A Final Reflection

Wow. It’s already the end of the semester.  Who knew it would fly so fast.  English was always a harder subject for me; I wasn’t very good at writing papers.  But for some reason, my college papers are much better than my high school papers.  I think my writing style has changed a little bit since high school, which isn’t always a bad thing.  My writing is more structured and organized, and I connect my ideas better.  My transitions have gotten a lot better, thanks Ms. Dimaggio for stressing that so much in class.  I think the best thing I’ve written this semester was a History 001 paper about the Black Death, comparing two different documents.  Most of that paper was influenced by this class though.  The two revising techniques I used were taught in this class.  The best thing I think I wrote in English was my evaluation paper about the Chrysler 200 commercial.  Eminem is one of my favorite artists, and he was great in that commercial. Not only that, I feel I did a good job analyzing the commercial and how it persuaded the audience.  But, I feel that all of my other papers have been very well written and of good quality.  I spent many hours writing and revising them, and they turned out well for the most part.  I liked the discussion of different techniques; it has me look at a paper much differently than I did before.  However, I wish there was a list of techniques, or one that I’d compiled, because sometimes I feel different techniques are necessary.  I hope to continue writing in my engineering classes, and I feel there will be an opportunity to.  I think there will be other classes that I will need to write papers for, so I think my writing should continue.  If I’m not writing in classes, I might continue blogging; it’s a good way to write about my ideas.

Lifting

                I love lifting weights at the gym with my buddies.  Not only is it a good workout, it creates bonds with the people you work out with.  I’m best friends with most of my workout buddies.  But I’m going to describe some of the workouts I particularly like.

                Now that I’m college, I tend to do 3 different days of lifts: On the first day, I do chest and triceps and abdominals.  On the second day, I lift shoulders and calves.  And on the third day, I do biceps and back.  The reason I’ve cut out my legs is because I do such much walking, that when I squat it becomes nearly impossible for me to walk the next day.   And in college, I walk just about everywhere, so it’s difficult to make it to class on time and get where I need to go.  So, I only squat when I know I’m not doing anything the next day.

                For chest and triceps, I start with a regular bench press.  This is just doing a pushup with a bar and weight instead of the floor.  Normally, after completing all the reps needed, I’ll finish with around 135 on the bar and see how many I can do.  It also pushes the pectoral muscles to the breaking point, along with showing how much one’s improved since last time.  After the regular press, I follow this with both inclined and declined bench press, which just changes the angle of the bench press.  On average, I’ll do about four sets of presses, varying the repetitions, but following a pyramid style lift.  As the weight increases, the repetitions decrease.

                After completing the presses, there are several exercises one can choose from to complete their workout.  Normally, one does some sort of dumbbell press.  This can happen just about anywhere; a bench, a workout ball, or the floors are just some examples.  One can also do offset pushups with a medicine ball under one hand.  A slightly different pushup would be a tricep pushup with dumb bells.   Using two low weight dumb bells (a five or a ten usually), one places them parallel to each other shoulder-width apart.  Using these dumb bells as the push off point, one changes the rotation from the shoulder to the elbows, allowing the triceps muscles to work harder.  For added intensity, after one comes up from the pushup, he or she can rotate at the shoulder and lift one weight above his head.

The Charlotte Bobcats

Well, tonight, we will see something you don’t see very often; the worst team in NBA history. Yes, the worst team over a course of 75 years. The Charlotte Bobcats have accomplished history… if you call it history. Over the course of this season, they have gone 7-59, a measly .106 winning percentage. Even the 1972-73 Philadelphia 76ers had a better winning percentage of .110. The talent level these days is much higher, especially with Kemba Walker on their team. He led the UConn Huskies to the national championship in 2011, and was hoping to change the culture in Charlotte. But he’s the backup point guard. Kemba’s a rookie, who started 18 games in place of DJ Augustin, Charlotte’s best player. DJ Augustin has been in the league for a couple years, and the offense runs through him. But after DJ, the offense gets very thin. Their third highest paid player, Corey Maggette, spends his time on the bench behind 2 other players. There is no leadership. Maggette should be a veteran presence, both on the court and weight room, but it’s hard to have a presence on the court if you’re on the bench. There was almost no preseason for the players to come together and bond as a team. Tyrus Thomas, brought in over the offseason to strengthen the offense, has had injury problems all year and has become petulant. He even got into a shoving match with his coach several games ago. The coach, Paul Silas, has been in the league several years, but when he took over last year, his winning percentage was slightly lower than .500. The Bobcats were so bad, they couldn’t even beat the next worse team, the Washington Wizards. They lost by 28 a couple games ago. The irony of this record is that their general manager is Michael Jordan, the greatest basketball player in history. The greatest player in history is now the worst general manager.

Exploring Venues/Publications

The two publications I chose are Grantland and Sports Illustrated, and both of these publications focus on sports and related subjects. They share a common audience, with any sports-crazy to average fan looking for an interesting story about sports. They try to attract the teenagers to middle-aged males, and to a certain extent some females could be interested in these publications. There are no major barriers, like race or religion, since they talk about all different sports and seem to have a good moral compass. Grantland is formatted a little differently from Sports Illustrated, as its online versus in-print like SI. However, there are several notable differences in their styles; first, their content. Sports Illustrated is similar to investigative reporting, giving reasons why teams are performing at certain levels and give predictions for the future. They delve deeper into the actual events, focusing on the human element of the story, the athletes and the coaches involved in the games. In comparison, Grantland focuses on the pop culture surrounding the sports; the articles often relate to music or sports or combine elements of both. Another difference is their writing style; they are nearly polar opposites. On one side, Sports Illustrated writes in a much more serious, more authoritative style. On the other, Grantland writes in a narrative style. Their articles are more free-flowing, and often take tangents off their topic. The articles have a relaxed tone, and tend to include irregular grammar usage not found in serious writing. Their use of evidence is often the same; lots of statistics from games and drafts and other important numbers. Sports has become a numbers game, and both use these numbers to support their arguments. I mentioned this earlier, but their formats are also radically different; Sports Illustrated is a biweekly magazine delivered to houses while Grantland is an online publication that gets delivered to your computer. Both are incredibly interesting, although Grantland’s articles tend to be very long.