Red Bulls

Recently, my brother, Ian, got drafted to the New York Red Bulls for soccer. The Red Bulls are known for being a very good professional soccer program. After being drafted, I immediately got so many texts and random people that I did not even know came up to me and told me to tell him congrats. At first I was just like yeah it is pretty cool but not too big of a deal. When I got home from school and saw my brother, it finally sunk in. My eyes began to water and I gave him the biggest hug possible, I was so proud to call Ian my brother. Many have asked the question, “Do you feel famous?” or “Aren’t you jealous?” Well the answer to the first one is no, just because he got drafted does not mean that I am famous, it simply means that he has become more popular. Now the second question on the other hand is yes. I am very jealous of him. I have dreamed about myself going professional in soccer and now that Ian has done it, it makes me jealous. He gets to play with some of the most famous people in soccer history. The Red Bulls play in April and I am most definitely going to cheer him on. I have been asked by multiple people if they can come with me and meet him. I find it very funny how only one of my friends wanted to meet him before he got drafted, and now a bunch of people want to. I will most likely just go with my family because family road trips are the best. Many people do not understand how much work it takes to even make the draft let alone be picked. My brother worked his butt off to get wear he is today. I remember when I was little and I would go and play soccer out in the back yard with all three of my brothers. Obviously I was terrible at it because I was very little, but just the fact that they let me play with them used to make me so happy. I still occasionally go outside with my other two brothers and play, but it will never be quite the same as having all three of them. This is why there are some bad things about him being drafted. I will only get to see him for seven days a year, and I will miss him very much. I know that this is what Ian wanted because he would work out almost every day not just to get better at soccer, but also just to play the thing that he loved most, soccer. My family is obsessed with soccer because four out of the six kids in my family play soccer and the other two still enjoy watching it. I do not think that there is one day that my family does not talk about soccer, and I think that my brother had the motivation to do well in soccer because he had his whole family to love and support what he loves doing. (526 words)

Temp.

Walking into school is a very horrible thing. You have to walk so far that your hands begin to feel like they are going to fall off. Even when you are all bundled up in winter gear you still feel freezing when you come in so there is no use to bring a bunch of winter coats. When arriving into school, you either get hit by a flaming hot building, or you come in feeling like an icicle.

Before school, I walk into many different rooms and for some reason, they are all different temperatures. One room is perfect and you love to just stand in there and feel nice and cozy. Others rooms are burning hot and as cold as Antarctica. This is something that really bothers me because I do not like to sweat during school, but I also do not want to freeze my butt off.

Who ever controls the temperature should put it at a nice comfy amount of heat so that people do not have to take clothes off or bundle up. My third and forth hour rooms are so cold that I have to be wearing a jacket at all times, but my second and sixth hour are so hot that I have to take off my jacket. It just does not make sense to me. Shouldn't the rooms all be the same temperature? I mean, that do not have separate control panels that they use.

I am not the only one that is bothered by this. Walking into a classroom I always here at least five people complaining about how hot or cold it is. I believe that someone should get right on this problem so that all of the students are at least moderately happy because that would make school a lot more comfortable. (304 words)

Miss Representation

When watching the film Miss Representation, I realized that women are often portrayed as very sexual objects. This is why it is acceptable to wear revealing clothes in today's society. Growing up for kids is a lot different today as well because they are exposed to so much sexual media, that they begin to think that it is okay to look and act that way. I do not think that all women in media are used sexually, but the majority is and that is just not right.
On television, there are many girls that look perfect to the viewers that are watching, but is that really real? Well in some cases, it is, but in others, they use computers to make them look skinnier and make them look like an all around perfect girl. This causes people in reality to think that they are bad looking, and they starve themselves. Kids starving themselves is a very hard thing to picture because most of them are fine the way they are, and they should just be happy with who they are, but the media makes them feel like they have to do that.
Miss Representation was a good eye opener, and I really enjoyed watching it. I learn so many new things about the media. For example, in almost every single movie the women are not the protagonist and they are just there for a love story or there to be on a guys shoulder at all times. This is not how women should be portrayed because women are much more than that. some women are smart, good at sports, and all sorts of stuff. Just because females are pretty does not mean that they are only good at being attractive. The media should definitely change the roles of women in everything. (303 words)

Contact Sports

                Walking down the noisy halls today was not the thing that I wanted to be doing this morning. Although it was dreadful, I did hear something come out of a student’s mouth that I really disagreed with. He said, “Football is the only contact sport out there.” I wanted to come up with something to say to him but I just could not say anything without sounding mean or rude, so I kept it to myself. This blog post is where my thoughts come out that I did not want to say out loud to the boy.

            First of all, football is a high contact sport. I agree that it is one of the most contact sport of them all, but other sports have a lot of contact as well. For example, in hockey, you skate around on ice and have people randomly shove you into walls for no particular reason. Also, when a player gets mad, they might just skate over to you and punch you in the face to get a fight started. I am not sure why the refs allow these players to fight because that is very dangerous. From a personal experience, I think that fist fighting in a hockey game should be banned. One day when I was little, my dad took me to a hockey game. A player decided that he was going to start a fight, and it happened less then fifteen feet away from me. I felt really bad for the poor guy who got his front teeth knocked out because his arm got caught in his jersey and he could not fight back. Just looking at that player made my teeth hurt.

            Another high contact sport would be soccer. I know that some people think that it is not a contact sport because all you do is run up and down a field trying to score goals. The truth is, is that yes at times it can be boring, but other times, it gets to be very physical. For example, my three brothers all play soccer, and for some weird reason, they all got really hurt in the same exact month. First, Gabe went up for a header in one of his games, and another player fell down on top of him. He wasn’t sure what happened, but he knew something was wrong. When he got x-rays, they told him that he had shattered his collar bone and could not play for at least two months. Two weeks later, Garet went in for a slide tackle in one of his games, and he had collided legs with a guy. He continued to play for a little while, until he could not stand the pain anymore. He later found out that he had broken his leg. Ian’s injury was not quite that badly, he just got hit and hurt his ankle pretty bad.

            Sports can all be dangerous, and be high contact, you may not realize it, but it is true. So before you go saying that football is the only contact sport out there, go do your research and you will find that other sports have a lot of contact too. (532 words)

Work Hard, Play Hard

To other athletes, soccer is not considered a hard sport. Well those people do not realize how tough it is to run for anywhere from ninety to one hundred and ten minutes with no breaks. It is a very mental and physical game and I just want all athletes to appreciate how hard soccer players work just to get a tiny bit better at what they do. There are many to things to do, even in off season. Some examples are weight lifting, long distance running, sprints, shooting, and foot skills.

Weight lifting is a key part of soccer because it helps you defend your own body against players that are bigger than you. It also helps you with shooting because if you have strong legs, you can shoot the ball really hard which makes it harder for the keeper to save.

Long distance running is very important. If you are good at running for a long time, then you will be able to make it throughout the whole game without stopping. But if you are bad at it, you will not do well in a game because you will get tired after barely any running. Running also keeps you in shape. Getting in shape is the best thing you can do for yourself. It helps you keeps a solid weight and it makes you love the game of soccer even more when playing.

Sprints help you in many different ways. For example, in soccer you have to change pace a lot, so it makes you unpredictable. It also helps you change direction really quickly and that will make it hard for your opponent to catch up to you or keep up with you.

Foot skills are what make you a tricky or sneaky player. When defending someone with great foot skills, it is very hard to figure out what they are going to do next. That is why dibbling also plays a role in foot skills, because if you cannot dribble very well you become predictable nad defenders will stop you from getting any farther. This also prevents you from scoring, which means your team will most likely not win.

As you can see, soccer has many parts to it, and you can’t be weak in any areas because you will not be a very good soccer player. In order to be good at soccer, you have to practice and work hard so that you can get even the slightest bit better. That is why you need to practice on your own, and not just when coaches can see you. If you only try when people are watching, then you will not get any better and eventually, other players will pass your soccer level, and you will be stuck behind. (463 words)

Hair

Dying your hair just seems so pointless to me. I am not sure why people do it. I look at my hair and think, “Wow I am glad that I did not do anything to my hair because it is a part of me and who I am.” Some people think that dying their hair makes them look better, and for some people that is the case. For me, I am too much of a chicken to do anything about the color of my hair. I always think “What if my natural hair never comes back!?” or “What if I do not like the color on me?” The things that I think are the things that keep me from dying my hair.

            Coming into school some days I see people complaining about how they did not get the color that they wanted. If I were that person, I would probably never do that to my hair again because maybe your hair just does not adapt to color very well.

            Another reason why I will not do anything to the color of my hair is because of my mom. If I ever did anything like that to it she would give me the longest lecture ever. That is just something that I would just like to avoid. Although she dies her hair, she still thinks it is a bad thing for me to do.

            To be honest, I am not sure if I will ever change my hair color. It would just take so much time to get used to it. It wouldn’t feel like me anymore, and I would probably think I look weird. That is the biggest reason why I will not do it and I will most likely stick to not changing it. I am not saying that it is a bad thing, but I would not do it to myself. (316 words)

Gender

People are having trouble understanding why there is such a thing like gender role. To be honest, there really should not be such a thing. I believe that some girls are better than guys at thing and some guys are better than girls at certain things. Not ALL males are better at something and not ALL females are better at something. Everybody has something they are good at whether it is the same thing as the opposite gender or not.

            First let’s talk about males. Most people think that males are all strong and they are all really good at weight lifting. The truth is, is that some guys may not be born with a lot of muscle to build, and I guarantee that there is a girl out there that could beat a guy at a weight lifting competition. Another thing is sports. For example, they think that hockey and football are both male sports, but I know many girls who play those two sports and are better than a lot of the guys.

            The next thing is females. Females are consider the “maids” or “cooks.” Well yes a lot of girls are good at that, but guys are good at cooking too. For example, my mom and my dad both cook dinner for me and my family. Either by themselves or together, they both do an equal amount of cooking. Cleaning, I will admit that women are usually the ones to be maids. I think that the reason for that is because society makes it seem like males should not be maids, so none of them apply for that type of job.

            As you can see, society is a big part of the reason why individuals believe that all male and female people are not the same. We may look different because of the long hair, and our naturally different parts, but when it comes to talents or being good at something, you cannot really judge someone for being a girl or a guy. A great example of being judged for being a girl is when the girls play the guys at my soccer practices. The boys come in to the game thinking that it’s and joke and they should take it easy. I come in thinking that it will be a good game. Usually it is a good game, and the guys don’t beat us and if they do, they do not win by very much. These are all reasons why you should not judge people by their gender. (424 words)