My posts

♣ My writing has changed so much since the beginning of 7th grade to the beginning of high school(now). I have learned so much and really written some true authetic writing

Please answer the following prompt. NO!!! I shouldn’t ever write to one of those again. Those bring out My worst writing that is when I begin to write not authentic. Prompts have no meaning. They just make me right for a grade instead of my own pleasure. I begin to sound like this:All and all, My first reason is becuase… That is the worst crap I have ever heard.

Writing on the blog or the wiki is the only way to go for me. Pull out any of my prompts. Technology > paper.It always will be. When I am writing on y blog I am able to write about what I want to and write as muc or as little as I want about it (as long as it is 1 paragraph). I have learned things about myself that I didn’t even know about. I have shown writing that I didn’t even no was in me. That shows true authenticity. When you write something you hadn’t had capability of before, because you believe in your writing and you write what you want to. That shows something.

My belief= When you write something you don’t believe in it sucks, unless it is for a grade then you are ust writing what the teacher wants to

Good belief= You write what you want on your blogs. GOOD!! That s how it should walways be becuase then you ae able to write about what you want to and express the true you.

Just take at the blog post. I couldn’t have used that much expression on paper, all the crossing out and stuff. Its more fun and more useful to get a meaning across

    The Cresthill A and B basketbal teams this year rock. We have only playyed one game, but we both won, so it doesn't matter we are still the best. The Cresthill A team won our game against Sierra by 20 points. That is a great imrpvement from last year when we lost to them in the regular season by 1 point. Everyone on the team was meshing together so well. We were making great passes, taking good shots, and finishing everything we did… Really Well. The B team held it a little closer dring the game, but they still came out on top in the end. They won there game by 4 points with some great free trows to finish the game.  Some of the key players yesterday inlcuded, everyone. We were all amazing yesterday.  Everyone was playign so well together. If you would have seen us in practice, we would have looked like we would loe all of our games. We were all hoging the ball for ourselves and making bad team decisions. I think it was just some simple nerves that we were able to get over. Our game yesterday wasn't about being the best player for any one person, It was about being the best team in the school league. Sierra used to be number one.As long as we continue to play like the team we did to Sierra we will be #1. 

My first thing on my list of my personal curriculum project was to do a few posts where I really connected with the issues, or talked about what issues are going on in certain places, and how we should think about them and deal with them.

Here are the links to those three posts

 http://nextmj1.learnerblogs.org/2007/01/31/uganda-and-the-lra/

http://nextmj1.learnerblogs.org/2007/01/10/building-off-of-mooses-can-money-buy-happiness/

http://nextmj1.learnerblogs.org/2007/01/04/my-first-connection-movie-we-are-marshall/

The three posts deal with Uganda and the LRA, We are Marshall, and the Pursuit of Happiness.

I don’t know what to write about. I am just going to think of random things that have happened to me in the past week. Every time I went to delicious I started singing fergalicious. To the D to the E to the L-I-C-I-O-U-S. Every time.  I was at the Bear rock cafe and I asked myself why there was a lot of bear paintings in the restaurant. Then i started laughing after at myself and my family stared at me. I had the worst service ever at Dave nd Buster’s this weekend. I stood at the front desk for over 15 minutes waiting for the person in front of me to say, “Can I help you?” I mean how rude does it get. She didn’t once acknowledge that I was even there. How rude. A the end of the night after being spent for $50 dollars worth of tokens I ended up getting bitter tasting pixie stixs, a remote control car that doesn’t work and two glass cups that are a cool shape , and one of them has already been dropped and broken. Who knew that a fun night at Dave & Buster’s could be so not fun. My fun weekend sort of sucked. It was also funny. That is my random weekend in a whole. I playd basketball to but that is normal.

She was lost on what to do. Erica had always been a good person putting her life before another but this time it just seemed different. There were several reasons why she didn’t want to sacrifice her own life to show her brother she wasn’t lying. First and foremost even though she thinks it sounds a little selfish she doesn’t want to die yet she wasn’t even 26 yet. She hadn’t even had the chance to have a child of her own. Secondly, If she died then what would her brother do. He couldn’t see what was coming at him because he can’t see the future like she could. So then they wold both end up dying and what would be the help in that. Third, she didn’t want to have to goo through the pain of one of those deaths. The deaths were always so gruesome. I mean what would happen to her. Would she be torn limb by limb, her greatest fear was having someone shatter some sort of bone in her body, especially her knees. The thought just made her wince.

She sat there in her room for hours puzzled on what to do. Every time she though of a new idea she didn’t like it. Finally she got some food to think on. Mmm. she grabbed the leftover steak from the restaurant she was at last night and ate it. It was so good. After finishing it she had an idea. How ironic. She thought what if she showed her brother someone that she had seen was already going to die so it wouldn’t be her fault but hat they died just like they were supposed to.

Who would it be though?? Hopefully not someone she was close to again? If so, who would she choose?

In my opinion this is the best sport ever. Basketball is essential to my life. Without basketball I just wouldn’t be me. I love basketball partly because I am good at it. I love playing in games and practicing. I always want to play basketball. I go to the gym for probably around an hour and a half either to improve my basketball skills, to work on my strength and conditioning, or to do both. Basketball keeps me in good shape and keeps me on edge. It helps to keep me up in school by taking away a lot of time to do homework so I have to do it. If that makes sense. Having conflicts helps me to stay on top of things. Basketball is my passion. I want to continue playing it forever, possibly go pro. So far I am ranked in the top 3 in the state for 8th grade boys and I play for a gold crown team and two travel teams. Hopefully by playing on a traveling team I can expand to being nationally ranked. Thats my goal, and my dream.

Well right now in ELT we are learning about the Lord’s Resistance Army or the LRA. It is a rebel group that has been fighting against the Uganda government for a few decades now. The story behind this is really sad. What the LRA does is they basically kidnap children from there homes in villages and force them to do usually become either a bodyguard, a soldier, or the women are usually made into sex slaves. These children are forced to walk from there homes in the villages for miles at night, to get to the city where they can sleep in bus stations, under benches, and in the park because it is safer to sleep there. Then the kids who aren’t lucky and are kidnapped by the LRA are forced to do the most horrible things. Every morning the kids in he LRA wake up to go to fight or to kill other people. They are also told repeatedly that if anyone tries to escape you must beat them to death, and if you don’t you will be killed. Also if anyone tries to escape you will be killed no matter what. When we were learning about this yesterday I was running so many thoughts through my mind. I was trying to relate with the stories we were hearing but I couldn’t. There was no way i was going to be able t relate to anybody who has killed another person out of force and has been kidnapped and turned into a child soldier because…. I wasn’t. Its hard to sit there and listen to these stories and think about all the times I tell people I am so poor. To these people I would be a very wealthy man. If we all sat and took the time to think about the fact that none of us will ever have to go through this. We should all be more appreciative are stuff and think about how much more appreciative we would be if we lived in these conditions in Uganda. My message is just to think.

Stress, stress, stress. I don’t know where to start. Lately I have let stress over come me and it has effected me a lot. I am letting school, my parents, basketball, and my social life all over come me. I need to regain control. I am starting with basketball. Recently I have gone through a period where my shot was very off and I wasn’t into going to the gym. Next my parents were stressing me out trying to interfere with what was going on and trying to figure it out for me. When they do that all it does is push me away. My school work is becoming harder and harder, sometimes when I am in things like math I don’t even understand what I am learning. On top of all that I have a rigorous schedule. Here it is:

Monday- School, After school- I hav practice, i go to the gym, and i do push-ups and bar dips.

Tuesday- School, no practice, I go to the gym for about three hours, push ups and sit ups

Wednesday- School, jumping and conditioning night, 1 hour of jumping drills, sit ups, run 2 to 3 miles.

Thursday- school, practice, gym, push ups, pull ups, and bar dips.

Friday- school, gym, hang out with my friends

Saturday & Sunday- 4 or more games and a little hang out time.

All this was bothering me until i bean to use my stressors against themselves. To fix the basketball I am going to start sticking to my weekly schedule without complaints, and imrpoving my game to its best. I decided instead of letting my parents interfere completely I would tell them the problems I am having with them and let them know ways we could fix it. Then I could listen to what they had to say and we could come up with a compromise. That worked well, for real. My social life my parents said they will make more time in my schedule to be able to hang out with my friends so I will have a good balance for playing basketball and hanging out. My school work, I basically just got to pay better attention in class to what my teachers are saying and what we are learning. By doin this I have resolved my problems and I feel better then ever.

Tips:

1. Don’t let the stress get to you from the start. But if you can’t do this…

2.Stay Calm. Don’t yell at your parents try not to let your emotions go wild.

3. Don’t always think you can do it all yourself. Its okay to ask for help every once and a while.

4. Everything that is stressing you try to turn these things to your advantage( as i described above).

5. Don’t make a big deal of something small in proportion.

6. Final one, something that can help I would say go to your parents. They will help, just try to talk to them calmly.

Link: Moose’s Can money buy happiness?

Personally I think money can buy happiness, in certain situations. For instance, in the movie the pursuit of happiness he is living the lowest possible lifestyle. He, and his son are running from Shelter to shelter as he interns for a job he wants to get. I haven’t seen the movie yet but from what I see in the credits II would say it is a very touching movie. It makes me want to stop to think about how my life would be so much different and really what I would do if my possessions, my clothes, and my home all gone. It is a scary thought. I think being homeless would bring a family together but I don’t think it is the lifestyle I would want to live everyday. What I mean by that is that the one thing no matter if you have no money, no extra clothes, or no home, you would still have family. It seems like spending all that time with your family would bring you so much closer together. If we really stop and think about it most of us are not that close with our parents/siblings. Most of us argue with our siblings and our parents. I know some of the time it seems like all I use my parents for is money and a ride to my friends’ houses, the movies, the mall, etc. Then I go back to thinking of a homeless lifestyle. It seems that you would talk with your parents you would be able to connect with your parents, and because you don’t have that money and sometime not even a ride you get a chance to spend more time with your family. Sometimes it is hard to tell which of us lives the better life on a more “emotional” level rather than a “possessions” level. I think that every person does deserve to have a home and money to feed there families though. Recalling the movie one of the saddest parts is when the main character gives a man 5 dollars that asks for a cab ride. We would think that 5 dollars oh well we can just go get another five dollars some other time. At this part in the movie he stands there looking in his wallet. He has 7 dollars to for him and his son. Thats all. We give five dollars and we get more money, where as he gives five dollars. and that is more than 60 percent of the money to his name. All I am saying is next time you ask for five dollars or you ask for a ride from your parents just think. Think about all the things you could do without using money. Think.

Well I am no movie reviewer but if I was I would give this movie a 6 out 5 stars. It was one of the most inspirational movies I have ever seen. Personally, being into sports I love football and basketball movies like Glory Road, and Remember the Titans. This movie was a little different. One of the most shocking parts of the movie is before the beginning credits even come. While I sat there in the theater the screen went black and then in the most serious lettering I have ever seen it said, “This is a true story”. After the movie I really thought about that first part. What the people who experienced this must have gone through. If you don’t know the story about Marshall, a football team, the coaches, parents, recruiters, and fans all were on a plane ride back from an away game. The plane was struck down and crashed in a near by town forest area. All 75 people on the plane ended up dying. I thought about what some of those people were and what some people lost. I don’t know what I would do. I really have no idea what I would do if I lost somebody. In the movie they were talking about all the losses. Some people lost brothers, sisters, fathers, and mothers. Some people ended up losing both parents. Let alone from the issues with sports at school, what some families personally lost. I know at if I lost a family member whether it was my mom, my dad, or my annoying at times brother, or even a best friend, I would be devastated. Life seems like it would be hard to go by day to day knowing that you will never see that person again. Never have the good times and the bad times you and that special person shared. It would be heartbreaking. Really the message I am just tying to send to you is that it is important to appreciate what you have now so that when it is gone you know you were able to get as much time with them as you could. At the young age you are now you should still hang out with your parents and chill with your friends so when that day comes when you guys may not be together anymore, you still have so many memories with them. It’s important to remember.