As the sun unforgivingly beats down on the lonely desert of Albuquerque, New Mexico, my opponent and I slowly drag our feet back into position. As sweat drips down our necks, we pierce each other’s soul with our eyes like gladiators in an arena, desperately searching for an opening to strike. It’s all come down to this point; it’s do or die. He bounces the ball against the ground, quietly analyzing his options with hawk-like eyes, and, in turn, I strengthen my grip on my tennis racket and brace myself for impact. Though the four-year gap between us gives my opponent a significant advantage, making his physical ability akin to Goliath’s in relation to my own pitiful “David-like” strength, I have erased all thoughts of defeat after trading points …show more content…
And I hated it. Tournaments consisted of dreadfully long car trips to the tennis club, suffering expected defeats in the first round to some unnamed middle-schooler, and then drowning myself in tears as my father lectured me about unforced errors on the trip home. As a result, I started to hate tennis, and when my dad was diagnosed with small cell stage-four lung cancer, part of me almost breathed a sigh of relief when he stopped forcing me to participate in his rigorous, self-established tennis bootcamp. There was no longer any need to struggle or to challenge myself, and for six years, I relished in the joys of unproductivity, while my peers showered me with praise for my flawless report …show more content…
In an unfamiliar world, every single one of my peers seemed to possess the brilliance of Einstein or the genius of Roger Federer, and I was once again forced to realize that I was simply a “snobby little eight-year-old” in a sea of middle-schoolers, except this time, I was one of them. For the second time in my life, I was failing miserably. I started to doubt my intellect as a human being, and my newfound fear of risking even the tiniest of failures constricted my growth as an
Every day in our lives, we desire to be perfect to please others. No matter how hard we try, if we do not achieve the concept of being perfect, then we will feel like failure. For example, every year at the Olympics, a newly crowned Olympic champion receiving a gold medal persuades young athletes to worry about winning a medal in every competition they compete. If they do not win a medal in a certain competition, then all their hopes are vanished for the next competition. This action shows how if we do not strive to emulate other people’s achievements, then we will not stand out from the rest of our population.
It is a commonly supposed that geniuses are able to produce their masterpieces because they are geniuses - because they do not act according to the customary social expectations of “average” human beings. They ...
In their minds, if they do well in school, they can get a career that can help them become successful. Although the students do not put limits on the relationship between social class and education, the school system does. The view that the school system has for the classifications of intellectualism leaves out the interests of most of the students. The writer Graff address this in his article within the lines, “ Only much later did it dawn on me that the sports world was more compelling than school because it was more intellectual than school, not less. Sports after all was full of challenging arguments, debates, problems for analysis, and intricate statistics that you could care about, as school conspicuously was not.” (Graff 790) In those lines, he speaks about sports, which is a topic that is not considered to hold intellectual value by the school system. He shows that other interests besides the things we learn in school can have intellectual value. He makes it apparent that it does not matter the individual’s economic status because they can still be smart. This article shows that everyone can connect and contribute to learning with their different interests, and their interest can bridge the gap that society creates between the social classes if they decide that they want to be successful and take their education
For generations, only certain people have achieved success - they are known as geniuses or outliers; however, they did not obtain it on high IQs and innate talents alone. In the book Outliers, author Malcolm Gladwell, #1 bestselling author of The Tipping Point and Blink, reveals the transparent secret of success behind every genius that made it big. Intertwined with that, Gladwell builds a convincing implication that the story behind the success of all geniuses is that they were born at the right place, at the right time and took advantage of it. To convey the importance of the outlier’s fortunate circumstances to his readers, he expresses a respective, colloquial tone when examining their lives.
It was a grueling school day that had ended with an arduous 120-minute Chemistry practical. The school bell that rang was like sweet music to my ears and the only thought that whisked through my mind was that of going home and sleeping in my big, comfortable bed. Just then, I remembered that the Table Tennis contest between Team C and Team D which also incidentally the finals, was at 4:00 p.m. I sluggishly changed into the clothes that I had in my locker and headed for the Games Room. I was very tired and hoped that I would have an easy opponent. However, this was not to be my lucky day. The captain of our team, Jason, was sick so I had to play the opposing captain, namely, Jonathan. Panic and doom were those thoughts that dominated my mind when I was told this.
In Chapter 4, the authors focused on gufted learners as social capital. As I read the book, I realized that we look at these gifted learners as commodities and individuals who will “drive the economy and become a highly valued professional assets of the country.” The gifted learners at an early age do not realize that they are already branded as “social capitals.” At an early age, the society is already honing and preparing the gifted learners to become the future leaders in different fields. Whether they are aware or not, the society is already putting pressure to the gifted learners on what they can become and contribute to the common good later in life. Thus, the pressure to excel in everything that the gifted learners do is on. B...
Lauer L., Gould D., Roman N., Pierce M. (2010). Parental Behaviors That Affect Junior Tennis Player Development. Psychology of Sport and Exercise, 11, 487-496.
First, Gladwell’s claims are impressively effective as a direct result of his use of professional expertise. Perhaps one of the most important aspects in chapter two, entitled The 10,000-Hour Rule, is the inclusion of professional neurologist, Daniel Levitin, who absolutely supports Gladwell’s main argument. “Ten thousand hours of practice is required to achieve the level of mastery associated with being a world-class expert – in anything,” writes Levitin (40). Equally important to the arguments made in chapter two, psychologist K. Anders Ericsson provides professional insight into the world of the “gifted.” In addition, Gladwell makes use of the findings of professional psychologist, Michael Howe, and renowned music critic, Harold Schonberg, regarding the length of time it took Mozart to produce “his greatest works” (41). By including these experts, Levitin and Howe, within his argument, Gladwell strengthens his claim that success frequently depends on how...
My dad forced me to play for my middle school team, but I didn’t complain considering I got to play with boys. I was pretty good, too. I was not only playing with these boys, but I was competing with them. Everything was going well. I wasn’t in love with golf, but I didn’t hate it anymore.
Ever since I became literate, literacy relied on as an important life skill to the point where I would challenge other kids to see who appeared smarter. But I've grown up to learn that obsessing over intelligence has not and will not make me any smarter. This relates similarly to one scholar, Cathleen Schine, who claims she is an illiterate to the world due to her poor choices of obsessing how smart she is, but she learned to control and outgrow the phase while she had the chance to in her article “I was A Teenage Illiterate”. Cathleen would carry intelligent and authentic books, but she only understood 10% of a classic novel and ended up developing into the 90% as she grew up (“I was a Teenage Illiterate”). This goes with the fact that as
...est high school students in America” (Gladwell 82). It was shocking to learn that all the Nobel Prize in Medicine winners did not all come from the most prestigious schools. Also, in the third chapter I notices some aspects that were highly relatable to me. My life relates to subjects included in chapter three because I am a student. It is interesting and helpful to learn that one does not need the highest IQ to succeed in today’s world. This is how I relate to chapter three. The third chapter in Outlier by Malcolm Gladwell had striking information that stated that IQs do not always determine who will be successful, and I can relate to the information in the chapter because I am student who has thought about my IQ before.
Tennis is a sport that many people love to play. It is not the hardest sport in the world to learn. When playing against someone, it is called a match. Tennis can be played one on one or a doubles match. The main object of the game is to hit the ball over the net, inside of the lines so that the opponent can't get to it. There are two lines about two feet parallel to each other that outline the court. In a singles match, the inner line is the out of bound line, while the outer line is out of bounds in a doubles match. If you want to play, take a look at my two favorite tennis players because they are masters at serving and scoring, a few key aspects of the game.
Peer relationships, obeying authority, and looking up to a role model, are all character traits that are learned through the practice of athletics. During a normal match of tennis, many mistakes will be made. However, these mistakes will be able to tell you the flaws in your swing and the ability to fix them and continue competing without getting frustrated. Tennis teaches the ability to handle mistakes and to use them to your advantages. Tennis teaches many positive characteristics that benefit the athlete in many areas of
I can vividly remember back when I was on the High school tennis team at 17 years old, going from school to school and competing at high temperatures. A leisure sport but also an intense sport especially in a competitive age. I remember talking with my coach, also my math calculus teacher, about how to improve my game. My first year playing tennis with a year
My opponent’s name was John Doe. There were other competitors at the tournament, but they had never posed any threat to my title. For as long as I had competed in this tournament, I had easily taken the black belt championship in my division. John, however, was the most phenomenal martial artist I had ever had the honor of witnessing at my young age of thirteen. And he was in my division. Although he was the same rank, age, size, and weight as I, he surpassed me in almost every aspect of our training. His feet were lightning, and his hands were virtually invisible in their agile swiftness. He wielded the power of a bear while appearing no larger than I. His form and techniques were executed with near perfection. Although I had never defeated his flawlessness before, victory did not seem unattainable. For even though he was extraordinary, he was not much more talented than I. I am not saying that he was not skilled or even that he was not more skilled than I, for he most certainly was, but just not much more than I. I still had one hope, however little, of vanquishing this incredible adversary, for John had one weakness: he was lazy. He didn’t enjoy practicing long hours or working hard. He didn’t have to. Nevertheless, I had found my passage to triumph.