tenth photo

Last but certainly not least is friends. I picked this picture because Paige has been one of my best friends for the last two years. This picture also shows my crazy side because I can’t believe I wore that to homecoming this year. Another thing I noticed in this picture is I was wearing a brace. That was from when I broke my wrist golfing this year at regionals and that is why I didn’t go to state. It was probably the biggest disappointment of my high school career.

photo #9

Another photo that defined my high school career was hockey. I did play it for my freshman and sophomore year. It wasn’t my favorite thing to do in the world but I do miss it sometimes. I miss hockey before high school but I don’t miss the ECA Stars.

photo #8

Last year at the PGA Championship at Hazeltine I got to take a picture with Rory Mcilory. He is now the best golfer in the world. He has been my favorite golfer on the tour and was so exciting to take a picture with him and get his autograph. He is a really nice guy and most gofers won’t usually do that.

seventh photo

Another success I had in my high school career was shooting my first deer. This usually happens in middle school but I didn’t see any deer my first 3 years of hunting. It was a great moment and luckily I didn’t have to gut it. It was small but she really did taste good!

sixth photo

Probably one of the best trips I have ever went on was last year when we went on a carnival cruise and then we went to the wizarding world of harry potter after that. There is this shop called Ollivanders wand shop and you 40 people go into a room. Then they simulate the wand choosing the wizard on one or two people. They usually pick a child but he chose my sister and me to go through the simulation.  It was so exciting and Harry Potter has been my obsession next to golf ever since I read them when I was younger. It has defined my childhood and my high school career

fifth photo

Probably one of the best trips I have ever went on was last year when we went on a carnival cruise and then we went to the wizarding world of harry potter after that. There is this shop called Ollivanders wand shop and you 40 people go into a room. Then they simulate the wand choosing the wizard on one or two people. They usually pick a child but he chose my sister and me to go through the simulation.  It was so exciting and Harry Potter has been my obsession next to golf ever since I read them when I was younger. It has defined my childhood and my high school career

fourth photo

One of the greatest achievements my high school career was making it to state my sophomore year for golf. It is tied for one of the best moments of my life. Not only did we go to state, we placed first in our sectional when we were most likely to get third. I have never tried so hard in my life and succeeded so greatly on one thing before. We ended up being the first girl’s golf team from memorial to go to state.

third photo

After family one of the bigger things that defined my high school career was golf. Golf is my hobby, sport, obsession, and hopefully one day will be a part of my career one day. It has defined my high school career and at some points I thought it was more important than school. That might be the reason I didn’t get the best grades my freshman and sophomore years because I needed to sort out my priorities.

second photo

The next picture I decided to do was a family picture. This is my mother, my stepdad, my sister, and me at the capital protesting against collective bargaining rights. I thought this was a good picture because family is very important to me. And one of our new mottos as a family is a family that protests together stays together. It was a weird thing to bond over but it did effect my senior year greatly.

first photo

I decided to do my photo essay on my high school career. I will talk mostly about trips I’ve taken, triumphs, and, of course, golf. What a better way to start of my high school cover photo is to use my senior picture. This was a long and stressful day of trying to take the perfect picture and of my mom yelling at me to smile. But I think it at least turned out decent.

Trayvon Martin Case

http://youtu.be/ThUCKcOAb2M

For those of you who don't know about the Trayvon Martin case it is a very controversial case that is happening right now. It involves the controversial law called the Stand your Ground Law. The law states that of you feel like you are threatened you can use deadly harm to your attacker and you don't have to try an retreat first. Critics of the law call it the shoot first law and a lot of people say that it will cause more racial  killings. This is what they think happened in the Trayvon Martin case. Zimmermann followed Trayvon Martin and shot him because he thought he looked suspicious. Zimmermann thinks the Stand your Ground law will save him in this case. This relates to my topic because ALEC is the group that came up with the law and a lot of people think it was just for corporations to sell more guns. Watch the video above for more info on the Trayvon Martin case.

Voter ID Law

http://youtu.be/_xlSU9-SmEo

This video is basically a debate about the pros and cons of the controversial voter ID law that has come into affect in many states. This is one of the many laws that has been made up by ALEC. Republicans say that it helps make sure that there is no voter fraud happening. The Democrats say the republicans made this law solely for political purposes only. This law makes a lot college students, Hispanic, and African American people not be allowed to vote and these are people who tend to vote more democrat. The democrats think it is only a move to rig the elections more in favor of republicans. In this video you see both sides of the debate. Two people debate on whether or not the Voter ID Law should be in the states and it gets fairly heated because you can tell they are passionate about what they are talking about.

ALEC Watch Review

ALEC Watch is an online book written by the NRDC. It has a very liberal bias to the book and it basically talks about the horrors of the conservative group ALEC. There are 7 chapters and they talk about everything from the history of ALEC to benefits the legislatives get to corporate dividends. The liberal bias of this book may not be for everyone but I really did enjoy it since it agreed with most of what they were saying. One thing I didn’t like was that it really didn’t tell a story it was just a book of facts. It was very informative but it did not catch my interest like other books do. Since there wasn’t a story there wasn’t any characters in ALEC Watch to connect with which also made it harder to read. I did find it interesting how they talked about all of the trips the legislators get for bringing ALECs laws into their states. This obviously connects to my topic because the entire book is on my topic. The book is on ALEC and my topic is ALEC. I would definitely recommend this book to someone who is interested in this topic but I would not recommend this to the average reader.

"ALEC Report." ALEC Report -- Table of Conents. NRDC. Web. 17 May 2012. <http://alecwatch.org/report.html>.

Capitalism: a Love Story

            Capitalism: a Love Story is a 2009 documentary directed by Michael Moore. It shows the effects corporate greed on American families. It shows the terror of what Capitalism does and how it helps only a few rich people but it doesn’t help anyone else. Right at the beginning they started comparing ancient Rome and the United States today. They talked about the similarities like Rome had chariot races and America has NASCAR, they compare their emperor to president, and both civilizations have a wide gap between the rich and the poor. These things eventually led to the demise of ancient Rome. I thought it started off the documentary very well because it shows history can repeat itself. It really set the tone for the rest of the movie.

            Another point that really stuck with me was pilots have to take up to $100,000 in student loans to become one but their starting year they only make $17,000 in a year. A running joke among pilots is don’t pick up your food stamps when you’re in your uniform. Also Pilots get paid less than a Taco Bell manager. But their excuse is “that’s capitalism.”

They touch aspects of the control that corporations have over their workers. For example, they talk about companies that take out insurance loans on their workers so if their workers die they get money for their death. These people are called “dead peasants” in the corporations. Moore did a very good job at shocking you with the facts about capitalism. I also really like the comical side that Moore put into the movie. For example, there is a scene where Moore tries to do a citizen’s arrest of the board of directors from AIG. It gives sort of a comic relief from the serious topic at hand. It also links to my topic because this talks about corporate greed and ALEC is basically just feeding corporate greed with what they are doing.

There is however a lot of controversy surrounding the movie. There are a lot of conservatives who claim he oversimplifies capitalism and he doesn’t really bash President Obama. I think it was a great movie and it makes you laugh and leaves you thinking about it later. It definitely reassured my view on capitalism and it is a definite must see.

Capitalism: A Love Story. Dir. Micheal Moore. Perf. Michael Moore. Overture Films, 2009. DVD.

Mockingjay book Review

The book Mockingjay is the third and last book in the Hunger Games trilogy by Suzanne Collins. The heroic Katiniss Everdeen has now has become the face of the rebellion that has taken a hold of the dystopian country of Panem. She has to rally people and ready herself for a war against the Capital. I really like the political aspect to the book. I liked how it dived into the political aspects of district 13 and the life there. But I feel Suzanne Collins rushed the plot way too much and didn’t develop the amazing story lines that she had in the first two books.

As for characters, the first two books I really loved Katniss. She is the badass 16 year old that basically sticks it to the man. In the third book she got on my nerves. This was a bad thing and a good thing. I think Collins was trying to portray that she isn’t ready for a revolution and in ways she is just a 17 year old girl. But she makes decisions in the book that that really portray her true personality. I really did like the twists and turns the love story took over the course of the book. Overall I think people should read it who has read the first two books so they can get closure to the characters. But the first two books were way better than the third so in a way the book was a disappointment.

Inside the 2011 ALEC conference

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r_OFdjC87ko

This YouTube video shoes a group of people called ThinkProgress try and get into an American Legislative Exchange Council conference. They are, of course, denied access into the conference, so they interviewed people outside of the conference. They asked a man that was apart of ALEC certain questions about his thoughts on ALEC. Then after that they waited outside a conference for people to come out for a smoke. They got very angry when asked what their names were and were unresponsive to questions.

Passage Journal #6

"A short time after Minnijean's return, a boy doused her with what appeared to be a bucket of soup. She froze in her tracks and did not respond, even as the greasy liquid trickled down her chest and horror painted on her face. Afterward, a group of perhaps fifty students gathered outside the Principal's office to shout cheers for the douser, saying he had paid her back. He was suspended. but we were frightened that he had set in motion an all-out soup war that could lead to the drenching of each one of us and guarantee a real brawl if we tried to fight back."
I picked this one because it shows that at least administration isn't too bias when it comes to suspending. It is fair that if Minnijean was suspended then the boy should be suspended. Although it shows that these segregationists will not be deterred from their goal. It is also upsetting that half way through the year a couple of kids finally got suspended. People should have been expelled the first day.

Passage Journal #5

""Nigger," I would whisper to myself. That's all I am to them. They don't see me as a real person. There even came a moment when i pinched myself to see if I was really there. So many times I wanted to shout, "I'm Melba, don't you see me? I play the piano, I can make blouses, I can write poems... and I sing." When I felt I couldn't hold it in anymore, I talked to grandma India."
I picked this one because I find it upsetting that she had spent so much time in central that she started thinking of herself badly. She faced so much ridicule from all of her peers and teachers that her self esteem was low enough to have her knock herself down. This passage also shows that her grandmother is a rock in her life. She couldn't have gone through the school year if she didn't have her grandmother. She even thought about killing herself which her grandma talked her out of.

Passage Journal #4

"One girl with short red hair, freckles, and a pixie smile was being especially attentive. She invited me accompany her to window that overlooked the school yard. I was suspicious of her kindness, but I wanted to believe someone was having a change of heart. As I stood beside her chatting about the bright day and the activity of the soldiers on the ground beneath us, I felt a twinge of joy.
"Stand right here. We're gonna salute the flag now," she said. I raised my hand to my chest and smile as the flag was hoisted up in front of the classroom.
"Aren't you gonna take a picture of me saluting the American flag with this famous nigger," she suddenly shouted to the boy who was focusing the camera. "Snap it, you idiot... now! I wanna get into life magazine like the niggers are.""
I picked this passage because as I was reading this I was kind of relieved that someone was actually being nice to her. Then you find out she is just using her to get on time magazine. It is actually kind of sad that Melba was so quick to trust this girl. The only reason didn't is because she craved some kind of positive reinforcement from the school and that was the only time someone approached her. Then after this the ginger actually stabbed her with a pointed stick and the teacher didn't do anything about it. I think it is sad that this is where the education system was at at this point in time.

Reaction to Imagine If...

In English class, we discussed if we could do a certain thing like wear the color blue because of the size of my shoes. The question was what would you do? Our teacher, asked us to write about it. I wrote about if I couldn't wear the color blue because of my shoe size it would be a restriction of my right to freedom of speech and expression. I would fight for this right because what else would they restrict if they restricted the colors I wear.
At the end of the lesson she said if you changed that you couldn't wear the color blue because of your shoe size to you couldn't go to school because of the color of your skin. It kind of hit harder with that because I feel that education is a right that everyone should have a not a privilege. I would do everything in my power to change that law just like the Little Rock 9 did.

Passage Journal #3

"A woman stood toe-to-toe with me, not moving. "Nigger!" she shouted in my face again and again. She appeared to be a little older than my mother. Her face was distorted with rage. "Nigger bitch. Why don't you go home?" she lashed out at me. "Next thing, you'll want to marry one of our children."" - page 111
I picked this passage to write about because I find it kind of disturbing. The fact that they had to face torment every single day from their peers is already disturbing in general. A lot of children get tormented by peers so I think it would be easier to ignore if I was Melba and I was getting tormented by people my age. In this passage though, she actually gets tormented by a mother and I think it would be harder to ignore if a grown woman who has children of her own was tormenting me. Especially if she continued to call me those vile things. The thing that disturbs me the most is if I was a girl growing up in Little Rock, Arkansas in this time period would I be one of the people harassing these 9 children. I wonder if my views would differ in any way. I obviously hope not but it is hard to tell how I would think if everyone around me were really big segreationists.

Passage Journal #2

"Shortly after Mr. Claxton left, the church ladies arrived with baskets of food. "So's the white people won't catch you'all shopping and chop your heads off," Mrs. Floyd said with an acidic smile as she brushed past me. She was grandma's very good friend, but she wasn't at all in favor of integration. "We have our place, and we do best when we stay in it," she said. Her words made me tense up, but i knew she meant well. She had no way of knowing about last night's shooting and how much the things she said hurt my feelings."- Page 69-70

I thought this passage was very interesting because it shows several aspects of Melba's life and integration. First, I  think it is interesting that everyone feels it is okay to tell her their opinion on integration. Whether it is good or bad. It is a lot of pressure to put on a 16 year old. In the passage she states that what she said hurt her feelings. When people give her their opinion and its negative I don't think they realize what kind of pressure they put on her. There is no way I could be able to handle the pressure of integration at my age. I also think that Melba couldn't have done what she did if her grandmother and her family didn't support her like they did.

Passage Journal #1

We recently started reading a book called Warriors Don't Cry and it is a great memoir about the Little Rock 9. Here is a passage from the beginning of the book. This passage is from the introduction on page xxii.

"Where is Governor Faubus, I wonder. Where is the man who dispatched armed soldiers to keep nine children out of school, who bet his life and his career that he would halt integration?
"Faubus is quoted on the news wires today saying if he had it to do it over again, he'd do the same thing. What do you think about that?" a reporter asks."


This passage from the book really stood out to me because it is so shocking to me. There are several things that disturb me. First, is that Faubus actually sent armed soldiers to a high school to keep CHILDREN from getting an education. I don't understand how he didn't lose his job as Governor. Especially, since he was ordered by the supreme court that separate but equal is unconstitutional. The second thing that is extremely disturbing is the fact that after 30 years he still has no remorse. Also that he would do it again if he was in that situation! I don't understand how someone could do that. I think that if Faubus didn't send in troops it wouldn't have been as severe and Eisenhower wouldn't have sent in the 101st airborne. It could have gone one of two ways if the 101st airborne didn't come in. It either wouldn't have been that bad and people would have been as severe when children were making fun of the little rock nine. Or one of the children would have been lynched. It could have affected education today if one of those did happen.

Kozol vs Ravitch

I recently read two books about education; they were called Savage Inequalities and Shame of the Nation. I read one chapter out of each of them. Shame of the nation i read about how much on average a school district spends per student in an inner city school and a rich suburb school. The answer was disturbing. In inner city schools it was roughly $8000 per 3rd grade class and in a 3rd grade class in the wealthiest suburb they averaged about $12000 per class. To me I don't think that is fair because all of those kids already start out at a disadvantage. A study in 2002 showed that a teacher in the Bronx was payed roughly $53000, in Manhasset a teacher was payed $87000, and in Scarsdale a teacher was payed $95000. Both of those effect a child's learning and studies show that a child needs preschool to be able to keep up with school. Most kids in the Bronx don't go to preschool. George W. Bush was once quoted saying "Giving money to a poor school is like pumping gas into an already flooded engine." He was basically saying those schools have too much money anyway. I cant express how much I disagree with this statement. It is probably the exact opposite from the truth. Deborah Meier said, "I will believe money doesn't count the day the rich stop spending so much money on their own children." It is so true. There is a high school in the South Bronx that when it rains the water runs freely down the stairs like a waterfall. You cant say that that doesn't effect learning. The next book that I read basically talks about how all children should be managers for their life and that's what they have to learn in school. They have to be able to be confident enough in themselves so every child needs to be in a manager-like position so they don't feel like the underdog.

Annotated Bibliography

Underwood, Julie, and Julie F. Mead. "A Smart ALEC Threatens Public Education." Phi Delta Kappan. PDK International, 20 Feb. 2012. Web. 8 Mar. 2012. <http://www.kappanmagazine.org/content/93/6/51.full>.

This article talks about Alec and the affects it had on education, state legislators, money, free markets, and many more. It is a liberal leaning article so it doesn’t shed ALEC in a very good light. It also talks about ALEC in different states including Tennessee Arizona, Indiana, Georgia, Louisiana, and Wisconsin. It goes very in depth about education including collective bargaining and privatization of schools in the US. They want to privatize education through vouchers, charter schools, and tax incentives. Another effect they will have on education is they want to have more student testing and student competition. They are big supporters of the No Child Left Behind Act. They also want to lessen the influence of school boards and school districts through several different acts. It also goes on to talk about ALECs influence in states and how strong it is.

"ALECWATCH." ALECWATCH. Defenders of Wildlife and the Natural Resources Defense Council.

            Web. 08 Mar. 2012. <http://alecwatch.org/index.html>.

            This is online book called ALEC watch. There are not very many books on ALEC and this one is one of the few. This book is more liberal leaning in opinion so it is against ALEC and it shows the bad sides of ALEC. This article talks about the history, finances, and activities of the American Legislative Exchange Council. They say that ALEC is just front so corporations can funnel money through it to get what they want from legislators. It talks about all of the laws that were made in their think tanks and are now cropping up around all of these conservative ran states. Some of the laws include Collective bargaining and Voter ID and both of these have shown up in Wisconsin.

"History." ALEC. American Legislative Exchange Council. Web. 8 Mar. 2012.

<http://www.alec.org/about-alec/history/>.

            This article talks about the history of ALEC and what ALEC stands for when it comes to views.  Their “slogan” for their council is Limited Government, Free Markets, Federalism. They describe themselves as a nonpartisan membership association for conservative state lawmakers who shared a common belief in limited government, free markets, federalism, and individual liberty. This article is straight from ALECs website and so it is more conservative leaning in opinion. Then they go on to talk about the birth of their task forces. They were created in 1981. They also talk about their clearinghouses to think tanks. The last part of the article talks about ALEC’s formula for success. 

Alec Watch: Non Fiction Book Review

http://alecwatch.org/index.html

For my non fiction book I read bits and pieces of an online book called ALEC watch. Since their are not many books about alec I thought this one would suffice. It is Liberal bias because I couldnt find many sources that were for ALEC except for ALECs website. This article talks about the history, finances, and activities of the American Legislative Exchange Council. They say that ALEC is just front so corporations can funnel money through it to get what they want from legislators.

The History of ALEC: Article Response

http://www.alec.org/about-alec/history/

This article that I read is about the history of the American Legislative Exchange Council. It has a conservative bias to it because it was straight from ALECs website. I want to have both sides in my blog. ALEC defines itself as a "nonpartisan membership association for conservative state lawmakers who shared a common belief in limited government, free markets, federalism, and individual liberty". The organization was founded in 1973 and has been helping out conservative law makers make their laws for 30 years. Then I read the about how they created the think tanks and their task forces.

Article response: A smart ALEC threatens public education

http://www.kappanmagazine.org/content/93/6/51.full

This article talks about how the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) is affecting public education. This article is bias towards the liberal views about ALEC. In the first couple of paragraphs it talks about how much ALEC has affected the midwest over the last year. It brings up how taking away collective bargaining rights showed up in three states last year including wisconsin. Then it goes on to talk about what ALEC strives for in education including changing teaching, privatizing education, increasing student testing, and elimate the use of school boards and districts. In this article, they think that all of these can be hazardous to the economy and education.

Boarding Schools

Ever since I read Harry Potter when I was ten years old, I've wanted to go to Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. Though now that I've grow up a bit I have realized it gives a unrealistic outlook on how boarding schools actually work and how they are portrayed. When J.K. Rowling wrote the books she said she wasn't supporting the 1940s versions of boarding schools. She claimed the only reason she made Hogwarts a boarding school was because it is easier to write a novel about children without parental figures in the picture. You can see the appeal it gives to young children. They are thinking I get to go to Hogwarts away from my parents and have feasts three times a day. Also it is like you are living with your best friends during the school year (and you get to learn magic). I looked up a "real" boarding school called Wayland Academy in Wisconsin. Wayland's only goal is for you to graduate and get you into a four-year college. At Wayland they have a 100% placement rate into 4-year colleges and to get onto the Deans List you have to have at least a 4.0. The average day at Wayland's consists of waking up between 7-7:30am , then breakfast is served from 7-7:45am. Next classes start at 8:00am and end at 3:30pm, after that you have mandatory after school sports from 3:45- 5:30pm. Now you can finally have dinner and you have to have permission to go off campus. Then you are in the library and you have a Mandatory study time from 7:30- 9:30pm, then its lights out at 10:30pm. Between all of the activities you have to do I don't know where you could find time at Hogwarts to go explore the castle and defeat Voldemort. Personally I still think boarding schools would be fun but I might still be harboring unrealistic ideas about boarding schools.

Responsibilities as a Student

Some of the responsibilities I have as a student is remembering due dates and doing homework. I have to make sure I do all of these things so I get good grades. I need good grades to get into college. I have to take on these responsibilities because of all these factors.

Future Plans

One of my plans after high school is to go to Minnesota State: Mankato. At the beginning of the year I had to decide whether to go Mankato or St. Cloud. Both of them offered me money to golf for them. I decided to go to Mankato because I liked the team better and the school. I also want to major in either Marketing or International Business. I will major in one and minor in the other. The reason I want to do that is because I eventually want to own my own business.

School Success

I think one of the classes i have succeeded in school is History and Civics. They have always been my favorite subject because I love learning about t. I am kind of obsessed with politics and current events. I feel like people need to be informed about what is going on. In my opinion, ignorance is not bliss. I would rather be informed and make informed decsions about our next president. Instead of ignorant people complaining about the president they voted for because they were uninformed. Having these views I feel like I succeeded in Civics and History because of it.

Lessons Learned

I think the biggest lesson I have learned inside and outside the classroom is honesty and integrity. I have learned this lesson from golf I think. When I was 11 years old I was in a big tournment to go to the world championship. There was a girl who lied about how many strokes she had on a hole. That was the difference between winning and losing for me. From that day forward I vowed that I would never cheat in golf because it wouldnt be fair to the other people playing against me. I have also learn to be honest in school because if I cheated on a test i would feel so bad afterward.

Cultural Factors

Gender Stories

            When I was younger I joined hockey in Eau Claire youth hockey association. They didn’t have a girl’s hockey team so of course I had to join the boys. I was a mites and I know I was completely awful. I was the only girl and I could barely skate. I knew I was the worst on the team but I didn’t care because hockey was so much fun. I worked at it and I progressively got better so by my 2^nd year of hockey I dramatically improved. There was this boy who was on my team the first year that was better than me but when I came back I was better than him. He didn’t like that at all he would always be extremely rude to me and would make fun of me on the ice. One day after practice I was skating off the ice and he came up behind me a swung his hockey stick at me. He hit the back of my head and I fell to the ice. His mom was so angry at him and she almost made him quit. This was all because he I became better than him at hockey. There was one other boy that got better than him but he didn’t get mad at him. So it was obviously because I was a girl and he was getting beat by one.

Social Class

When I was younger, I classified my family as middle class. My mom is a school teacher. Since March, I have been classifying myself as lower class. I’m sure you know what I am talking about since my mom is a state worker in the state of Wisconsin. Since Scott Walker started picking on the working class it has taken a toll on my family. It is a classic situation of upper class picking on the lower class. It has definitely divided our society more. I think this has shaped my experiences because it has definitely made me more liberal than I already was. That shows how much social class had affected how people look at the world. Also since all of this happened I have realized how much money my mom spends on the essentials. It has made me pay for more stuff on my own. My family is definitely worrying about the financial status with two kids in college next year. That is how social class has affected me.

Race

I really don’t think race really affects me personally as I am never discriminated against due to the fact that I am white. I sometimes feel bad for people of color as I see they are sometimes discriminated against even today in our society. I live in the mid-west and my school and city are primarily white. As you said in class people who live in the Midwest are at a disadvantage because we live in the whitest place in the United States. Luckily, I have visited other countries where I have felt a minority. I have been to Mexico, Belize, Honduras, and many other places. I feel like I know a little bit more about different cultures and races because of it. In these countries I felt like a minority and in some case taken advantage of because I didn’t know the language. I felt like I was being watched more closely because of my color.

Religion

I was raised to be Lutheran. I was the perfect child because I went to church every Sunday and Wednesday. I went to church camp, was in the plays, joined chimes, and joined the youth group. Little did everyone know that my father forced to go to Church. I of course learned to resent. I had doubts about the Lutheran faith but I was scared to question it because everyone made me think that I was going to hell. I stopped going to church with my dad after 5^th grade but I still went with my mom. She was more laid back when it came to church. But I still had doubts so after I got confirmed I decided that the Lutheran church wasn’t for me. As of right now I don’t know what faith I am. But it took a lot of courage to finally stand up and say I didn’t want to go there anymore.

Teachers: The good and the bad

My favorite teacher I have ever had was Mrs. Zehms, my third grade teacher. I think what made her such a great teacher was the fact that you knew she was having just as much fun teaching as she did when she stared working 20 years earlier. She still had the drive to help all the children in her class succeed. She definately went above and beyond the call of duty for me. My best friend in elemantary school, Zack, had diabetes and he would have to leave math class right before lunch to get an insulin shot. She made it a priority to help him get caught up. Also I loved how eccentric she was. She was kind of like a kid herself. Those as are the best qualities you can have a teacher.

Some of my worst teachers are a totally different story. I wont name any names but some of the qualities they all posess is you can tell they cant wait until they retire. They basically ae counting down the days until they retire. Also my chemistry teacher would just assume you know things about an atom or an ion. So when they tried to explain to you what we were supposed to do you didnt understand what he was saying. But above all the worst quality a techaer can have is not wanting to help a student when they need help. Those kind of teachers that the student is too scared to approach the teacher because they will get mad. Those are the worse qualities you can have as a teacher.

School Struggles

I think one of my biggest struggles in school has been procrastinating. I am actually procrastinating right now while writing this blog. It is definately a problem I need to fix because it leads to really bad time management. It is something I need to work on before I go to college. It leads to bad grades because it is hard to balance golf, work, and school. I think that is why I had such bad grades freshman year because I didnt know how to balance at all. I have slowly started to improve.

High School

Its weird to talk about high school since I am still in it. My experience in high school iis fairly normal. I dont absolutely hate it but I dont love it. I feel like it is a phase you have to get through to get onto your real life. I am just here because I want to get into college and get a good education. This a transition period where you have to make big decisions about your future and find out what you want to do with your life. One of my bigger decisions was about where I want to attend college. I feel like it was 10 times more stressful for me because I had a deadline of october. This was because I want to play golf in college and I had the deadline of early signing. It was stressful but thats what high school is about, making decisions.

Middle School

Middle School was what I consider the three years of one big awkward moment. It was so uncomfortable because everyone was so immature. Everyone was trying to be like adults and make their own decisions but you were still considered a little kid. Thats when "drama" started because the hormones started to kick in. I remember I had a friend that if you said one thing wrong she wouldnt talk to you for several months. Everyone tried to be like adults but you were still considered a child. Have you ever had that feeling when you look back on a moment and you think why did I do, say, or think that way? Thats what I think when I think of middle school in general. The one good thing that came from middle school was that was when I started getting into reading. Which now reading is one of the things that define my life.

Elementary School

I dont hardly remember elementary school at all. I dont remember classes or hardly any teachers I had. The one thing I do remember was my favorite teacher of all time. Her name was Mrs. Zehms, and she was an excellent teacher. She was so eccentric and she had short, brown, wiry hair and big sunken in eyes. Everyday, she would wear a a different pair of earrings and she reminded me of Luna Lovegood from Harry Potter. She didnt care what people thought and I remember her wearing a lab coat when it was science time. She was the best part of elementry school. I also remember having to change schools from Sam Davey to Lakeshore. I absolutely hated Lakeshore and I missed all of my friends from Sam Davey.

Narrative essay

My mom and Mitch (stepdad) met two years later in 2000. They started dating they never got married but I do refer to him as my stepdad. He is the father figure in my life. He is the one that got me into golf. People that know me will say that my obsession in life is golf.

I golf every day and I hope to golf in college.  When I was nine years old I went to Williamsburg, Virginia to play in the U.S. Kids Golf World Championship. I definitely wasn’t the best girl that was there. I ended up placing 39^th which is very close to the bottom. I didn’t care it was still a good experience. Since golf has been my passion, I am thinking about going into golf management for school.  I have been looking into the best colleges for PGA Golf management. My ideal college would be to go to Ferris State University in Michigan. But there are a bunch of other colleges that I am thinking about like ASU, UNLV, and South Carolina. I will also probably apply to other colleges like UWEC, Stout, and UMD.

The thing that probably makes me happiest in life, aside from golf, is my family. My mother is the world to me. She is always there for me and I don’t know what I would do without her. My sister, Carly, is also probably one of my favorite people to talk to. If you ask people, they would say that we are the exact carbon copy of each other. They say we look alike (Carly and I don’t see it). We love all of the same music and shows. We can talk for hours and hours. We basically have the same personality and we are both really stubborn. I’m pretty sure we both got that from mom.

I think it is really hard to write a story about your life when you are 17 years old. It is still being written. But basically my life revolves around my family and golf.

This I Believe...

I believe that life is unfair. I know that isn’t a very cheerful beginning that you were looking for, but I also believe that everything happens for a reason. I actually had something very recently happen to me that fit this belief. Yesterday, I had a golf tournament and it was to go to sectionals. There was a very slim chance that we could make it as a team but I definitely could make it individually. I would have to shoot my worst round of the year to not make it. I started off on the front nine fairly bad but not bad enough to not go. Then I started the back nine and it gets worse. I know though if I get my act together I can still go. I get to the 14th hole, I hit my drive and it goes right into the fescue. I started looking for my ball. The fescue is extremely thick but I found my ball really embedded. I decide to try and swing at it. I hit the ball and it just gets embedded further. Usually when I hit a ball like that it hurts my wrist a bit and the same happened here. I was getting frustrated but I decide to try again.  I hit and sure enough it gets embedded even further but that was the least of my worries. After that hit, my wrist started throbbing! At this point, I don’t know what to do now because I can’t move my wrist and I can’t take relief from the fescue. I start thinking of my options and if I quit there is no way I could make it to sectionals. If I keep on playing it will be extremely painful and frustrating.  I decide to keep playing because if I stop I can’t go to sectionals. I end up with a ten on that hole. It doesn’t get much better because I can’t move my wrist.

So for the end of my story I did not make it to sectionals. I missed the cut by two strokes! I was obviously upset but at the end of the day I have to shrug it off. I don’t know what the reason was on why I didn’t make it to sectionals but I’m sure I will find out someday. Everything has a way of coming back to us in the end. I have to look back and say life is unfair but everything DOES happen for a reason.