forced to Give it up - What made me choose this crazy route
There's nothing worse than having to say goodbye to something you have loved. It leaves a space in your heart that will never be filled. When you give it up willingly, it's something you can stomach, as it was a decision that you made. But when you essentially have no choice in the matter, the pain you feel when you think about it hurts more than you imagined it would. Sadly, this happened to me.
High school sports are very different than college. Depending on the school you go to, high school ball is open to everyone. It doesn't matter how tall, strong, or fast you are, if you can play and are dedicated enough, you will have a spot on the team. College is a different story. I got into the University of Michigan my senior year, and realized that my playing days were numbered. Michigan is a D1 school, where only the fastest, strongest, and best players will get recruited. At 5'6 with very little power, I sadly didn't have those attributes. I thought that playing for the club team was a possibility, but when I got to school the following year, I realized that my skill level wasn't high enough for that either. My time playing baseball was over.
However, I could not let the game go. I loved sports far too much. I decided to figure out how I could remain involved in sports in some way, and decided the best way to do that would to be to try and get involved in the media . To do that, I knew I would have to join organizations that could provide the chance for me to gain experience working in the field. I found organizations for both radio and television, but soon I realized that I wanted my opinions to be heard about as much as I wanted simply work in sports. Although I was given the chance to give my viewpoints on the radios and tv, since the shows onIy last around 30 minutes and covered a variety of sports, I could never really go into the detail I wanted to about specific topics. I knew the only way I would be able to do that was to write. After a few half hearted attempts, my sophomore year, I created my blog: The Stone Sports Report.
Sadly, because of the time commitment that writing a good piece takes, I have not been able to contribute the blog in a long time, but there are a few pieces that still give me a lot of pride. Without a doubt, one of those pieces was my very first blog post - a goodbye to Denard Robinson, Michigan's former star quarterback. It is the post that made me realize I enjoyed writing about sports. Once I wrote this piece, I realized that I enjoyed writing more than I originally thought, so I decided that I would get better as a writer. This lead me to think about applying for the Minor in Writing, which is what I did the following fall.
As apart of the minor I have had to think about my writing in a way that I have not in the past. I have had to figure out why I write. I have had to examen previous assignments and pieces of writing, and reevaluate and transform them into something new. I even got to try my first true attempt at making a video. This ePortfolio is what I have accomplished in this class so far. I am truly proud of the work that I accomplished this semester and I hope you enjoy it. If you like what you see, you can also check out my contributions to the Minor in Writing community blog.
High school sports are very different than college. Depending on the school you go to, high school ball is open to everyone. It doesn't matter how tall, strong, or fast you are, if you can play and are dedicated enough, you will have a spot on the team. College is a different story. I got into the University of Michigan my senior year, and realized that my playing days were numbered. Michigan is a D1 school, where only the fastest, strongest, and best players will get recruited. At 5'6 with very little power, I sadly didn't have those attributes. I thought that playing for the club team was a possibility, but when I got to school the following year, I realized that my skill level wasn't high enough for that either. My time playing baseball was over.
However, I could not let the game go. I loved sports far too much. I decided to figure out how I could remain involved in sports in some way, and decided the best way to do that would to be to try and get involved in the media . To do that, I knew I would have to join organizations that could provide the chance for me to gain experience working in the field. I found organizations for both radio and television, but soon I realized that I wanted my opinions to be heard about as much as I wanted simply work in sports. Although I was given the chance to give my viewpoints on the radios and tv, since the shows onIy last around 30 minutes and covered a variety of sports, I could never really go into the detail I wanted to about specific topics. I knew the only way I would be able to do that was to write. After a few half hearted attempts, my sophomore year, I created my blog: The Stone Sports Report.
Sadly, because of the time commitment that writing a good piece takes, I have not been able to contribute the blog in a long time, but there are a few pieces that still give me a lot of pride. Without a doubt, one of those pieces was my very first blog post - a goodbye to Denard Robinson, Michigan's former star quarterback. It is the post that made me realize I enjoyed writing about sports. Once I wrote this piece, I realized that I enjoyed writing more than I originally thought, so I decided that I would get better as a writer. This lead me to think about applying for the Minor in Writing, which is what I did the following fall.
As apart of the minor I have had to think about my writing in a way that I have not in the past. I have had to figure out why I write. I have had to examen previous assignments and pieces of writing, and reevaluate and transform them into something new. I even got to try my first true attempt at making a video. This ePortfolio is what I have accomplished in this class so far. I am truly proud of the work that I accomplished this semester and I hope you enjoy it. If you like what you see, you can also check out my contributions to the Minor in Writing community blog.
Some Of My Work from the Past
Although I have not done a lot of formal sports writing on my resume, I do have several writing samples from school and my blog. Here are some of the ones that give an idea of my style of writing.
AcademIc Writing
This was one of the first term papers I wrote at Michigan. I got lucky enough to get into the introductory writing class who's topic was Harry Potter. It went into details about different themes found in the book, and we dissected several characters and their decision making, as we tried to find similarities to other books and series. We noticed that there were several similarities, but in my opinion we hadn't answered the question why we loved this series. So I decided to write about it for the final paper for the class.
This was my final paper for my Communication Studies 101 class and is one of the papers I am most proud of writing during my time at Michigan. As a Communication Studies major, I have had to write about several different media issues ranging from the influence of violent media to representation of minorities and women in the media. For this paper, I discussed how a show I really like (The Legend of Korra on Nickelodeon) was breaking stereotypes and giving the audience a real representation with strong female characters.
Blogs - For Classes and Personal Posts
This is the blog I had to maintain during the current semester for one of my classes. The topic of the class was digital disruption and the future of journalism. I was originally told that this blog would focus on a specific beat, so naturally I chose sports. All of the posts aren't about sports but they each cover a topic we had in class. Topics ranged from photo journalism, to wearable technology. Most important to me though is the first post you will see. This was a recent project we had to do on the future of an industry, and I found a great new company known as 120 Sports. I wrote a feature on it and am pretty happy with how it went.
This is my personal sports blog, which I sadly do not update enough. However, of what I actually have written of this blog, I have been very happy with what I have produced. This showed me how hard it is to maintain a blog with constant, up to date content. Writing a simple, researched post on a serious topic take a decent amount of time that I sadly seem to never have. Still, the little sports writing experience I have can all be found here.