Freshman Year

Hey guys! It's been a weird year for me. You all saw my growth from the beginning of the year to the end. If you remember, I started this blog as a school assignment. For my last blog assignment I am supposed to talk about my experience and growth through blogging so here we go.

image courtesy of A Boundless World

Where was I when I started my journey? I was literally no one. No one knew who I was or where I came from except for my ski team. It was weird to have such a small group of friends for me but it is where it is. I also was six months post op of my first ACL reconstruction and I had just started working out with my team again. I had a new coaching staff that I needed to get to know and I moved up a year in skiing. Overall it was a pretty rough start to the beginning of the year.

But that start pretty much resembled the entire year. So the question is, how did blogging help me grow? Well, I guess you can say blogging made me more mature. If you look at my posts from the beginning to the end, my topics have changed so much. I went from blogging about Halloween to blogging about staying positive after injury. Documenting my writing progress has really helped me to see just how much an individual grows in a year. In a way blogging has also helped me cope with tearing my ACL a second time. It may seem like the only thing I talk about here but shoutout to those other four kids on my team that just went through the same thing. It's a hard process that you have to deal with and this blog has helped me to stay motivated and get out of my previous lazy patterns. It's helped me come to where I am now.

Now I have a workout group that I started between five other girls and I all with the same injury. We go to the gym together to stay motivated and work through the difficulties of injury. I've been more responsible for myself and my actions, for example documenting everything active I do in a day so that if I start to have pain anywhere in my body my coaches and I can pin point exactly what caused it. I've taken my first AP exam and maintained good grades throughout the school year. I've been voted the sophomore representative, branching out and making more friends and acquaintances, And finally I've grown as a person throughout my experience. It might even be hard to say goodbye to blogging.

I would encourage anyone reading this to try blogging. Here's an article about how it can help grow your business for any of you older people. This whole journey started as an assignment and now here I am at the end of it. I don't know if I will continue blogging or not but if I do I'll keep you all posted. It's been a great experience and I hope all of you readers enjoyed watching my first year of high school. So I guess this is goodbye for now! Maybe I'll see you soon!

Student Council

Hey Guys! So I recently decided to run for the Student Council elections this week! I am running to become the Sophomore Representative! I thought that I would tell you how I'm running my campaign and ways that may help you win if you are ever interested in running for Student Council! Let's get started.

The first thing you should do is make posters. It is important to show the students who you are and making posters can help you with that. I wrote pretty much the same thing on every poster so that everyone knew that I was the same person which leads to my first tip: do not create posters that look too different and unrecognizable from each other.

the picture I used on my campaign posters

If your posters don't look similar in anyway other than having your first name on them it may be hard for students to realize you are the same person. Also, make sure to hang your posters in the most frequently visited parts of your school to ensure that the majority of your class or your voters see your poster. For my school this means that the candidates for Student Body Vice President have two schools to cover because the ninth grade is at a different school. This leads to my next tip.

MAKE SURE TO GET TO SCHOOL EARLY ON THE DAY YOU ARE ALLOWED TO START CAMPAIGNING. This is especially important in Park City because there are so many different sections of the school to cover in such a little amount of time. I would say to try and hit the main traffic ways of your school first and to have friends help you hang posters in different areas as well. This will ensure that you get prime space in all areas of the school and not just on one wall. However, the most important part of your campaign is your video.

Your video should be your number one priority after your posters. Although some schools don't allow videos most do and many videos are the reason candidates are elected into their positions. Even though it is kind of sad, most high school elections are still popularity contests and having a funny video is an essential part to a winning campaign. And again this leads me to my next tip, don't make your speech too long.

If your speech is long and boring people won't vote for you. Try to throw in some puns and hold your audience's attention. If you make them remember you they will most likely forget about the other candidates and vote for you as they remember you the most. If you want more information on how to write a good speech and presenting it click here.

Be clever and have fun with your campaign! Most schools also have positions you can apply for so don't worry if you don't win! I would still encourage you to make the most out of a Student Council experience because it can be a really good opportunity and a fun time! Hopefully you all enjoyed that post! See you soon!

Update 5/5/16: I won the election! Thanks to all the students at TMJH who voted for me and congratulations to Matthew who was elected as well! Good job to everyone who participated I encourage all of you to apply for positions! I look forward to working with all of you next year!