UPSB v3
General Discussion / Penspinning Essay
-
Date: Tue, Sep 16 2008 07:14:21
this is a high school essay written midnight the day it was due. I know it sucks. It's kind of retarded, but yea
prompt: Life Changing Event
Manipulation Complex
Life changing moments can happen in an instant. Some people become paralyzed throwing themselves in front of moving car to save another’s life. Some people fall into comas after stepping in front of the gun of a mugger. Then there are those who tear their knee sidestepping in a casual game of family basketball while the ball isn’t in play. Though, while saving pedestrians and friends has its moral perks, tearing one’s knee is not without optimism.
It started on that fateful Friday. I remember vividly finishing tennis practice, and my cousin calling me to come play basketball with my other cousin and him. So they picked me up and we went to the park. We played on an indoor court, something I had never done before, and I figured it must be safer inside. It was the first run, and my team scored. As I retreated for the second run, I noticed my cousin’s friend Ken unguarded on the right. I side-skipped towards him and suddenly tripped over my cousin Sovuthy’s foot. My body wrenched over sideways with my feet stubbornly still trying to skip, and I fell to the ground. Feeling fine at first, I realized I had a strange feel in my right knee, and tried to extend it. A sharp pain shot up my leg and I writhed in pain. Two weeks, one x-ray, three doctor visits, and two MRIs later, I found out I had a torn meniscus that caught inside my knee joint. In light of the painful and crippling events, I was surprisingly content with my crutches and one leg. The true shock of what was happening to me hit me on Monday though, when Craig approached me during school and say, “Oh man, dude, how’re you gonna make the tennis tryouts now?†The tennis tryouts were on Monday, three days after my accident. I had been training for two years to make the tennis team, and now I couldn’t try out.
Life on crutches was hard, as I soon found out. Walking around on my hands took out a lot of my energy, and I had to take breaks very often. I couldn’t skateboard, play tennis, or take pictures for the newspaper anymore. I found myself with nothing left to do and nothing left to aspire to. As I searched the internet in boredom, I came across and interesting concept: manipulations. So, again in my boredom, I set off on my random quests of uselessness. First, I learned how to solve a Rubik’s Cube. The process was surprisingly simple, yet seemed to amaze everyone. Of course, solving a cube and shuffling it repeatedly lost its fun after awhile, so I looked for new things to do. As I learned magic tricks, card flourishes, dice stacking, glowsticking, pen tapping, and contact juggling, the measures with which to amaze people seemed endless. Finally, I hit my holy grail: penspinning.
Penspinning is exactly as it sounds, and it was exactly what I was looking for to fill the void in my life which my knee had left me. It was fun and flashy, and it allowed for my own personal creativity to be added to it. It was the simple act of spinning a pen that never ceased to amaze people, and never ceased to be entertaining for me. Through the penspinning community I was able to meet and interact with others from all over world, including Japan and France, in a friendly environment where everyone got along due to one common thing. And no matter how seemingly unimportant and trivial it may seem to the public, it means so much more to me than most people will ever know.
So while tripping in an inactive basketball game isn’t as glorifying as dying in combat, it isn’t as bad as it seems. In fact, I often think that had I the opportunity, I wouldn’t change the way things happened. The accident opened my eyes to the world in a new way, and I plan to keep them that way.
i recently got kicked to a lower program, and so this retarded essay would kinda be like amazing for them
she was amazed i knew what parallel structure, subject verb agreement, and prepositional phrases were -
Date: Tue, Sep 16 2008 07:27:15
This essay is written in a very informal tone. I'm not used to reading those kinds of articles, especially if the aim of the article is to introduce something new to the reader. There was tons of random stuff thrown in the paragraphs that will overwhelm the reader. The mentioning of all these other manipulations will have the reader go "okay, so there's these manipulations... What about them?" Overall, there's way too many sentences that simply assume the reader knows what the writer is thinking. You usually want to avoid this kind of writing attitude, especially in school essays.
As for the actual pen spinning mentions, it was very short. But at least now I know that you enjoy the social aspects of the community. woot.
Keep writing.
-
Date: Tue, Sep 16 2008 07:44:00
neat essay.
u play tennis? never knew.
it was pretty refreshing given that it was my first time seeing penspinning written in an essay -
Date: Wed, Sep 17 2008 00:34:33QUOTE (Shadowserpant @ Sep 16 2008, 12:14 AM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>i recently got kicked to a lower program, and so this retarded essay would kinda be like amazing for them
she was amazed i knew what parallel structure, subject verb agreement, and prepositional phrases were
Wtf kind of program is suprised at that? -
Date: Wed, Sep 17 2008 00:51:55QUOTE (sangara @ Sep 16 2008, 05:34 PM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>Wtf kind of program is suprised at that?
It isn't that bad... -
Date: Wed, Sep 17 2008 00:52:58
its pretty good essay!
-
Date: Wed, Sep 17 2008 01:12:50QUOTE (Eso @ Sep 16 2008, 12:27 AM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>This essay is written in a very informal tone. I'm not used to reading those kinds of articles, especially if the aim of the article is to introduce something new to the reader. There was tons of random stuff thrown in the paragraphs that will overwhelm the reader. The mentioning of all these other manipulations will have the reader go "okay, so there's these manipulations... What about them?" Overall, there's way too many sentences that simply assume the reader knows what the writer is thinking. You usually want to avoid this kind of writing attitude, especially in school essays.
As for the actual pen spinning mentions, it was very short. But at least now I know that you enjoy the social aspects of the community. woot.
Keep writing.
im not used to writing essay's in first person, like i was supposed to, so i kind of winged it. I turned it in today and the teacher read mines and, what do you know, was amazed by it. Im aware that this essay sucks, but thank you for your feedbackQUOTE (sangara @ Sep 16 2008, 05:34 PM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>Wtf kind of program is suprised at that?QUOTE (Missle_Z @ Sep 16 2008, 05:51 PM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>It isn't that bad...
yes. it is.
I was in the 2nd best program of the school sophmore year, and was kicked down to the third this year... and it is rediculous.