Category: school

Sweaty Hugs and Hard-Earned Gatorade

mypetlobster1Leave a comment
Photo Credit: thepreachersword.com
team
tēm/
noun:
a group of players forming one side in a competitive game or sport.
synonyms: group, squad, company, party, crew, troupe, band, side, lineup, phalanx
verb:
come together as a team to achieve a common goal.
“he teamed up with the band to produce the album”
synonyms: join (forces), collaborate, get together, work together.
Sweaty hugs; cheering until my throat is raw;the pre-race jitters; hard-earned Gatorade; singing to “Africa” on the bus rides; pushing through almost unbearable pain; the cheers from my coaches and team mates; the feeling of success, when all the hard training and effort pays off; the happiness of coaches bringing food, after you just pushed yourself to your physical max; the endless support we have for each other; the amount of effort we put in; the dynamic and connection between us athletes; the fact that real teammates don’t only care about how you perform, they care about how hard you try. All these things contribute to the the feeling of being part of an authentic team, which is one of the best feelings that exists.
au·then·tic
ôˈTHen(t)ik/
adjective
adjective: authentic.
of undisputed origin; genuine.
“the letter is now accepted as an authentic document”

synonyms: genuine, real, bona fide, true, veritable

antonyms: fake. synonyms: reliable, dependable, trustworthy, authoritative, honest, faithful.

In my words, the way it should be: caring and real. 

I’ve been on many teams before. On some, we’ve won championships and received numerous trophies. On some, we placed last and got our asses handed to us. Winning is great, it’s what I strive to do, but I’ve realized that more than just winning that counts. I’ve realized that to have a good team, winning can’t be the only focus.

On a previous team, every day I would give my all. Yet, no matter how hard I tried, even the slightest mess-up resulted in dirty glares and angry shrugs. It made it so I was nervous to go to practice; I was afraid of my teammates; I pushed myself to the limits, because I was scared the punishment if I didn’t; and I was absolutely mortified before every game. This approach worked. I got stronger, I got better, I became a better athlete, but I forgot the fact that I love the sport.

After two years on that team, another opportunity came up, so I switched to a team with a VERY different dynamic. We pushed each other to do our best, to be our best. When slip-ups or bad days came, we encouraged each other to get better, not to feel like shit. I became so close to my teammates, I had good relationships with my coaches, I was so excited to go to practice everyday, and I pushed myself to the limits, because I wanted to get better for myself and my team. Our team performed just as well as the other one I mentioned and my love for the sport was rekindled.

Recently, I joined another team. I love both of the teams I’m on right now so much, but it’s been a long time since I have felt the feeling of happiness, appreciation, friendship, and passion as I did yesterday at my first ever cross country meet.

I know I love swimming far more than I love running, so it confuses me that yesterday, in this sport that I just joined months ago,  has brought me almost as much joy as the sport I have been doing for years. I think it’s just because swimming is more of an individual sport without a large aspect of team. I think its because the swim team I’m on has people who qualify for the Olympics or on the Junior National Team and I’m so slow compared to them, it makes me feel like I’m slow, period. Maybe its because a cross country the team is only as strong as its weakest link, so everyone is needed. Maybe because in the small league we run in, I too place high and feel like a good runner.

I think all of these things are a factor, but what I know for sure is that the feeling of being part of an authentic team is one of the best feelings that exists.

My Tuesday Run

faithfulomnivoreLeave a comment
Image from redbirdhills.com

In cross county, my coaches always remind us that the sport has as much to do with mental strength as it does physical strength.

With that in mind, I’d like to invite you to come running with me – for the mental part, at least.

Here’s what a few miles look like inside of my head.

Mile 1:
Don’t start too fast, just get warmed up.
It’s hot today, but not as bad as it usually is. The gravel crunches beneath my shoes. We reach a little bit of downhill.
I hear my coach’s voice: “Let gravity do the work.”
 Get your breathing back. Drop your arms. Shake it out.
The road in front of us curves up a long hill. It’s steep.
Slow it down. What hurts worse, lungs or legs? Legs. I can breathe still.
My calves tighten the farther up we climb. I count my steps between each exhale. We’re running in 4/4 time. I inhale on the 1st beat, exhale through 2, 3, 4.

Mile 2:
Sweat drips down my forehead. I wipe it off with my shirt.
Take it easy now.
My breathing is steady – that’s good. My left calf hurts more than my right. The opposite of yesterday.
This hill is a bitch. Settle in, we’ll be here for a while.
It hurts.

Mile 3:
Keep your arms down. Breathe.
The road settles and is flat for a while.
You’re not tired, it just hurts.

Mile 4:
What hurts worse, lungs or legs? Both. You’re not tired, you just can’t breathe. There’s a difference.
The next two miles are steady uphill.
Use your arms! The harder you work the faster you’ll be done.

Mile 5:
This hill is a BITCH.
My ragged breathing is louder than my shoes on the pavement. Sweat covers my whole body. My arms ache from pumping and the muscles in my legs feel like they’re made of both cement and water at the same time. My mouth is so dry that when I touch my tongue to the roof of my mouth it sticks.
Eyes up, on the road. So close. I feel awful.
I can’t breathe. The smell of wood chips in the orchard makes me want to puke. Push.
Everything hurts.

The Finish:
I jog past the green gate the marking the end of the road, the end of the run. My left foot leaves the pavement and lands on grass and the right follows.
Don’t sit down. Breathe.
As I walk back and forth beneath the oak trees, my lungs start to settle down. The tension in my legs slowly fades, first easing up in my quads and then from my calves.
My breathing returns to normal. I’m not hurting anymore.
I just ran five miles.
I feel good.

 

Retrospect

localdreamerwithapenLeave a comment

Isn’t it ironic how, being so far away from home, I have never before felt closer to my country?

9,338 kilometers, to be exact. That’s how far away my childhood home is. My best friend, my room, my horses, the forest by my house. I haven’t looked back a lot in the past years; I don’t really miss it all that much. But, from time to time, I wonder how my life would be if I had never left Germany.

Photo Credit: mapio.net

How would it be if I would still come home every day to my dog barking and my mom talking on the phone? How would it be if we still had our family dinners every day, with the good, old German Wagenradbrot and Kochkäse. If we still went to the Biergarten after spending all afternoon at the barn; then, we would walk home, probably fight a little bit as usual; and, then, watch some sort of wildlife documentary together because we couldn’t agree on a movie we all liked. What if I still woke up to my dad feeding my dog every morning and the rain bouncing against my blinds?

I’ve realized that this part of my life is over. I haven’t spent my birthday at home since I was thirteen. My siblings are both legal adults now and go to college in California. Next year, I will too, and I will leave another home. That is okay, though, that’s how it goes. But, there isn’t a single day I don’t feel as if I owe an apology to my parents: for taking their daughter away from home too early.

A Senior Rant

localdreamerwithapenLeave a comment

So, just a thought: when you know that the first semester of senior year is already ultimate hell as it is, don’t try and stuff more work into it by moving the Senior Seminar into the first semester!

I know that there is probably some reason behind it that makes some kind of sense, but I just don’t know it. Just saying, it wasn’t the smartest move.

Photo Credit: kmox.radio.com

In these upcoming months, we now not only have to apply to colleges, perfect out SAT and ACT scores, and  try and boost our grades as much as possible, but we’re also going to have to try and get our entire senior project done by March. I know that, essentially, it doesn’t make a huge difference time-wise for most people, because, let’s be honest, we’ll most likely all procrastinate anyways. But, I know that there are also some people that have already planned on having an entire school year to finish their projects because that’s simply how much time they need.

I know that I should probably be writing college essays right now instead of ranting about something I can’t change anyways, but this is just one of those things that make me want to bury myself six feet underground. Gotta love being a senior!

The Beginning of the End

maydaygaskarthLeave a comment

When I stepped into my first class at the beginning of freshman year, senior year seemed so far away.

Now, I just survived my first week of being a senior and too many realizations hit me at once.

That, at the end of the year, I won’t be sitting on the bleachers watching my friends from higher grades graduate. This time, I’ll be the one walking on the stage to receive my diploma that I worked so hard to get over my high school years.

But, it’s only the beginning of the year. There’s still so much to anticipate. So much to go through.

The countless college applications and dreadful Saturday mornings I’ll spend doing the SAT until I get the perfect score so I can get into the perfect college. The ideas for my senior project that I still can’t choose, because I don’t even have one in mind. What my prom dress will look like, or even my graduation dress.

Photo Credit: The Odyssey Online

It’s only the beginning of my final year at OVS. It’s the beginning of the end of my high school experience.

It hurts knowing at the end of the year I’ll have to say goodbye to everything I’ve known. To my friends and teachers, to my horse, and to the small town and smaller school that has been my second home.

But, I’m still hopeful that this will be an amazing year, and maybe my days at OVS will only be in my memories and I’ll be living a completely different life, but I’ll still remember them as the most important times in my life.

13 Years

whynotstayinLeave a comment

Thirteen years is a long time for a seventeen year old – and I have been here for thirteen years.

I’ll be honest there is certainly a dissociative sense of gladness that I’ll finally be seeing a change of scenery, a change in pace. It is easy to say, “God am I glad to be moving on,” it is easy to think that I’m ready and really don’t care all that much. It is easy to look at these past thirteen years and think of only the things I’m ready and willing to give up.

It is not easy however to look back on the past four years, the past seven, all the years and think of all that I’m leaving behind. It is not easy to leave with honesty, with neither hell nor rose tint. I won’t say that the past years, high school in particular were perfect – I have nothing to compare them to, I won’t say they were terrible either – they weren’t.

It’s odd to think about, even odder to try to put into words the sort of feelings I have about moving onto the next part of whatever future awaits me, because in part there is a sort of cold readiness to just leave but in equal part there is a desperate need to hold on, to dig my heals in, to continue to put my nose to the grindstone so I don’t feel the inevitable sense of loss.

It is undeniable that who I am is inescapably tied to these past years and I wonder everyday if I have the strength to untether myself from that. All my heart strings are tangled up and confused as to what to do in these last days – run as fast as I can home where I can rest and pretend like I’m already gone or stick around and grow melancholy realizing that it is the last time that I will be as I am where I am – realizing that these are the last moments for me to see my teachers as the teachers whose classes I used to know I would inevitably show up in again next year, sleep deprived and more than a little black-mooded.

Photo Credit: napavalleynow.com

Is it strange that I feel so much and nothing at all? Is it weird that I can’t find it in myself to reminisce like a bad made for TV movie with an even worse soundtrack? Is it weird that I can’t find the strength to tell my friends that I love them now in case we naturally fall into radio silence? Is it weird that I can’t find the ability to say thank you to the teachers who have built me?

I’m not sure how to put it all together. How to show the the people who deserve my thanks and love just how thankful I am and how much love I have for them. I’m not sure how to say goodbye to the place and people who have been my entire world for 76% of my life. Thirteen years is a lot of “stuff” and people to say goodbye to and I don’t think I’ll ever really be ready for that, but in three days I will have to anyway.

It is not a goodbye forever but it is a forever goodbye to the safety and essence of what those years have been.

I almost inevitably will cry June 1, I’m not ready for that. On June 1, even if I don’t say it outright, I hope that everyone from the past thirteen years understands that I am eternally thankful and that, selfishly, it may hurt me too much to try to say it to their faces.

So let me say it now, in the likely event that I can’t say it later:

Thank you for all the years, for the good, the mediocre, the not so good, for everything.

30 things

localdreamerwithapenLeave a comment

Finals week starts tomorrow, and I already know it’s gonna be extremely mentally exhausting. So, here is a list of unimportant things that make me feel better/calm down:

  1. the smell of the ground after rain
  2. running your hand across smooth wood
  3. fingers sliding down guitar strings
  4. watching the sun set through the leaves of a tree
  5. cat purrs
  6. freshly washed sheets
  7. pressing flowers in a heavy book
  8. braiding your hair
  9. the smell of saddle soap
  10. watching horses eat
  11. drawing in black pen
  12. painting your nails
  13. the sound of shoes crunching in the sand
  14. the sound of shoes crunching in the snow (though this seems pretty unlikely to happen anytime soon)
  15. opening a new pack of gum
  16. watching vines that butter my croissants
  17. walking barefoot through wet grass
  18. a dog’s cold nose
  19. when a dog high fives you
  20. dogs
  21. biting into an apple
  22. cutting a piece of paper perfectly straight
  23. matching your outfit with your shoes
  24. opening a textbook to the exact page you needed to open to
  25. closing all the tabs after finishing a research paper
  26. twinkle lights
  27. the shadows of trees moving in the wind
  28. putting on eyeliner in one single motion
  29. listening to the rain and flume
  30. a good hug
via chaifeed.me
via i.pinimg.com

Summer feels

localdreamerwithapenLeave a comment

I can’t wait for this summer. You know, in the past, people have always told me that junior year is gonna be harder than all the other years. But I had no idea that they were actually right about that!

I’m mentally and now even physically so exhausted that I don’t want to do anything but sleep. But guess what! I can’t!

That’s why I can’t wait for summer. I can actually sleep then. I won’t have anything to do but read, ride horses, go for runs with my dog, probably study for the SAT, go to my summer journalism program, and travel. I’m so excited to travel!

via static.tumblr.com

 

In the US everything seems to be so far apart. If you go on a two hour train ride here, you get to another city in the state. But if I go on a two hour train ride from my hometown, I end up in another country. I can’t wait to go to Paris, to Amsterdam, Berlin, to Greece.

I also really can’t wait to ride my horse again. I am so glad that I get to ride at my school here, I am so thankful for that, but it’s so different from my barn at home. I can go there whenever I want, I can stay there as long as I want, go on trail rides through the fields and forests, and I can actually get lessons. So, obviously, I can’t wait.

Of course I’ll miss all my friends here, as always. I’ll miss the amazing weather in California, and the amazing avocados and oranges, that simply don’t taste the same in Germany. But I can’t even tell you just how excited I am for this summer!

AP madness

localdreamerwithapenLeave a comment

Today my mom asked me if I have been feeling stressed lately, because I apparently looked a little tired. Yes, yes, a thousand times yes, I am so stressed. Ugh.

Since the beginning of the school year, most of my classes have been leading up to these two weeks: the AP weeks. So, naturally, I’ve put a bunch of pressure on myself for doing well, or at least pass my exams for God’s sake.

lol…    via theodysseyonline.com

If my grade depended on them, I’d probably not care as much, ironically. If they counted towards my grade, I could at least try to do well for the rest of the year to make up for it. But if I do badly on my APs, there is literally nothing I can do about it. So no pressure!

It’s not like doing well on those exams could determine whether or not my dream college finds me worthy of being admitted. It’s not like passing them could mean I wouldn’t have to take a bunch of classes in college, which could possibly save a ton of money AND nerves. No pressure at all!

Well, at least there are about 180,000 other students living this nightmare with me, and at least I still have time to watch The Great British Baking Show now and then, and at least I now have an excuse to wear sweatpants to school. This all is definitely a struggle, but it could be worse.

(That still doesn’t mean I’m not stressed though…)

 

better together

rufusdespacitoLeave a comment

i spend a lot of time thinking about this year and how it’s blown by.

after all these two hundred some odd days i realize that i have lost and gained a lot of friends.

to those of you who are reading this, i love all of you and i never wanted our friendships to end.

but to you, i’m sorry.

i am sorry if i caused us to drift apart, but i miss you and i hope we can be together again.

 

Photo Credit: pexels.com

 

we always promised we would be friends forever, but i guess not every promise is kept.

we swore we would be friends until the day we died, and would never, ever let anything come between us.

but, it breaks by heart that we aren’t close and i’ve been longing to just talk to you again, just like we used to.

i miss you and i love you.

you may know who you are, and i hope you do, because i’m calling out to you, i’m screaming, you just can’t hear me or maybe you don’t care to listen.

maybe it’s our different opinions on certain things, or maybe it is that we drifted separate ways, but i hope we can find our way back soon.

i remember how we used to be,

we were so close,

and knew everything about each other.

we would laugh and cry together, learn strange dances at midnight, sing our hearts out to songs from our childhood until the sun rose, and just be us.

we used to die to be with each other, and would spend every ounce of time we could together.

but here we are, seperate, and i’m trying to find my way back to you.