Response to a classmate's blog

The most significant statement was made when John Maxwell asks "Are you grooming yourself for success or failure?" This one really hit home with me. I am always trying to better myself through everything I do, except for the times when I do something really stupid, which isn’t too often in my mind. lol. Doing well in school boosts my confidence which will lead me to new experiences and challenges. Anyone’s major goal in life is to be successful and happy. I really think I am on my way to do things that make me happy. I am trying to create a successful future with every day in school. I don’t exactly know what my career but I know that anything I choose will be something that I really love. So my goal is just like anyone else’s but I like to put my own little twist on it because that’s what makes me unique from everyone else. I always have to strive for what I want even on those days I’m feeling that I need to take a day. Inner drive is something that will push me to new levels. I really think I possess enough inner drive to push through those tough days.

Mrs. Heitman

We had a speaker come in and present to us the expectation of  the Monsanto company that is on the outskirts of Williamsburg. I really liked that she came in and explained the expectations. I am approaching the state in my life where I will need to have interviews for internships or a job in college. I have recently taken a college class that expressed the importance of interviews, cover letters, and resumes. This extra practice and preparation will help me in the world to create the best chance for a job in the workplace. Mrs. Heitman focused on topics of an interview that Monsanto tests in employees. I really liked the topic over your relations in the workplace. You always have to respect the codes and rules of a company you work for. This is really important because I have recently had a few people I know be fired because they didn't follow policy. I can't stress enough how important it is to be professional in the workplace.

Speak up!

Great ideas are on the brink of exploding into our world. Tomorrow I have a presentation to give to the administration of Williamsburg High School. my group will give a presentation on how students have been, over the last couple years, been less motivated then past classes. I plan to bring that inspiration back through my friends and myself. We will confront problems in our school motivation and propose a solution. I really am excited to give our input and I hope it will make a difference. Even if we don't get the solutions we are looking for through the administration, we can still promote these ideas through our peers.

New Vision

I have a new vision that has come upon me i am really wanting to become a talented player in basketball and practice is what is going to take me there. I am going to try to improve my ball handling skills so i can become more of a threat on offense. If i can back dribble and thread through defenders i think that will take me to a new level in basketball. I have a lot of turnovers this year by dribbling too much or being loose with the ball. I need to tighten up my dribbling a little more and have a better IQ on the floor. I will do this by bringing full effort in practice.

Hardwork

Little hard work goes a long way. I hope putting in hard work in basketball will go a long way too. I plan to tune up my skills as a point guard. I really want to do well and I 'm not doing so well right now. Its kinda of embarrassing when I turn the ball over every time i touch the ball. Literally. I know its a serious matter to make my team as good as possible. I'm not doing my responsibility right now and I need to fix it. So  putting in hard work i hope will get me there. I also need to just slow things down a bit in my mind when I play. Slowing down and seeing the floor better will be a key to success. I will make my team better.

Mr. Ritchie

Mr. Ritchie came in and presented our leadership class with a presentation on leadership. I took away a few things from his presentation. I really liked how he said never forget where you come from. Don't let your surroundings change your personality. You always should stay true to yourself.  Mr. Ritchie's message was very like the message of Aaron Thomas, who said Williamsburg people should take a bit of their personality to the place they end up in the future. That would be nice to spread the personality of Iowans. Another thing Mr. Ritchie said was that your community is like a family.  You always need to stick up for people in your community  and teammates. I really liked the story of former football players at Williamsburg  standing up for Coach Ritchie when Ed Thomas was testing the loyalty of the players. It shows a lot of loyalty in our football program.

Being Thankful

I realize how much I am thankful for as the holidays come around. I am thankful to have a house to live in and food to eat when other people don't. I am thankful for my family. I realize how important they are to me and I really enjoy every moment I spend with them. I am also thankful for the great friends I have. They always make me have fun and enjoy high school. I am also thankful for all the teacher/coaches who care for me to get better in my journey through high school. I know they put in a lot of effort and sacrifice their time to benefit me. So thank you all! I'm very thankful for you!

Team Synergy: Raider Basketball

Raider basketball's motto is "Team Synergy." It means that we will together produce an outcome better than any one individual. Team Synergy increases each others effectiveness and ultimately the success of raider basketball. I really like this motto because we have a few players who are very talented on our team. They could play individually and produce an outcome by them-self; or we could play as a team with synergy and produce an outcome that would be great. If we just focus on one person having a good game every night, the player would have some off nights and no one would step up. Working as a team is always the best route to take in basketball. And if we push each other in practice like we have been, its scary to think of what we could do. Even the players on the second team have a role. We will be next years team so we will have to push ourselves and the team to high expectations. Pushing each other out of comfort zones is the best way to get better.  That's what I expect to do; I want to make everyone better on the team. Even if it means that I don't play this season.

Vuk's presentation

Vuk's presentation was very eye-opening to the problem of obesity in America. In Montenegro, the population is about two percent obese while America youth is about two-thirds obese.  And the reason why universal healthcare works in European countries is because they are healthier than the people in America. People in America have to take more trips to the hospital which costs more money. That’s why universal healthcare is a problem for many in the US. People don’t want to pay for the bad health habits people have. It makes me wonder how people are ever going to get healthy with all of the fast food and unhealthy foods. It starts with just one person making healthy habits and convincing others to be healthy too. Michelle Obama is an example of this because she is making school food healthier. The future generations choose what we want to be; so how will respond to this problem? I hope we choose the right path

Vet's day ceremony

It is very inspirational to see the past war heroes of Williamsburg in the auditorium. The Veterans were blown away once again by the people who set up the ceremony. They love the time we take out of our days to support them and give them support. This year I was a little more active and it was really great to shake the hands of the veterans and tell them we appreciate them. It makes me think of the impact this made on the veterans and what the student body could do to other people. How could we impact someone else's lives? All it takes is a little work and SMART goals.

Aaron Thomas

He had Aaron Thomas come in and present a speech for us that was very eye-opening. He talked about how his father, Ed Thomas, was the geratest man he ever knew. He was always considerate of his surrounding people in his community. He had three things that were very important to him: faith, family, and football. Ed inspired us just to be a better person in every aspect. I makes you think about who you are and what you are. People should be respectful towards one another and care for your community and neighbors. You show them the respect and character that they have shown you. These people in your community look up to you and are inspired by you. So what if you make a bad decision and you drink on the weekend. The talk gets around and the next thing you know you are on the bench regretting what you did. Then people have to question what your morals are and lose respect. Someone is always watching and making the right decision should be a priority in your life.

Problems in our School

As a class we are identifying the biggest problems in our school. We focused on three main problems:
 Attitude towards self improvement, Hallway interactions, and school spirit. I spearheaded Attitude towards self improvement because I really think I can find a way to motivate people to have that attitude to make themselves better in everything they do. We have wrote down our system analysis and adapted the system to fit the characteristics of our problem. Our group looked at our results we are getting from the attitude we currently have and we want to change it to a more positive outlook to finish better in athletics and in the classroom as well. We still need more refining but this is the root of the problem. I really think we can find a solution. :)

Chantal Knepper

In leadership we had Chantal come in and talk to us about college and what would be good things to participate in. She went to Wartburg where she is in many student organizations. She is involved with service projects and she is taking a lot of good experience along with it. She applies these experiences to her  everyday life and is going to put them on her resume to look good when applying to get a job as a doctor. It helps me relate to the volunteer service I do for student council and NHS. They are very important to me and I plan to keep doing these service projects.

New Goal: being organized

I need to be more organized; plain and simple. There is a problem of forgetting certain assignments that I have to complete online or just forgetting everyday items that I need. I haven't been taking advantage of my assignment book he school has provided for me. I need to starting using it and writing down my assignments. This simple thing can help me be less forgetful and start reminding myself of the duties I have to complete every week. So my goal is to be less forgetful with homework and I will achieve this by writing in my assignment book. This is a very achievable goal and I will complete it. :)

Speaker

We had a speaker come into leadership class the other day talking about what influences us in the world. What makes us believe what we believe? We discussed how advertisements, family/ friends, and the media influence you in everyday life. Advertisements make you want to but certain things on television; friends and family influence you to do things or believe certain the things as well.  Media can make you like or dislike someone. But whatever  you choose to do, you have beliefs that make your conscience think certain activities are wrong.  believe most of the decisions i make are linked to my family. I always want to make my family proud.

Communication

Communication is something we focused on this last week in leadership class. We went through a couple of exercisers which display what kind of qualities each person had left for Mr. Fritz to jot down. We went through the exercises and found out what Mr. Fritz was observing. He observed me taking the initiative and getting everyone in a circle and starting conversation for a plan. He also observed me being a worker because I was doing all of the work for getting my partners across a "river" without dropping them in the river. These qualities are good ones but anyone can improve  their leadership qualities. Hopefully these qualities can help me on my way to gathering more good qualities and becoming a better leader.

Prioritizing

Prioritizing is a essential component to living a comfortable life. If you prioritize you will know what's important to you and how it applies in your life. I personally prioritize things like homework, friends, and communication. If I prioritize homework I would do the homework that has the most importance and most urgency to get done. An example that would be an exam due in a college course in a week. If I don't do the exam I could fail the class and my GPA for college could go down. If i prioritize friends, I am choosing which friends I want to hang out with on the weekends. I prioritize communication when I forget something and don't tell someone; or if i do remember to tell something before a certain time. If i remember it has some significance to me and I am prioritizing. This can help you do various activities in every-day life.

Getting Better Every Week

As a player for Williamsburg High School football team, I think we need to take things one step at a time. Just like in leadership, everything takes a while to get started. We need to come together as a team and finish out the season well. We have a tough game next week against Washington and we need to win it to stay in the playoffs and maintain our goal of going to The Dome at UNI. As a team we need to stay discipline and do our assignments. As a leader it is no different, people depend on you to fulfill your assignments and follow through with success. A lot of pressure is put on the leader but people have faith. Believing is what drives the leader and pushes him/her to put forth their greatest effort. Leaders run off of the followers that believe in him/her

What are my Core values?

My core values are respect, honesty, communication, faith, family, initiative, and hard work. I chose respect because I believe you don't need to be everyone's friend but you need to respect everyone. Respect can bring relationships from people closer to you and develop good friendships. Honesty and telling the truth can bring people to have a higher respect of you but if you aren't honest you will only break the trust of people you care about the most. Communication is important because you develop relationship with people when you communicate. Faith is very important to me in life. I believe God helps me through all the times of struggles and helps me find the right paths for me in life. Initiative is essential to completing goals in life; and when you create goals you have to have that initiative to change for the better. And hard work is very important because I believe yo must have that quality of how to work hard in everything yo do. If you work hard, only good things can come from that effort. I believe all of these qualities and core values make  me who I am today
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Pursuit of Happyness 2

In the Pursuit of Happyness I watched in class I analyzed certain character qualities and motivations of Chris Gardener. He displays a high character quality throughout the movie toward his customers and his fellow businessmen. This is important because he never loses control and becomes unprofessional. He also has great value in his son's education because Chris wants his son to become a better man than he was. This philosophy comes to him because he met his father for the first time when he was 28 and wants his son to live the life that he didn't. He grasps those qualities and is motivated by his son to have a better life. He is also motivated when his wife leaves him. This motivates him because he is finally rubbed down to the core with adversities; and he just wants to be happy. He questions what happiness his and how to achieve it. He eventually finds happiness within himself after he goes through adversity. He pushes himself to be a better man and work harder than everyone else in the stock brooking company. This brings him to a job and true happiness with himself and his son. I believe that you must find happiness within yourself and not look for it in others. You will only have false  happiness when you put it in objects. The story of Chris Gardener is motivating to find true happiness and to do what is needed to achieve it.

Pursuit of Happyness

In leadership we are analyzing the Pursuit of Happyness. I have seen the movie before but it is interesting to go more deep into the movie and look at the steps it take for Chris Gardener to get motivated to become a better person and climb up the scale of stockbroking, from the bottom to the top. He is in poverty and can't make the essential needs for his family. He goes through the up and downs to meet his goal. So what makes us get motivated? for me personally, I have to  see my weakness that needs to be fixed. In other cases I like to pursue something I am passionate about and set small goals to reach it. I can also be motivated by an experience that changes a view or a belief that can be a good or bad experience. Once I am truly motivated I believe I can reach any goal with hard work and dedication.

What you believe in

I recently heard a quote that said," Getting in arguments shows that you have stood up for what you believe in." I think this quote couldn't be more true. I'm not saying you should go and make fights because that's not the point. I believe if you stand up for what you believe in you are less likely to change your opinions and you will be more confident about your decisions. This is essential in leadership because it builds trust with your audience when you are consistent and true with your followers. I think I stick up for what I believe because I don't let someone else tell me what I believe in is wrong. I can be stubborn because of this but I know what I believe in.

Presentation

In leadership class I had a presentation and I was really concerned with it. I have always have had the small fear of going in front of a crowd or a small crowd in this case and talking about a topic. I was really nervous at first and then I involved the crowd which made the presentation go a lot smoother. At the end of the presentation people commented and said I look really comfortable up in front of everyone. I was a nice experience and now I'm not so concerned about doing presentations anymore. You just have to know your information and then motivate others around you with communication. That is one thing I learned from the experience

Becoming Literate

One main goal in the leadership class I'm taking is to become literate. Being literate is the ability to become familiar with a topic, communicating it with people, and motivating people around it. I want to become literate so I can become a better leader and become a successful person. I want to accomplish this by doing well and learning how to become literate by doing a few presentations. My topic I chose was texting and driving; this related with the people I'm delivering this presentation to and I have an idea to motivate people around preventing texting and driving. Hopefully I can become more literate and motivate people around this important issue.

Mr Atkison

I learned that leaders have to lead in the dark. Leaders can't just lead in the open and expect people to believe their message if they are someone else when they aren't in front of people. A real leader has character and has responsibility. A leader has integrity and patience. Mr. Atkinson brought a new perspective of a leader to me. Its nice to have different perspectives brought to me by these leaders that come in and bring a presentation. I can really take a look at myself and see what I want to change and how I want to change it through self-recognition before I go to bed at night. Looking at the things I need to work on to be a better leader

How do we perceive things/ Mr. jepson

I believe we see things and judge them through our core values. These values have come from how we were raised or who we chose to relate with in the world. If you were raised to learn from your experiences you will perceive your failures and successes as being something to learn from. This is the way I think I was raised and I am thankful for it. I am fortunate to have a good family to show and create good examples for me. I am content with what I value and how I perceive things.

Mr. Jepson had a good speech that made me think about his lesson about how everything we do is 90/10. He said that 90% of everything we do is controllable by how we react to that 10% we can't control. I took this to the field in my football game playing Grinnell. We lost the game and everyone has someone to blame it seems like. But the thing we need to learn is how to get better from the experience we went through. What we need to focus on is our turnovers and how to control those. Getting better everyday in practice and working together can help us achieve this.

confidence

Confidence goes a long way in leadership. It gives you the confidence that is needed to believe in yourself and make decision that you think are right when in the leadership role. It gives you the fearlessness to try new things out and be prepared to fail at the first attempt. I think I have this confidence in everyday life but I also have my insecurities that I hide loosely. The only way to get better is to have that fearlessness to try new things to make those insecurities something of the past. Hopefully this confidence can help me on my way to become a good leader.

who inspires me?

Who inspires me? That's the question we were asked in leadership class. It makes me wonder who I do look up to. I look up to Michael Jordan because he has accomplished so much in his lifetime. He wasn't even a starter in his junior season in basketball. But he worked as hard as he could to achieve his dream. I love to see Michael Jordan play in old clips of him making clutch shots on the biggest games in the NBA finals. When he played through the Flu in his famous "Flu Game" he showed his love for the game, teammates, and fans. His determination for the game can't be described. His hard work, determination, and love for the game make him one person that inspires me.

Ticket

Yesterday i got a ticket for speeding when coming into school a little late. I was going about 67mph on a highway when the speed limit was 55mph. A state trooper pulled me over and he gave me a ticket after I explained to the officer why I was late. He lowered my speed down to 65 because it wouldn't go on my insurance. I was really thankful for that even though he gave me a ticket. I was pretty bummed out from the experience.

The same day in leadership class we talked about having a good attitude when "failures" come along in the road. I learned that in order to grow from your failures you need to have a positive attitude and make yourself better from the mistakes you make. I learned that I need to watch my speed more often and wake up earlier for school so I'm not late. That is how i will make myself better from this experience.

what do i want to be?

College is coming faster and faster. And going to college brings up one problem for myself; I don't know what career I want to pursue and have a future in. This is a huge step in my lfe and i don't want to make a mistake. I know it will be almost impossible to predict what I am going to be doing after college but I want to be in a field that I will love. So I had a plan to make this process a little easier on me. I signed up for a college course called Career Decision Making. Currently I am now taking the class and I am learning some important things about myself and the job market. I now am planning to find myself a field that I would like to pursue. Hopefully with this action and determination I can find what I am looking for.

Goals

At leadership in school I was to make some goals for myself and one goal i made was missing zero tackles in my football game that I had. My first step was to make my goal more specific after I made a goal to win our football game. So I filed it down to something that I could control myself because I can't control our whole team's actions. I was going to accomplish my goal of zero missed tackles by concentrating at my tackling stations to prepare myself for my game. So on game-day, I only missed two tackles. I can still improve but I can only takes things one step at a time.

I will still strive for this goal with the ongoing season.

Finding my color

In class, I took a survey to find some of my qualities of a leader. There were four colors that characterized what type of personality you had as a leader; "red", "blue", "white", and "yellow". According to my survey I was a "yellow", but I was also a very close blue and white. "Yellow" is a person who is very fun orrientated. I can seeing myself as some who loves to have fun but I know when its time to buckle down and be focused. "Blue" is someone who is intimate. I can see why I was a very close second with "blue" because I am outgoing and like to have a meaningful relationship with people. And last I was tied in second with "blue" as a "white". A "white" is someone who is peaceful-minded and wants to avoid conflict. Someone who is independent and likes their space. I can see how I have all of these qualities and its fun to see some of the  personalities you are in this test

Leadership

Leadership is characterized as the social influence in which a person can get the support of others to meet a common goal. I have heard and seen great leaders but i want to see how i can bring some leadership qualities into my life. Whether it be on the court or field, having a good leader can influence your team or even classmates to make right decisions. So how can i become a good leader?