Personal Narrative- Track Competition
The moment of truth was upon me. The official times, this includes whom qualified for finals, for the 400m relay had been posted. My eyes scanned the page for the bold letters that spell ANDERSON. As I ran my finger across the page to where the times were posted, my ears began to shut out all outside noises, leaving me alone with the thump of my heart and the inhale and exhale of my lungs. Both began to increase in speed as my eyes narrowed in on the time.
My sophomore year had begun and I wasn't sure whether or not I was going to do track this year. Last year I played football in the fall and soccer in the spring. Not really enjoying it, the decision was made to play " real futbol" (soccer) in the fall, leaving the spring sports season open. My friend kept telling me how fun track was, so I decided to give it a try.
As the first meet neared, things were going well. I made it onto the 4x100 team making me the third fastest kid on the team. The other members of the relay were Jason Schmidt, Jeremy Willard and Rodney Schmidt. Jason and Jeremy were both the top dogs and Rodney and I were second from the bottom of the barrel.
The 400 relay was my best event. We placed in every meet and even took home some medals as the season progressed. As the track year rounded for the home stretch, we had only three more meets to compete in: the Tiger Invitational, regionals, and state.
As the Tiger rolled around, there arose a question of whether or not to keep the team together or break it up and give the two seniors a chance to compete in other individual events at regionals. I actually didn't know about this possibility until about five minutes before the race began on Saturday. We were all huddled together preparing for the start. Jeremy came up to Rodney and me and told us that if we didn't do well the team might be dropped. Kicking our motivational drive into high, the four of us focused on only one thing: running the time we all knew we could. Getting into the blocks I felt more ready than ever. At the sound of the gun, I shot out of the blocks. I sprinted around the track, concentrating on making a great hand-off.
The short story, “Battle Royal” is a very powerful piece in which there are many symbolic instances that explain what life was like for minorities in the 1950s. The grandfather, the naked woman, the battle royal, and the dream are all important symbolic aspects in this narrator’s life. These symbols were able to explain why it was so difficult for minorities to be accepted in normal society.
One sport you may not have considered for your High School activities is track. Track is a sport with an array of benefits for your body. People from all over the world participate in many running events including sprinting, middle distances, long distances, relay races, hurdles, steeple chasing, and race walking. I will go into more detail under the subject of sprinting a bit later. First, I will speak to you about the preparation it takes in order to get into track sprinting shape.
I picked up my starting blocks and walked over to the white line along with the seven other girls right beside me. I rubbed the bitter cold from my arms, and took a deep breath. I went to work setting up my blocks, dropping the footholds into the slots that fit my specific measurements. The starter announced that we would have two more minutes to take some practice starts before he would call us to the line. I got down in my blocks, rose up, and finally sprang out of them, just as well as I had been doing in practice the day before. I could not have been more ready for my eighth grade Mid-Southern Conference track meet.
One of the themes in "Battle Royal" that stood out to me was the realistic portrait that Ralph Ellison described as the difficulty of being a black person in a country dominated by white men. Ellison shows the battle of equality of black men in this time period. In the beginning of the short-story, you begin to understand and see this theme unfold. Ellison says "All my life I had been looking for something, and everywhere I turned someone tried to tell what it was" (Ellison, 274). The narrator looks for answers of who he is from everyone else. The opening scene depicts young black boys, blindfolded, forced to fight in a boxing ring, for the “entertainment” of whi...
Ralph Ellison’s short story “Battle Royal” is a story about a young man contemplating his self-identity in a world where he was seen only by the color of his skin and he struggles between showing off his true face and the one that he perceives the white community only wants to see. The protagonist upon delivering his graduation speech is invited to deliver that same speech to the towns white leaders with the disillusion that his hard work had earned him a once in a life time opportunity. Unfortunately to his surprise his prize would not be so easily won, as Ellison proceeds to illustrate through a series of trial’s that the protagonist must endure. Ellison gives you a look
“This nation was founded by men of many nations and backgrounds. It was founded on the principle that all men are created equal, and that the rights of every man are diminished when the rights of one man are threatened … It ought to to be possible, in short, for every American to enjoy the privileges of being American without regard to his race or his color.” — John F. Kennedy. In his short story “Battle Royal”, Ralph Ellison depicts the struggles an African-American male goes through, in a world dominated by Caucasian men, while trying to succeed in life. The narrator completes challenges, created by the white overseers, to achieve his goal of reciting his speech. This is a representation of the hardships blacks endure for their social equality. Ellison utilizes an unclothed blonde as a symbol of the desires wanted by black men and how they are viewed in a white society.
The narrator in "Battle Royal," by Ralph Ellison, is confused and disillusioned. He is black man trapped in a world of cruelty and social inequality with nobody to guide him. He is being ripped apart in two directions by the advice of his grandfather and by the wishes of the white society which he longs to please. While attempting to satisfy their wishes, he forgets what is most important- his own dignity.
"Battle Royal" "Battle Royal," by Ralph Ellison was a very difficult piece of literature for me to understand. As a little background information, Ellison was very much into music (228). He was born in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma on March 1, 1914 (221). Different themes are presented throughout this short story, which reflect different views that Ellison had at the time that he wrote this essay. One boy is invited to speak at local men’s club where he will deliver his graduation speech. As I go on, I will discuss the nature of the short story and how it affected me. The narrator’s view of this entire situation at the men’s club is kind of humiliating which will later set the stage for events that will happen in his future. Black people are viewed different in this time period and the narrator does not understand near the end of the story. The narrator looks up to his grandfather. He told the narrator’s father to keep up the fight. The father then tells the narrator what the grandfather told him. This was just being passed down through the different generations. This to me shows the loving relationship that the grandson and the grandfather share. Near the end of the story however, his grandfather’s presence scares him to death. The grandfather’s advice was a little too much for the narrator to handle. "Live with your head in the lion’s mouth…overcome them with yeses…let ‘em swoller you till they vomit." This scares the boy.
Ellison’s novel presents the problems faced by African Americans in a unique manner. Through his use of the extreme tasks subjected to the blacks of his story, he manages to convey the intensity of their struggle against cruelty and all its complications [Carlson, 2000]. His story deals with the topic of the fight against racism and as such is a attack on racism in general, no matter where it might be found. When a human being is diluted because of his race, as is the case with the characters in Battle Royal, it is a disgrace to the entire human race; Ellison’s story tells of the great necessity to fight this evil at all times and under all conditions.
I expect the use of synthetic personalisation throughout in both charity leaflets (Fairlcough 2001). I also expect the use of imperative sentences.
The start of the 2002 track season found me concerned with how I would perform. After a disastrous bout with mononucleosis ended my freshmen track season, the fear of failure weighed heavily on my mind. I set a goal for myself in order to maintain focus and to push myself like nothing else would. My goal for my sophomore track season was to become a state champion in the 100 meter hurdles. I worked hard everyday at practice and went the extra mile, like running every Sunday, to be just that much closer to reaching my goal. The thought of standing highest on the podium in the center of the field, surrounded by hundreds of spectators, overcame my thoughts of complaining every time we had a hard workout. When I closed my eyes, I pictured myself waiting in anticipation as other competitors names were called out, one by one, until finally, the booming voice announced over the loudspeaker, "...and in first place, your 2002 100 meter hurdle champion, from Hotchkiss, Connie Dawson." It was visions like these that drove me to work harder everyday.
Organizational change tends to occur in organizations that deal predominantly with the public or rely heavily on interactions to complete tasks and projects (Rooney et al., 2010). To keep up with an ever-changing world, organizations must be flexible and change with it (Griffin, Rafferty, & Mason, 2004). The business environment changes rapidly and unpredictably with increased competition, technological developments, higher customer demand, and market globalization. In response to these pressures, organizations are structuring themselves for change so that they are flexible and ready to shift in response to threats to their effectiveness and survival (Zorn, Page, & Cheney, 2000; Kraatz & Zajac, 2001). More (1998) argues that, “successful organizations are those that initiate change, respond to change, plan change and implement change as an ongoing...
I had never really been a part of a team that had a chance to win something, but the potential was always there. I finally got my chance to be a part of such a team my sophomore year of track. Mr. Jones, the head track coach, had decided to experiment with some different races to gain more team points. Since the girls' team lacked a medley relay, he placed Cindy, Kim, Susan and I in those spots. Cindy would run the 400, Kim would run the 200, and Susan and I would start the race off by each running the 100. We all had worked viciously to earn those spots by running off against our teammates.
In recent years the research of scientists has come to public attention and it is a widely accepted fact that the Earth is warming up. What has caused this change in the Earth is still up for debate and a controversial issue. One side is that humans are causing the warming by burning fossil fuels. Staying on that topic, fossil fuels are limited in quantity, and some scientists speculate that we may run out sooner than we are ready for. This is where sustainable energy systems come into play. When using sustainable energy systems such as hydro electric, wind, or cruder methods such as waste incineration, burning of fossil fuels will decrease. With this decrease, or at least slowdown, of fossil fuels we will be able to reduce or maintain green house gas emissions as not to influence the warming of the globe more than we already do. And obviously we will be able to conserve our fossil fuels so that we do not run out while we are still dependent on them.
Organisations as machines, political systems, organisms, and flux and transformation are particularly common assumptions that are often used by managers, writers and consultants to make sense of how organizational change works. In reality most organizations use combinations of approaches to tackle change and not just one of the above, however these provide useful insights into the process of organizational change (Cameron and Green, 2012). This essay will try to make sense out of these assumptions to understand what organisational change is. By doing so, insights will be drawn on how organizational change can be managed and led.