Go big or go home is my motto for the night. Everything I do at this tryout will affect the rest of my junior year and all of senior year. “Hands on your hips, a smile on your lips, spirit in your heart, let’s start,” plays through my mind as the judges stare at you and the person with whom you are trying out. This journey begins several hours before, at the beginning of the day. For several people, it was a typical Thursday. People were thinking about how close it was to the weekend and what they were going to do. For about twenty-one girls, with high hopes of making the varsity cheer team, it was the day of tryouts. Fellow classmates could tell they were stressed out because they looked like a mess, especially the soon to be seniors. All six seniors that were trying out were stressed, hoping to make Varsity their senior year. For example, people were as stressed as can be as if they did not study for a psychology test. Our hair was a mess. We couldn’t …show more content…
Tick tock. Tick tock. Everyone is anxious. Tick tock. Tick tock. Three twenty-nine in the afternoon….one minute before tryouts start. The seconds pass slowly. The clock suddenly strikes three thirty. Time for tryouts to start for the last time for six of us. Mrs. Atkins yells at us to practice the dance, cheer, and chant in front of the judges so that they can see what it is supposed to look like. After we finished that she tells us to go outside and wait. Before tryouts start she sits us down in a circle. Mrs. Atkins said that we all made the team, but we still had to try out to determine who would be the lucky fourteen girls to make Varsity and who would be the seven girls to make Junior Varsity. She continued to talk and all I could think about was how my heart felt like it was about to pound out of my chest, and what I would do if I did not make Varsity my senior year. As I focused my attention back into Mrs. Atkins talking, she gave us our numbers and our partner for
The utmost top scoring students at schools often exhibit an unbelievable amount of intelligence and participate in an abundance of interesting extracurricular activities. Interestingly, there is an unexplained part of the story behind these amazing students’ success, which is described in the book “Doing School”: How We Are Creating a Generation of Stressed Out, Materialistic, and Miseducated Students, by Denise Clark Pope, in which Pope interviews and shadows a random assortment of students at Faircrest High School. This book flawlessly supports my topic about the amount of stress that is truly beneficial to students as Pope reveals the consequences stress has on them, such as the hardships they face regularly and
When I arrived at my new and enormous high school, I got lost. It was June, and since classes had just ended for the day, large crowds of kids filled up the hallways, and I got bumped around like I did not exist. Thankfully, a cheerleader saw me and figured that I had come there for tryouts since I wore shorts, cheer shoes and a big bow in my hair. She took me to the gym where at least sixty girls had shown up for the competition. The first things I saw were cheerleaders doing high level tumbling on the gym floor with no fear. The upperclassmen led us in warm-ups, and they seemed nice. A lot of the girls I met had been cheering since they were five and six years old. I saw a lot of talent in the room, so I knew it would not be easy to
Teen Stress Teen stress is a huge problem in our day and age. This is not an exaggeration. Although this may seem unreal, teens today deal with a lot more than you’d think. You may think they have it easy, everything is set up for them so they don’t have to go through the hardships of adulthood, but the truth is, things may have gotten easier, but at the same time, they have gotten harder.
The following day, Harriet excitedly awaited the cheerleader tryouts that were to be held that afte...
Movies portray cheerleaders as the popular girls that everyone likes and aspires to be. But when reality hits at Salem High School, it’s a completely different story. Cheerleading was taken as a joke by the other athletes and even students. It was considered a hobby, but to me it was a passion and something I worked hard to be. Being on the cheer squad in high school was difficult to deal with in school because we were constantly being snubbed by the other athletes and students in our school ever since we were kids in junior high which should not happen because everyone has the right to do what they love and they should not be judged for it being different than everyone else. It was always us versus them up until my junior year of high school when we finally earned the respect of our peers.
All college students sitting in classrooms today face challenges that can impede their success. A challenging course schedule, competing demand for the student’s time, and college readiness are all factors that can hinder a student’s performance in the classroom. Moreover, these challenges also have the ability to impact the student’s overall student development. While most students share a common set of stressors, there are certain groups on campus that face pressures and challenges that are not shared by the majority of their peers. Student athletes are such a group. Joshua Watson (2005) noted the positive benefits of participating in intercollegiate activities, but also noted that such participation can lead to issues of “maladjustment, emotional illness, and psychological distress” (p. 442).
Being a college athlete is very tiring. College athletes have to endure a ton of things. From six AM practices, to midnight study sessions, being a college athlete is hard. To be a college athlete, the athlete has to be prepared to get used to getting little to no sleep. With early morning practices, class and then studying, with possibly a lifting session, a college athlete needs to be prepared to be pushed not only physically, but also mentally. To be a college athlete it takes a lot of mental toughness. A college athlete has to find it in them to do whatever it takes to study for all of their classes, meaning staying up until necessary, and then waking up the next morning to get up and practice. This is one of the hardest things for college athletes. Mental toughness is a whole other level when it involves sleep. Where one would say, “No. It is fine. I will just wing the test. I am too tired to study.” Or, “I will just study in the morning.” Athletes have to be prepared to break mental boundaries and drive themselves to success. They have to realize that other things are more important and that sleep will have to wait. Megan, a
It was the most competitive three days of my life, basketball tryouts. This is the first time my friends and I were trying out for a school team, we were all hyped for basketball season. I entered the tryout excited and consequently energetic. Adrenaline was pulsing through all the players bodies, there were 6 foot tall 8th graders with years of experience competing against 6th graders who have never touched a basketball before for the same spots. I was in between, I was a 6th grader that had experience along with some skill. That was also my downfall, I went in overconfident and consequently cocky. I wasn’t planning on getting cut, I walked into the tryout overwrought, nothing could stop me from being on the team.
“If at first you don’t succeed try , try again.” At the age of six I was starting to play football. The game was a hard hitting running and commitment. I was six years old at the time now I’m fourteen a freshman in high school a lot has changed.
College is a time for young people to develop and grow not only in their education, but social aspects as well. One of the biggest social scenes found around college campuses are athletic events, but where would these college sports be without their dedicated athletes? Student athletes get a lot of praise for their achievements on the field, but tend to disregard the work they accomplish in the classroom. Living in a college environment as a student athlete has a great deal of advantages as well as disadvantages that affect education and anti-intellectualism.
Near the end of my junior year, my peers and I were assigned a community action project that focuses on minimizing an issue that society faces. After given the instructions, I immediately thought of my own issues of stress and sought to help others not feel alone as I do. I decided to hold a support group during lunch and after school to discuss the issues students faced, and possible ways to cope with their problems. Every student was welcomed to participate, but only five people showed up. From there, I began to hand out homemade stress balls with the intentions to encourage students to attend and possibly entertain them in their time of despair.
"C'mon, Chris, you get in the shower first," Taylor ordered from the other bed. "You're already up." Chris conceded and worked his way to the shower. Everyone in the room knew it too, due to his grunting and whining under his breath. Soon enough he was out of the shower and so were Taylor, Anders, and I. We ate breakfast with the rest of the team downstairs in the hotel in silence. It was too early to talk or chat. Everyone knew that one thing was going to be on their minds: winning. It was not worth discussing, either. Everyone knew that our varsity eight was possibly the strongest that McCallie had ever had, and that we had a good chance of winning some gold medals that day, if not a great chance. We loaded on the bus like ants, noiselessly flowing into one little opening. The bus ride was silent all of the way over as well. Everyone's heads, looking intently forward, were slightly jostling along with the bumps in the road. Some tried to sleep, but the tension and excitement was too much for most of them to be successful.
Winning is more enjoyable after experiencing an emotional defeat. I confidently thought my capable cheerleading team could not be beaten. Though I did not expect the outcome, I learned a meaningful lesson in life. To begin a day like no other, my alarm clock sprang to life at 6:00 A.M. in The Orleans hotel on the Las Vegas Strip. After many months of practicing, my team finally made it to Jamz National Cheer Championships, the biggest, invitational competition on the west coast.
The first time I decided to audition for a play was about three years ago. It was during my sophomore year of high school and I was in my French class when I heard some of my friends talking about how they were going to audition for the musical at the Sikeston Little Theatre. I soon joined into the conversation and they had convinced me to audition for it with them. At first I did not want to do it, but after a few minutes of them trying to convince me, I finally said I would audition.
Six long hours after departing Hotchkiss, we finally reached our destination. We pulled into the parking lot of the Super 8 just off Interstate 76 in Sterling, Colorado. Since I had been to this hotel on a previous trip to Sterling, I began wishing I had brought my swimsuit along. Mom and dad went inside and got the keys for room 129. I was so sick of riding in the car that I did not care what the room looked like as long as there was a bed for me to sleep on. As we entered the room, on the left there was the bathroom sink, a mirror, and a place to hang our "good" clothes. To the right, was the miniature bathroom. There was not enough space in there for a midget. Stepping out of the entranceway, there was a wooden dresser with a 27-inch television. By the large window, there was a small table. Two queen size beds sat on either side of the nightstand. The purple patterned quilts were quite shocking compared to everything else in the room.