Tom Murdough

11/21/19

English 9

Ms. Wade

                                      Fight, or flight

                  It was a normal day at the Lincoln public school. I had a good day of school, a  delicious, and nutritious lunch of Hawaiian pizza, and chocolate chip cookies, and it was a Friday. It couldn’t get much better for me. After school finished, I met all my friends at the field and we played our usual game of touch football on the field outside the school. We always made the same teams, my friends and I, against the fifth graders who were a year older than us at the time. We started with the ball and my friend scored on a run play because a fifth grader slipped on the mud while he was trying to two hand touch him. My friend thought he juked the fifth grader out of his shoes and ran backwards while pointing at him all the way down the field. The fifth grader took offense to this and immediately sprinted up to my friend and punched him in the face. He fell flat on his back and the fifth grader kicked him and jumped on him. My friends followed, and started a “mini-brawl” of sorts. They were throwing punches at this one kid that got up and punched my good friend in the face. I had never seen, or been a part of a fight, so I didn’t know how to react. My instinct was to go fight the fifth grader for my friend, but there were teachers and parents in the area. At first, I was a bystander, until the next play when the same fifth grader blindsided me and knocked me to the ground. I had reached my break in point. I got up immediately and got into a “fight” with the fifth grader. My friends were at the scene of the fight immediately and came to my aid. I punched, kicked, tackled, and almost brawled with the kid. From where the parents were sitting, it looked like we were just “play fighting.” They thought it was no big deal until the fifth grader went to the parents with a bloody nose and snitched on me. He portrayed what I did to what Myles Garrett did to Mason Rudolph. My parents were very unhappy with me, and I was banned from pick up football which is pretty hard to do. In this moment, I was defending myself, and my friends, but I really should have kept my cool and stayed out of it.

Tom Murdough

11/5/19

Ms. Wade

English 9

                My biggest “fatal” flaw is having the wrong emotion
or feeling in the wrong moment. This mainly takes place on the football field. I find that this has always been an issue for me. An example of this may be on the football field. Our team was recently playing our best defense of the year against Fay. We had held them to two first downs the entire game and we were on fire. It was a fourth and fifteen or so from our 45 yard line. Expecting a deep pass, I dropped into zone coverage and shadowed their primary target. Then they did the unexpected. They ran a reverse to the opposite side of the field that I was on. All of a sudden, I became a spectator. I didn’t go for the player, I just slowly jogged after him. That was the play that lost us the game. If I had given extra effort and sprinted down to catch him, it could have been a new game. This “fatal” flaw goes both ways for me. In practice recently, coach called a jet sweep to our X(Wide Receiver). At the time, I was beyond frustrated because the plays were not designed for me to get the ball. I unleashed my anger with a blindside block on a teammate that knocked him down and sent him to the trainer. It was practice, and we weren’t even going full speed. Thankfully, my teammate was alright, but it could have been much worse, as he could have missed our last game of the season due to my recklessness. At times when I need to be aggressive, I become passive. At times when I need to relax and just “chill out”, I become aggressive. I need to be more disciplined during walkthroughs in practice, and I need to be more free and wild at times when that is necessary.

Tom Murdough

Ms. Wade

English 9

10/20/19

                     Adam Aronovitz Reflection. The similarities from the activity and the Odyssey.

                  This past Friday, Adam Aronovitz from Global Routes came to Fenn and spoke to our grade as a whole. He didn’t speak to us for long, but he did give us an activity to participate in. In the activity, there were two separate countries with two separate characteristics, traits, and “personalities” of sorts. The first country in this activity was Maro. Maro is one of the more developed and wealthy countries in the world. The people of Maro are quite generous, and want to give some of their resources and money to the less fortunate. The other country in the activity is Minia. Minia is a less fortunate and impoverished country with less resources and money.

                   One theme or characteristic from the Odyssey that was shown by the Minians was Hubris. A few Maroans were generous enough to hop on a plane to Minia to help the Minians out. The Maroans went to Minia to give them resources, food, money for buildings, housing, education and supplies for harvesting and farming. When the Maroans arrived to the Minian village, they were not greeted by anybody, given directions on where to go, and shown zero hospitality or warmth. They were not welcome in Minia, that was for sure. We offered them help building huts and sculptures in their village and they wouldn’t even talk to the Maroans that gave up their own time to help the Minians. The Minians were stubborn, arrogant, and had huge egos. They did not want our help and showed significant hubris throughout the activity.

                  Similar to what I stated in the first paragraph, hubris was one of the main characteristics of the Minians. The Minians showed us the opposite of hospitality. A great example of being shown, is the them not welcoming us to their country, and almost ignoring us as a whole. The Maroans went to Minia to help them, and were completely shut out by a bunch of people that thought they were the best and didn’t need any help. They continuously denied our help in building a sculpture in the center of their village. They did not have any resources to build the sculpture. In addition to this, they did not have enough people to build the sculpture. We offered them help in building the sculpture, help with money, and resources for the sculpture. All they said was, “we don’t need you”, or didn’t respond to the Maroans at all.

               The Minians showed arrogance, unfriendliness, hubris, and zero hospitality to the Maroans who came in peace and only wanted to help them out of the poverty they are dealing with right now.

”Freedom is nothing but a chance to get better”-Albert Einstein

Tom Murdough

How could ninth grade be better?

10/9/19

English 9

                       Being with friends, and having fun with them is an essential part of boyhood. This year, as we move on to our High School days, means the end of our boyhood in a way. High School means more work, commitments, and less free time to hang out with friends, and free time in general. Personally, I feel that ninth grade at Fenn has helped make the transition from being a middle schooler with all the free time in the world, to a high schooler that struggles to find the time to eat a real dinner with his family.

At Fenn, we are given a good amount of free time, and a good amount of work. I think that it is the perfect balance. At least on the days when teachers don’t assign me three essays, six pages of math homework, and having to learn one hundred different Spanish verbs in one night. of the few critiques that I have, is the amount of study halls that we get. There are some days where I feel like I have a list of never ending assignments, and I am unable to get them done before I should be going to bed. A study hall on these days would be extremely beneficial to the quality of my work, the amount of sleep I get, and the amount of free time that I have. The more sleep I get, the fresher, more focused, relaxed, and less stressed I am the next day. We are given two thirty minute study halls each week. I believe that is not enough. It doesn’t even really make a difference unless I have a night of homework that will last thirty minutes, or if I have a test the next day. The study halls that we are given are almost pointless as they are only thirty minutes long twice a week. I think that something more like what the middle schoolers have is more reasonable. One hour every day, every day of the week. That is one of the few things that I would change about our ninth grade year.

The other thing that I would change about this year, is senior time and the amount of freedom that comes with it. This is not necessarily an issue, but it is something that would make our senior times more exciting. We are allowed to be in the gym lobby, the turf, the green, or the gym. Every once in a while, our grade is allowed to go over to the Boonisars house and play knee hockey, mini basketball, and drink sodas with friends for a limited period of time. I feel like a cool addition to senior time, would be for our grade to walk into town for an hour or so, and enjoy ourselves. We could get pizza and ice cream with friends, or just take a walk around town. This would be a lot of fun for our entire grade and I strongly believe that it is something that we should do in the future. Our grade should have more options, and more freedom at senior time.

Ninth grade is a great opportunity for us to bridge the gap in between our boyhood, and high school days. Most days, I feel like I’m in high school and I have to stay up until late. This is when a daily study hall would come in handy. As ninth graders we should be give some free time, and it should be well spent. This is how I would improve our ninth grade year at Fenn.