I believe that Ifemelu’s observations about the American college classrooms are very solid. However, I believe that some are just illusions that she is giving off because of the background she is coming from. For example, because she does have a hard time affording college it can be very easy to walk around and convince yourself that other students have life figured out. However even if they may not have the same problems in life as her that means that they don’t have barriers they must push through. I think what she experiences is not any different from a student from a low-income household vs one from a wealthy household. As the low income student you might find yourself feeling alone on your journey through out school because people have more money have access to tools and resources that you can’t get your hands on.
Nationals Bids Structure
With the USAU Club Ultimate National Championships regional bid allocation being finalized last there has been a up roar of debate on how USA Ultimate should how many bids a region is rewarded for nationals. I find that that the current system has multiple flaws when you account that the “Triple Crown Tour” requires Pro and Elite Flight teams to play a very restricted schedule giving select teams the chance to move up in ranking.
For those who are not familiar with the USAU Club National Bid System: There are 16 spots a nationals which are divided upon 8 regions (Southwest,North Central, Great Lakes, Northwest, Northeast, Southeast, South Central, and Mid-Atlantic) in which each is given one auto to nationals and the last are giving based on a ranking system in which the strongest teams earn additional bids for there respective region.
This was completely fair to me 3 years ago when every team was able to compose their schedule of tournaments with no restriction of USAU’s Triple Crown Tour. But, now that the tour is a reality we need a way for teams that were not at nationals the past year (meaning they did not earn pro or elite flight status) to either create a competitive schedule or make it so that all the schedule are similar in some way. So I propose that we do away with the current regional system and make it so that we decide who goes to nationals by winning qualifiers including teams from all over the nation. The format for the postseason would be that every team who has played a minimum of 10 games is entered into the postseason and play in the opening round in a number of tournaments that will be composed of 20 random teams the winner and runner up of there respective tournament will move on to the next stage. Depending on the number of teams left from the first round it will be another qualifier to in which the top 20 win the right to go to nationals.
So here are is a example of my postseason structure…
- 200 Teams enter the postseason.
- 10 20-Team tournaments leading in 10 Winners and 10 Runner-Ups
- Nationals field is set.
However numbers are not always that perfect so say there is 350 teams registered for postseason play…
- You would first break it down to 17 20-team tournaments and One 10-team
- Now that you have 36 teams and will hold tournament in which the top 20 finishers go to nationals.
The overall goal of this format is so that newer teams or teams that were started with the idea to develop players are given the same chances at earning a bid to the national championships. While allowing teams that have stuck together for years with national success to still reap the benefits of a triple crown tour schedule.
The down falls of this structure are the increase travel expenses because it leaves the chance of a east coast team having to play their qualifier on the west coast or vise versa. Also their could be dreaded “Tournament of Death” in which 3 or more highly deserving teams end up in the same tournament. The upside is from a fan standpoint these games would be amazing to watch because of new intensity that will be brought to these formerly regional games.
Any Given Sunday
What I like about this speech is that even though it was written as a inspirational speech to pump up a team at halftime, it can also be used as a speech about work ethic in everyday life. I love how its basically broken it 3 basic principles. The first being everyone fails at something in life, the second being that winners are the ones who fight the hardest and three being that you don’t have to fight alone. The speech starts is delivered in a slow calm tone at the beginning in order to engage the audience of a story of hardship and speeds up as he begins to talk about “fighting for that Inch”. He does this because he wants the players to realize at first that he understands what they really are going through and because of that he knows they can fight through it. This makes them buy into what he’s saying rather than thinking its just another half time speech a coach is giving at the middle of a game. Through performance he continuously points or ask the crown a brief question to make sure they each feel a part of the moment. Which makes it more probable that they will go out on the field with enthusiasm because they want to be a part of this special moment with their coach and team.
RCL Blog #2
One of the very crucial civic spaces that Adichie talks about in the text is Princeton University where Ifemelu attends. She lays this out as one the overall reason for why they are still in America dealing with the prodigious that comes along with being different than the norm in this vast culture. However, what makes this location civic is that like at all colleges and university around the world people come there to learn not only academic knowledge but also how to be their self in community. Many people come to college not really knowing what they want to do for the rest of there life and they rely on there college experiences to help guide them on the path to finding those answers.
The colleges offers this to the students by offer numerous majors and minors, while providing resources such as academic advising and alumni mentorship programs so that student may pick up skills and habits that will be useful to them in the future. The education system is a very unique civic place because its one of the play communities where adults come into rooms and learn ideas through discussion from each other just as much as they do from Teachers. Propose to your household where its mostly parents teaching ideas and children receive them with little exchange in the reverse order.
Response to Q3 (pg 41)
As one of the captains of the Ultimate Frisbee Team for my High School, I was tasked with project of trying to change the culture of the team. The team was often know to be the team that no one wants to play and mot because we were so amazingly great. Were looked at one of the least sprinted teams in the league which is something the league officials , our coaches, the captains took very seriously. So my co-captain and I decided that we would hold a team meeting in which we could talk to the group to make a strategic plan on how we would play sprinted but still keep that grind it out hard nose style of play. One of the things we was showing the sprint scores (A score hand out by coaches and captains to describe how fair and sprinted a team was during the contest) for the last 10 games which had averaged off to about a 2.4 on a 5 point scale.The meeting proved to be quiet successful most people agreed that they didn’t like the reputation of our school that we were putting out for the public to see. However, there was some people that did not truly understand the concepts, especially the players who primary sports were things like basketball and soccer were it is socially acceptable to break rules or foul a player hard if you feel that it gives your team the advantage.
A time in which someone tried to persuade me to change my mind was my advisor in High School, who convinced me that I should take a math class during my senior year. He convinced me by asking simple questions such as “Why do you want to drop the course .” in order to make me admit I was simply being lazy and falling for the “Senior-its” trend. Once, was able to get that out of me he guilt tripped and talked about how much better a full academic schedule would look to colleges. His carrot and the stick approach got me not only to take a math course but, sign up for the one he was teaching that year.
Passion Blog Ideas
For my blog I would like to do a sports blog or a Movie Review blog. However, I really have my mind set on doing the sports one. I will be open to talking about all sports in my blog however it will mainly have a focus on basketball, football, and ultimate. I will talk about both games and off the field discussion topics. Such as what is the best format for the NCAA college football playoff.
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