Monday, January 26, 2009

Jailbird Mama

So about the 3 month pregnant woman who made the fabulous decision to rob a bank. There is no way she should be allowed to raise her baby once it is born. If this were to happen, the government wouldn't have made that decision, she would have already made it when she stepped into that bank. Obviously, she had already become a negligent mother and doesn't hold her childs best interest.
I do think, however, that she should be able to have contact with her child once it is born. It'd probably be in the childs best interest and the mothers, if she had wished to raise the baby, to put the baby into the care of a relative. This way, the child is not fully neglected from knowing family and the mother can have the satisfaction of knowing her child is in the arms of people she trusts and she still has contact.
The thing that is truly most important is the safety and upbringing of the baby. Being raised by a mother in jail wouldn't be the healthiest option.

Friday, January 16, 2009

sports

Sports have been a huge part of my life since i was little. Basketball, golf, and recently volleyball (lets not forget gymnastics way back in elementary school). It's always seemed to be a complete escape from the drama of everyday life, a way to sweat out your stress. And then comes freshman year.

I referred to the 9th grade recently as "the year when you thought it mattered." What a shame, in my opinion at least. Coming into high school, i was ridiculously excited for basketball season, as were all my teammates, despite having won..4 games all of seventh and eighth grade. I spent hours upon hours at open gyms, speed workouts, running. I spent my nights at the courts way back when they used to keep the lights on. Sadly, i spent the most amount of time practicing for a sport i quit my senior year, grew the most in a sport i just joined, and neglected the sport i'm most talented at.

Back to what i was saying about 9th grade. It's supposed to be the year to build you up and thicken your skin for your varsity years. Coach Bancroft, i'd say, did a pretty good job of it. She was easily the best coach I had. She didn't take any BS, she knew how to coach, she ran us until we were blue in the face, and that was the last i've seen of it. It stopped my freshmen year. The team that year was determined our high school careers at ishpeming were going to be pretty solid. Every year since then, however, has been a let down. We've been coached, since then, to just take it easy. "The score doesn't matter tonight, girls, just take this as a learning experience." The girls at IHS have been told that gazillions of times. Maybe that was their coaching technique, or maybe it was just to heal the battle wounds of that expected 41 point loss to westwood. So maybe it did feel like heaven when stephanie cross came to bust our butts in volleyball. It was the first time in ages, it felt, where a coach wasn't afraid of "hurting our feelings." And we were successful. Connection?

I know many adults in our school listen to us girls rant and roll their eyes because they think we need to suck it up and actually put in effort. We have. we've tried. we've just been faced with some hurdles, such as coaches. I can't say that girls should be treated like boys in practices. i agree that girls are much more emotional and different. You tell a boy he's rotten, and he'll prove you wrong. You tell a girl she's rotten, and she'll believe you. There's no doubt about that. But for once if a coach wasn't afraid to push the limits in practice, it would all pay off. If coaches didn't tell girls that the numbers up on the scoreboard didn't matter (than why are they there?), than our drive would be stronger. If we didn't "treat these games like practice," we might win more than 3 a season. There is a way to coach girls, and it is different than boys, but you don't have to act like a girl in the process.

ANYWAY- i'm sure half of this doesn't make sense because i'm tired and confused and I didn't even make the point i wanted to in the first place. but i guess instead of writing an hour long diary entry above, i could have just said :

we're not afraid to work hard, we've just been taught it won't matter.