I Believe

Jeff Wallace

LAR 112

Professor Harris

December 14, 2011

Baseball: Love of the Game

            I believe that the game of baseball has many life lessons that go along with it.  The game has taught me many things not only about myself, but about others around me as well.  It also helps people express who they are and how dedicated they are to being on a winning team.  Baseball relates to aspects of one’s life and the underlying meaning of certain times one will go through on their way to success.

            During the many years I have spent playing and coaching the game of baseball, I have become a believer that being a part of a sport gives people that extra drive in life needed to get through challenging parts in one’s life.  When I coached younger kids and taught them how to play the game the correct way, I watched them mature and grow up at a very young age.  Some of these kids were becoming much more mature than their age said they were because simply learning and interacting with rules and fun baseball consists of. 

            When playing the game for myself, I found out that it helped even me through daily circumstances.  I could relate baseball to everyday life almost every time I played the game.  I believe that when I step on the field I become something greater than myself; I become part of a team.  This team allows me to become someone/something greater than I can ever explain.  It gives me the right to be a part of an organization that people come to watch and envy.  Every time the seasons change I can count down the days until opening day, and that day gives me such an overwhelming amount of pride because on that day, I become a star.  I become entertainment for someone else’s satisfaction.  I become a baseball player.

            After all is said and done, baseball is life to me and I believe there is no tenth inning.  The game is played and between the lines, but the lines to me are life and death.  This game means the world to me and I believe that it should mean more to every individual who is a competitor.

Economist

The life I have been given is something extremely precious to me.  I try to live everyday so that if it were to end as the sun set that night I would not regret anything done.  During the day I try to do as much for others as I can, but will only give someone my time if its not a lost cause.  What I mean by this is that I try not to waste my day away with someone that could care less about the outcome of their own day.

I try to use the gifts God has given me as often as possible.  For instance, I am very good at helping someone through their problems and I love to do it.  So if during the day I stubble upon someone I know I will do what I can to cheer them up, or help them realize what the problem is and how to fix it.  Also, I am a very friendly person that is easy to get along with.  Some people may not see this as a gift, but in my eyes its one of the best ones God chose to give me.

Inspirational Teacher

The most inspirational teacher I have ever become engaged with was my high school accounting, government, and economics teacher.  His name was Mr. Long.  Mr. Long was not only a teacher in multiple classes, but the high school football coach as well.  He always pushed me to succeed in the class room to the best of my ability and most of the time I found this extremely stressful, but looking back on it I am so very thankful for what he did.  Not only did he push me in the class room, but on the field as well.  After a long rough day of school and you thought you were out of Mr. Longs ‘crosshairs’, there was practice.  On the field Mr. Long stressed the importance of teamwork and dedication and was a great example of this since he was much older than most coaches around.  When you went to practice, he was not any different than during the classroom or someone running into him at the grocery store.  Mr. Long was a very straight forward man and taught me to be the same by pushing me on and off the field.  In the classroom, he put forth as much effort into my education as I would allow him and wanted me to build off my strengths.  On the field, he pushed me to be the best player, both mentally and statistically, I could be.  After all of the influence he had on both my education and athletic career, I have him to thank for all he has done to make me the man I am today.  Because of everything he has done, I want to thank him.

Banking Concept of Education

1.) Paulo Freire’s “narration sickness” is when you are sitting in a class room and the teacher continues to ramble on about a subject, but the students get nothing out of it. After the students have studied the facts the teacher wants and passes the test, the facts get tossed aside and nothing was ever learned.

2.)  Narration sickness reminds me of the No Child Left Behind Act because instead of actually helping the student learn they are just providing the student with answers, more or less. They do this because in the long run the teacher looks like they are getting their points a crossed in a well-developed way. In the long run, students get nothing out of this and they move on with little thought to how they did well on a test.  It’s a grade and they got a good one.

3.)   Mr. Durfee is a wonderful example of an instructor who used the banking concept practices.  He taught all math classes in my high school. The way Mr. Durfee taught was by lecturing something all day and if you had a question he would tell you to look into the book and study.  He expected that the students should know what to do by simply memorizing the book.

This kind of teacher has so many disadvantages that the students face. The reason is because they will not obtain anything since they only need it for a set amount of time.  I did not learn much at all from Mr. Durfee and became my own teacher in a tough subject.

4.)  Mr. Long was an excellent example of a great teacher.  He taught many different classes like government, economics, and accounting. The way he taught was fun and easy to retain the information.  Mr. Long would teach through personal experiences and current events.  Along with the current events, there was a lot of dialogue going on throughout the entirety of the class period.

Mr. Long was very educated in the subjects he taught. He never made someone feel dumb for asking a simple question and could relate well with all of his students.  There was never a dull moment during his class and made the learning experience very fun and eventful.

5.)   Athiens is the culture that embrace the concept of liberated or problem- posing education that Freire spoke of in his “Banking Concept of Education.” The class that I face these in the most would be Business Research and Writing.  During this class there is a lot of dialogue between the teacher and students. The class that could benefit from more practice of dialogue would be my Intro to Christian Thought class. During this class the teacher lectures the entire time with little time during, or at the end, to answer questions.  This makes the class hard and very frustrating.  I have troubles learning this way and my grade reflects that.

Civil Rights

What is passive resistance?

Passive resistance is a way to represent yourself and to do it by disputing something without violence.  It can be done by doing symbolic protests and/or many other demonstrations as long as violence does not exist.  There was one person in particular that everyone knows for using passive resistance and that would be Martin Luther King.  He used many ways to get his points a crossed without using violence and is a key example.  Another would be Judith Hand, he presented a strategy for abolishing war in general.

Photo #1

Who: Anti-segregation demonstrators

What: People being sprayed with a fire hose

Where: Birmingham

When: 1963

How: In a line and sprayed

Why: Believed something different than everyone else

Reaction:

Looking at this photo, the first word that comes to mind is pain.  The pressure that pushes the water out of fire hose is extremely strong and can feel like something is splitting you in half.  This is very inhuman and makes me shutter just thinking about being in that situation and feeling the pain of the hose.  Not only would I have not liked being sprayed, but I would have hated doing that to people that simply have a different belief than my own.

Photo #2

Who: Blacks and white policeman

What: Taunting the policeman

Where: In front of a department store

When: 1963

How: Singling out the policeman

Why: Because the color of the skin

Reaction:

When looking at this picture, curiosity sets in me.  I wonder if that policeman has the belief that whites are greater than blacks, or if he is just being put into the stereotype.  I realize that the blacks in this picture have hatred towards whites, which was put there by the whites themselves, but what if the policeman is just trying to do his job and sees the blacks as equals.  Now I realize the odds of that being true considering the time period and that it was said that the law was against them, but do you think the blacks would take this into consideration or would they careless what he thought?  These pictures leave me wondering more often than not.

Discrimination today:

I believe that there are many different types of discrimination today.  Most of it that happens today though I believe is much more modest and more of a self-belief.  There is discrimination not only on the skin color of someone, but also on gender.  I believe that there might be more discrimination on the gender side of things than color.  Maybe this is just what I see more, but this seems to be a bigger issue in my eyes.  Men and women are blaming each other for everything and anything these days.  It is being to become ridiculous. 

Pathos, Logos, Ethos:

1.      Strive for reaching a personal level with reader.

2.      Try to keep my opinion out of it and use facts.

3.      Make sure to bring in statistics if possible.

This I Believe

Sculpture Walk

Jeff Wallace

Sculpture name: Aplomb     By:  Luke Achterberg

1.      Unusual, colorful, bright, tall, swirly.

2.      The sculpture is very tall and consists of bright colors. Also, when looking at the sculpture, one can tell that it is made up of strong and sturdy metal.  Parts of the sculpture are very intriguing because of the different dynamics used throughout its entirety.

3.      I like everything about this sculpture except for one thing, its durability. Over time this sculpture is going to rust/deteriorate.

4.      If given the opportunity to purchase the sculpture, I would not.  The main reason is because of how large it is.  I would not want to keep this sculpture outside if I purchased it because I would want to make it last longer.

5.      This sculpture represents graffiti you would see on the side of a train or wall.  I believe it symbolizes a form of art similar to freestyle.  The sculpture is not suited well with its surroundings.

6.      Yes, the sculpture has a very bold presentation.  From the back side of the sculpture it becomes simple and bland.  When looking from different sides and angles aplomb has various unique projections to it.  The material has been molded to many different angles and curves.  The metal has been welded at the seams as well.

7.      The work that this sculpture consists of is both rounded and angular to an extreme extent.  Also, the sculpture this simplified, despite many different angles that are portrayed.  Aplomb is abstract art that has a smooth surface that consists of both patterns and colors.

Sculpture name: Katrina        By: Osamede obazee

1.      Strange, abnormal, unique, scary, weird.

2.      Looking at the sculpture I can see the desperation of the woman in the sculpture. I like the fact that the person in Katrina is trying to hold onto the umbrella despite it being completely destroyed.  The sculpture also seems to be very delicate even though the scene of it is very destructive.

3.      There is not much I do not like about this sculpture.  Katrina seems to be very well made and detailed. 

4.      I am not one for art therefore I would not purchase this particular sculpture.  The main reason I would not want this sculpture is because I would have nowhere to put it.  When thinking about how many people would give this sculpture a good home, I know it would be more adored somewhere else.

5.      I believe this sculpture is trying to represent desperation and the importance of little things.  After observing the sculpture, I also realize that it shows how many things were lost in the storm by noticing the missing shoe.  The sculpture would relate well with people who were a part of the actual storm and others that it affected.

6.      Katrina has a very strong frontal presentation.  At first glance you can see how very well it is constructed, even though it is made of scrap metal.  In my eyes the sculpture is the most interesting from the front considering it is of a person and you can see the face only from the front.  When moving around Katrina at different sides and angles, you can see many little things that stand out.  The one that is most noticeable is how far she is leaning back and how she is using all the strength she has to stay on the ground.  The material in this sculpture is made of scrap metal and it is very easy to realize that the sculptor took a long time to get it perfect.

7.      I do not think that Katrina fits well into any of the categories listed since it is a human being.  Katrina is a very detailed sculpture mainly because of the person involved and the circumstances that are taking place (high winds resulting in struggling).  The sculpture has different textures that are involved in it because of the hair and smoothness of the legs and clothes.  This is a great example of a concrete sculpture because people can relate to a real life situation.

Sculpture name: Robert the Bruce         By: Benjamin Victor

1.      Historical, simple but detailed, familiar, pride, glory.

2.      The main reason I am intrigued by this sculpture is because I am related to William Wallace.  The sculpture has sentimental value to me.  I also think that this sculpture is extremely detailed compared to some others on campus.  When I look at the sculpture many things catch my eye, there is not a specific focal point that I look at.

3.      I like everything about this sculpture.

4.      This is the only sculpture that I would purchase on the campus if given the opportunity.  Not only because of who it is, but because of how well it is put together and the simplicity of the piece as a whole.  I believe that this sculpture is the best one on the entire campus because I can relate to the history of it much easier.

5.      I believe that Robert the Bruce represents courage.  Because of the fact that he took on the challenge ahead of him when he started the war/revolution against England.  I also think that the sculpture represents poise because of how he is sitting on the horse. 

6.      From the front of the sculpture you can tell that it sends a strong message.  I believe that the sculpture is the most interesting from the front because the viewer can see the most detail.  This sculpture has been made very precise and took unnecessary ways of completing it, but in the end it helps the overall sculpture. 

7.      When I notice the sculpture I think that it is primarily angular.  The reason I say this is because he is turning his horse while rallying his troops and starting a charge.  The sculpture is both detailed and simple to me.  What I mean by this is the sculpture is of something so simple, but in a very detailed way.  The surface of the sculpture is made up of more textural items.  This sculpture is another great example of concrete art because it can easily be related to by a large audience.