Future NBA star LeBron James was born in Akron, Ohio on December 30, 1984. As he grew older in his home state, he became a top recruit out of St. Mary Vincent High School. Deciding to skip college, he went on to be the 1st overall NBA Draft pick in 2003 by the Cleveland Cavaliers. Later on in his career, he signed with the Miami Heat during the offseason, and would win two championships with them before returning to Cleveland to play for his original team in the summer of 2014.
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In my opinion, good and bad are too black-and-white, with no other word in between to more accurately describe something. For someone to use the word "good", they are looking at something in a positive light, they are pleased with something, and they might be happy about the situation they are in. The word "bad" refers to the exact opposite; when someone is being negative about something, if they are disappointed about an occurrence, or they do not like what they see. I feel like good and bad are too general to be used as much as we do. There are so many words that could be used to reflect a piece of work, and these specific words could give the recipient or audience of criticism or praise a more realistic idea of what they did right or wrong. Good and bad are on completely different sides of the spectrum. When used in a condescending manner, bad can be very hurtful, such as a pet disobeying his or her owner's wishes. Good may be a nice complement, but sometimes it is not quite satisfying. When someone says you did a "good job", it would feel like a much worse remark than if one were to say "great job" or "incredible!" While these words could be used less in today's society, they are a very basic way of description and communication relating to emotion, which is a concept that far too many people do not understand on a deeper sense. For example, if someone were to say, "you're good at sports," when they see someone playing basketball, that athlete wouldn't feel much, and this response is demonstrated as displayed:
Athlete: Uhhh,,,thanks? As members of communities that are perfectly able to express opinions in a more precise manner, we need to think about our choice of language. Good and bad are not the best ways to feel about something, nor are they the most kind words to use. So as the reader of this post, I encourage you to search for other words. More detailed words.There are 1,025,109.8 words in the English language. So why just use two? The hardest thing I ever had to do was preparing and competing for the 2014 San Diego U-T County Spelling Bee, which I took part of as a representative of High Tech Middle North County. After I made it past the round at school, the county bee would take place about a month and a half later. Between my victory and the Bee, I had to study. This consisted of flashcards, the dictionary, a word list, foreign languages–everything. All of those geeky materials to get me hyped for the contest. While I could have taken this lightly and maybe looked at a notecard every once and a while, I did the complete opposite. I wanted to win so bad, because my ultimate dream was to make it to the Scripps National Bee in Washington D.C. (The winner of the County Bee would advance to Nationals.) After weeks of studying during art class, after homework, in car rides, and forcing my siblings to quiz me on random words, the day finally came.
Knowing that this was going to be a tough competition, I was extremely nervous. Like pulling an all-nighter the night before the Bee nervous. When it came time to get in the car and ride to San Diego's Hall of Champions in Balboa Park, I had notecards, vocabulary words on my phone, and I was sweating profusely. Butterflies swarmed in my stomach, and I just thought about how much work I had put into the process. What if it did not pay off? About forty-five minutes later, it was time. After checking in and hearing some good luck messages from my family and my middle school advisor, Mrs. Piro, I filed into a row with other anxious contestants, waiting for the Bee to start. In the first round, hardly anyone was eliminated. I spelled "goatee" correctly, giving me the opportunity to advance to the second round. What most people do not realize though about competing in a Bee is the doubt that circles through your mind when you are on stage. Even when given a fairly simple word that you have seen a million times, you start to think if the way you're spelling it is wrong. After making it past the initial stage, I made it past the second round, too, and then it was on to the third round. After a somewhat long break, I got the word "refinery". R-E-F-I-N-A-R-Y. Ding. I was out. The nerves evaporated, all of that time that I had spent studying, challenging and pushing myself went out the window. But even today, that memory lives on in my mind, as fresh as if it were yesterday. *Side Note – The next day I traveled to Orange County, and while looking out the window, there was a refinery that was labeled REFINERY. I'm not even joking. I think it was meant to haunt me. While it may not have necessarily taken place over the weekend, I had a moment of inspiration on Friday afternoon. I was trying to come up with an idea for my Humanities Creative Writing story. Since we are currently reading The Odyssey by Homer in this class, our Creative Writing piece had to include one character from the novel, and one aspect of Ancient Greek culture. With my teacher, Mr. Lee and a few other students, we tried to come up with ideas of how to write our own story using those two components, and we started talking about the Greek Gods. Then, I had my light bulb moment. I was instantly reminded of the Percy Jackson series, which featured a demigod (half God, half human), who went to a camp in California called "Camp Half-Blood". This led me to think about if Gods ruled today's society and what would it look like, so I decided to base my story on that. Four regions–East, West, North and South–and four Gods. My story will pertain to a divided nation and what America would look like without a President.
Moments like these are when I stretch my brain to the point of a mental explosion, and sometimes I spend hours dwelling and pondering on certain ideas. While some people get an idea by looking at a picture or a word or are reminded of a movie or a book or a TV show that could influence their thought process, it takes me a really long time to get a really good idea. I also like to think of these newfound ideas logically. For example, if I had an idea to create a basketball gym on our school's campus, I would need to know the details, too. First of all, where would it go? How much money would it cost? Couldn't we be using that money to pay teachers more so that they can extend their tenures on the HTHNC staff? This might be a sound strategy for brainstorming, but sometimes I am overly critical of ideas, which leads to those hours of trying to get inspired. Inspiration is gold: you search for it forever, and then when you do find it, you can strike it rich. |
Robby AcklesStudent at HTHNC ArchivesCategories |