Junior year started off like any normal year. I had been playing volleyball all summer and had somehow made the team! You'd think this would be a good thing, but not necessarily. I was ensured, by the coach herself, that I hadn't made the team because of how good I was. She flat out told me I was originally going to be cut, but then she changed her mind and decided not to because I had "proved myself" to her somehow; she never told me what exactly inspired her to keep me, but if I could I would go back and NOT do whatever it was! Well, anyway the season started and I was the bench-warmer taking stats. It was a pretty good gig though, I didn't have to work exceptionally hard at anything, because I never got to play. That was until like half the team got hurt and little ole' me had to go be a star... that was literally shaking in her knee pads because she was so scared of making a mistake(mostly because my coach was really intimidating and let you know when she was mad)! I played to the best of my ability, trying to follow my coaches every demand while also trying not to do anything wrong. It was a really hard job, because it seemed that anything I did was wrong and I was constantly being belittled for it. (I do have to make the comment that my coach did not treat me as bad as another girl that quit playing because she was such a bitch!) I made the best of the season by making fun of her right under her nose, and just showing her how much fun I could have even with the shitty conditions I had to deal with! I continued on with the season and received my varsity letter, but I will not be trying-out this upcoming season.
To address the ACT. Or any horrible kind of standardized test you had to take your junior year in high school. IT DOESN'T DEFINE YOU. This isn't going to make or break your life plans. If you really are that upset with what you recieved, work/study harder and re-take the test, because colleges take your highest score, not the first one. When I got my results... I cried like a baby. I was an emotional wreck. I sometimes still get a little worked up, when I hear what other people got compared to me. It's a touchy subject when you are talking about how smart, or not so smart, someone is! No one ever really sits and talks about it, but it really does hurt our feelings when someone attacks our intelligence, and that's what standardized tests do, don't they? They're a measure of what you have or haven't learned through your years of schooling and how well you can recall the information at a flip of the hat, WITH a time limit! So don't feel bad it you didn't do well, because standardized test's don't tell you how good of a person you are, or if you are going to do well in life. The only purpose that they serve to society is that they are another way to sub-categorize us away from one another. I always have to come back to this statement about standardized tests, it isn't a measurement of how well you know the material it's to see how much you can memorize and then regurgitate for the test. So hold your head high and be glad that you got through it, because if you don't want to re take it, you don't have too!
To sum up what My junior year taught me, it would be that you can't base your self worth on what others might think of you. You also can't take care of yourself if you aren't doing things for yourself in the first place. Meaning, that if you aren't doing things that make you happy and make you feel like you are getting something out of life, then you need to take a step back and think about what you are doing and who you're doing them for. Because one thing is for sure, I wasn't playing volleyball for myself. I was playing volleyball for my friends, grandparents,and for college applications. I LOVE the sport of volleyball, but this past year I was not playing for my love of the sport. I was playing to be with my friends; I was playing to make my grandparents proud of me, and I was playing so that my college applications wouldn't be empty of extracurricular activities. In order for us to have a worthwhile life, we have to be able to have some things to hold up in the end and say, "I did that for me. I did that because I loved to do it, and if I could I'd do it again, and agian." At least that's what I hope to accomplish with my life.
Thanks for reading my ramblings,
xomeghan
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