(10.13.16) UNIT 2: Draft + Final Draft + Reflection

Draft

Being a student is not as simple and as fun as some people may think. There’s always a never-ending pile of homework that must be dealt with every night, and arduous athletic training that must be taken on a constant basis as well. There are some discourses between full time student communities versus student athletic communities, because of their different priorities. I remember struggling throughout high school because juggling my exams with my tournaments wasn’t as easy thing. I traveled throughout different states, and skipped several days of school here and there, just so I can attend my tournaments. I always came home at around 10 in the late evening from practice, and then that’s when I had to start on my schoolwork. There were days when I would come home extra late because I had additional training sessions with my team.

But even though I had to sacrifice so many tears, so many sleepless nights, and so many hours of my days, I was never able to give up on either of these communities. Both of them represented who I was as a whole. My academics were to bolster me in achieving my goal of receiving a degree in Health and Exercise Science to become a sports psychologist. My passion for archery motivated me to earn the highest ranks as possible. I knew they were not easy tasks to accomplish, but both were goals that I wanted to achieve in the long run.


Final Draft
Being a student athlete is not as simple and as fun as some people may think. There’s always a never-ending pile of homework that must be dealt with every night, and arduous athletic training that must be taken on a constant basis as well. There are some discourses between full time student communities versus student athletic communities, because of their different priorities. I remember struggling throughout high school because juggling my exams with my tournaments wasn’t as easy thing. I traveled throughout different states, and skipped several days of school here and there, just so I can attend my tournaments. I always came home at around 10 in the late evening from practice, and then that’s when I had to start on my schoolwork. There were days when I would come home extra late because I had additional training sessions with my team.

But even though I had to sacrifice so many tears, so many sleepless nights, and even a previous musical talent of mine, I was never able to give up on either of these two communities. Both of them represented who I was as a whole. My academics were to bolster me in achieving my goal of receiving a degree in Health and Exercise Science to become a sports psychologist. My passion for archery motivated me to earn the highest ranks as possible. I knew they were not easy tasks to accomplish, but both were goals that I wanted to achieve in the long run. There were always tension in between these two groups. As previously mentioned, archery took a lot of my time. For some reason, my testing schedule for finals were always a weekend or two after one of my tournaments. This brought over so many much conflicts for me because it would make me doubt myself in even participating in the tournament; I didn’t want to end up overloading myself with pounds of stress on my shoulders and fail miserably in both my exams and tournaments. Time management eventually became probably the biggest challenge for me as a high school student. As I slowly adjusted to all the workload that was upon me, I resolved this by studying wherever I can, whether it be in the hour long car drive to practice, or a road/plane ride trip to competitions. Moreover, I was also an active choir student throughout my years in high school. My archery training days would sometimes conflict with my choir performance nights, and so I had to sacrifice one for the other. As much as I wanted to, I couldn’t attend both events when they occurred at once.

My team was invited to train with South Korea’s Seoul National Sport University’s archery team. We vigorously trained six hours with them to prepare for an international tournament there.

Tension isn’t necessarily always going to be between two people. As you can see, it can be between two whole groups. These tensions will, unfortunately, always require some sort of sacrifice. At one point, I actually had to let go of one of these communities - not because I wanted to, but because I physically wasn’t able to do both:

In April by the end of my spring break, I was to decide which university to attend after I graduated out of my high school. I was very conflicted between a variety of schools: going out of state to either Texas A&M or Syracuse University, or staying in my home state by attending either University of Pacific or one of the top UC schools. Each school had its own pros and cons, but my main dilemma was regarding whether the school had an archery team or not. The amount of financial aid I was to receive was of course an issue too, but I viewed my archery much more highly than anything else. I wanted to attend Syracuse University, but I knew for a fact that there wasn’t an archery club or team. In the end, however, I ended up on taking up a big risk by attending Syracuse. My family and friends knew by heart that meant the ending of my archery career, but I felt that maybe it could be the possibility of something new as well.