Unfortunatley Hard Times Happen

Never give up. There are always tough times, regardless of what you do in anything in life. Be able to push through those times and maintain your ultimate goal.

-Nathen Chen 

                 Everyone goes through a hard time. One of my hard times was when I lost the baseball tournament. When we lost, I was disappointed, sad and mad. I wanted to win so bad, it I guess that is just how life goes sometimes. After 7 long innings our tournament is done, our entire team is tiered and sad. After two long days of baseball and many games, we had only won two games. Everyone is sad and disappointed about our performance. I was mad, I dedicated my entire weekend just to be last in the tournament. I was mad and sad about how it went. I didn’t want to talk about it or anything related to it. As I look back on this experience, I was glad I went to this tournament. It thought me how to not get into my own head and also not to quit. At some points when we were down by 10 in the second inning, yes i did not want to continue playing but I knew I had to, I couldn’t let my teammates down no matter what. All of us followed through and kept on fighting, even when we were down by 10. We didn’t stop because we were down, we all knew that we had to keep on fighting. Also I am glad we won a few games because if we had not, then I would have been even more mad. The one positive thing about having a hard time, is that you can learn something from it. 

A Place Like no Other 
“When you go all over the world for work, your dream vacation is your bedroom.”

-Jack Antonoff

            Everyone has a place where they feel safe. That place for me is my room.My room is super special to me because I spend so much of my time there. I sleep their and just hang around in my room. As I return from Maine as summer is practically done, we pull into our drive way. It has only been two months since I was here but it felt like forever. My whole family is happy to be home but sad as summer is coming to an end. As I start to see more and more of our house, my whole family is excited to be back home. As we come to a stop, I jump out of my seat in the back, cut off Buck and run inside. Immediately running up to my room and jump into my bed. Then I get up and look around, it felt like I haven’t been in their for over a year. As I look around some more, I think, this is a special place. The more you think about it, the more you realize how much time you spend in your room. I sleep their all night, do homework and just relax on the weekends. My room is a place that I know where everything is, and why it’s their. Although I do lose somethings in my room, they always turn up. I love my room, and could not think of a better place to do most of my stuff in. A place doesn’t have to be a huge mansion that you go to in the summer, it can be as small as sitting on porch, late at night

Everyone Has Something They Like To Do 

Follow your passion, be prepared to work hard and sacrifice, and, above all, don't let anyone limit your dreams.
-Donovan Bailey 

    There’s one thing you can’t teach, and that’s passion. I have been playing baseball for my entire life and I love it. I have dedicated countless hours into perfecting my swing, and work on my fielding. Two outs, it’s the bottom of the ninth, man on third. As I preparer to hit the ball, I know I need to get a hit. I step into the batters box, tap the middle of the plate twice with the tip of the bat, do a half swing and then stare down the pitcher.  As the first pitch comes in, my eyes lock onto the ball as a pull my bat towards the ball with all my strength left and then I hear a loud crack, I see the ball make contact I start sprinting as fast as I can. As I look to see where my hit went, I see it fly over the short-stops head. As my cleat touches the white bag I was so relived, I was super nervous.  Then as I look the man on third scores. As I think, this is something I love to do. I have been playing baseball for my entire life and it is my favorite sport. Any time I can I like to play catch with the baseball and just swing the bat. Sometimes I even just wear my glove around the house. Baseball is a weird sport because there is a lot of mistakes, but you just have to forget about it and move on. Baseball is by far my favorite sport, and I love playing and practicing it.

Power of Family

The most important thing in the world is family and love.
- John Wooden  

Without family, there will be no one that loves you no matter what.   My Family has helped me through hard times, and shaped me into who I am. When I was sad or need someone to talk it out with, my family was always there for me. If I was ever down, I knew my family could help me, if I am having a bad day, just being with my  family makes it better. As Buck and Dad my dad are climbing up the mount Katadin, I was struggling. I thought I could not make it up the hill. My Dad and Buck pushed me through the hike. They started to change the subject about all of the bad of the hike. This helped change my view of the hike and made it much more enjoyable for me and my family. They didn’t care that I was not being the nicest to them, they still tried to help me and make my trip better. They wanted my trip to be better and not there’s. That is what family is all about. They help you through things even if it effects them more that it does you. Family is a special thing where you can be mean to them, and they will still care about you. But you only have one family, so you have to treat them well. 

Ryan Lewis
Literarily Reflection
Fitz 9th Grade Class

Learning How to Survive
Buck’s Journey Survival In The Wilderness

“Survival was my only hope, success my only revenge.”

Patricia Cornwell

Its a cold winter afternoon, the winds howling at 20 miles per hour. Bucks body is freezing and he can barley feel his paws crushing against the snow and ice trails. Over the last few days Buck has been traveling nonstop through Alaska. But Buck was not always a sled dog or even a wilderness dog like he is now. Before he was just a normal dog, He would get fed at ton of food and he would sleep all day. This all changed once he got kidnapped and was sent to Alaska.

A Nightmare for Teenagers 

“Yo yo yo squad up in ten”

“Bet let me hop on, I’m bout to cook you”

“Ha funny”

“Yo we have a problem”

“What”

“Fortnite isn’t working”

“Oh shoot it doesn’t work for me either, the servers are probably down”

“Wait noo, google isn’t working either”

“What is HAPPENING?

“I don’t know bro, but this is not good”

“How are we gonna survive without internet”

“Hunny the internet stopped working again”

“Ah I’ll get on it. Stupid WiFi, never wants to work”

“ um dear I think there’s something wrong with the internet. I’ve tried everything but nothing is working”

“ aw shucks, looks like we’ll be having to live old school for a while”

“Bro what are we gonna do with no internet”

“We could go outside and play football or basketball”

“Ya but I would rather play fortnite”

“Imagine how fenn will handle this, we could barely survive a half day imagine a whole one”

“They might have to cancel school”

“Big facts”

“Alright let’s play catch I’m bored”

“Ok pass”

“ oh my god no hands”

“Shut up buddy that was a horrible throw”

“You know what this isn’t fun, I NEEED MY PHONE”. NOW. Let’s go inside it’s getting dark anyways”

“I know right I wonder how the old people survived without internet”

“ lol im pretty sure they used birds, typewriters, and pens with feathers on them”

“ lol wait since we don’t have any internet does that mean we are gonna be living in the dark and have to use candles”

“I don’t know bro but lately I’ve been having dreams about ghost coming into my room while I’m sleeping and if there’s no power, Tonight is not gonna be a good scene.”

“Ha bummer, your a 14 year old who still has nightmares about ghost, what a nerd”

“Shut up”, they don’t always happen just sometimes”

“Bro I’m tired let’s go to bed”

“ agreed, this day has been crazy, when the internet comes back, we’ll look back to this day and think about the things we did and how miserable we were”

“ ya lol, “Living old school”

“ I like that, that would be a great title to a story”

“Funny”

Family and Friends  

You don't choose your family. They are God's gift to you, as you are to them.

-Desmond TuTu

It was a blistering hot Monday afternoon in Booth Bay Harbor, I was standing on the dock looking into the beautiful blue ocean debating whether to jump in. As I finally make my decision to jump in, i just go for it, I leap into the air. I can practically feel how cold the water will be. As I feel the cold water, As fast as I can I swim towards the diving dock, but by the time I get there I am not cold anymore. As I jump and splash around in the water, I think this is what summer is all about: it is about having fun with your family and friends.

Speeding Down Snow 

 _{”Ski Good or Eat Wood”}

-Unknown 

The winds howling all over, the snow is falling down as you and your friends rush as fast as you can down the cold mountain. Skiing las such a great experience that I am lucky to do it so often. Skiing is one of those experiences that you won’t forget. The fist time you made it down a trail or the first time going of a ski lift. It is a skill that i will use in all of my life. I hope to ski a lot in my future because I love to ski and I hope don’t stop anytime soon. 

Camp Belknap 

How One Class Bonded Over a Trip 

“The bond that links your true family is not one of blood, but of respect and joy in each other's life.”

-Richard Bach 

As we pulled into the misty, gravel road, we all knew what was going to happen at camp Belknap. The entire ninth grade knew that there was going to be swimming, playing games and just having fun, but what we didn’t know was what our class would take out of this experience.  We all heard from past grades that your entire class would bond over this trip. Going into this I didn’t really believe them. Now after the trip I can say that is was wrong. Our entire class bonded a ton and everyone had a bunch of fun. 

When we first got to Camp Belknap, one of the first games we played was Bezou Ball. I felt like everyone liked playing this game. When the counselors were explaining the rules, rule number one was that when you get tagged by the opposing team, you can’t run anymore you just have to pass it. You also can’t shoot when you are tagged. The last rule is that you can’t go inside the goalie box. If you go into the goal box it would be a penalty. But when he was say the rules he said one thing, he said that really resonated with me is that he said, “The team that wins the most, will be the team that has the best teamwork.” At first everyone just blew that off and just wanted to play. When our team played first, we just passed when we had too. We didn’t pass if we weren’t tagged. We were just about ourselves scoring and not the team. But at the beginning it was really hard to score because we weren’t really passing. It took a while for team to score a lucky goal and to finally switch. After a lot of people were running into the crease (including me) we decided that if we had people standing around the crease we could pass it to them and they could shoot and not go into the crease because they have no momentum. We all thought Timmy would be the perfect fit because he can’t run due to his knee. So what we did was we ran all the way down the the other goal and passed it to Timmy. Timmy would usually score because at first they didn’t guard him. After Timmy scored about four times, they started to guard him which opened it up for other people. Like our team other teams started to make their own plans. One team had three or four people standing around the crease. After this our team all walked back to the cabin together and just talked for a while about this game. We all had fun playing with each other and all bonded over this experiance. 

During free time I personally would go play basketball, swim or play ping pong.  At all these activities there would be a bunch of different people. I would get to talk with them and have fun with them during these activities. Although no one just wen to one thing, it was cool to see people doing different things. During these activities we would usually be playing a game like 5v5 in basketball or 2v2 in ping pong, or even just seeing who can jump the highest off the diving board. Playing all these games made our class closer and made us just have a ton of fun at camp Belknap. 

My last class bonding idea was the bus ride.  You could obviously tell which one was the one coming back and which one was the one going there. One was very energetic and one has time people were sleeping. The bus ride was a great class bonding time because we would all just talk as a class. On both ways people were playing music and people were recommending songs, people were talking about trades that they would do in Fantasy football and I think it was a great class experience just have some chill time together as a class. Our class really benefited from the bus ride. 

This trip really helped bring our class together. I personally can say that I have made many new friends from this trip and also had a ton of fun with my old friends. I had fun playing games and doing activity’s with our class. I think because some kids lost there good friends it made them talk to new reach out to others and make new friends which made our class really made our class one group. This trip I think was very beneficial to our class. At first people just played with there old friends and didn’t really open up to others. But at the end of the trip people were playing with everyone no matter who it was. I think I personally learned a lot but I also think our entire class learned a lot too. 

Slice of Life 

Recces Basketball 

“The most important measure of how good a game I played was how much better I’d made my teammates play”

– Bill Russell 

Recess basketball at Fenn is not like any other basketball being played. In recess basketball there is no fouls, but you can’t just blatantly foul. No keeps track of there points or how many shots they missed. Most of the time people can one on ones to try and cross someone on the other team . Some times the game can have almost ten people on a team and sometimes there can be two on a team. It all varies because not everyone comes every recess. As the more gym basketball I have played I have found that the more people there is the rougher it gets because everyone wants the ball. Also sometimes we have long recess and the game goes for so long.

One of my favorite parts of recess basketball is definitely when we have a long recess. When we have long recess it is so much fun to play basketball because the game can actually go for a long time. One of my favorite moments in recess basketball was when one time a made five threes in a row. I was just feeling my three ball that game. That was on of my favorite moments because on a normal day I might not even make one. Also making five in a row is a lot.

As I look over my recess basketball memories I think that one I leave Fenn that will be something I will miss. It may be a small thing but know I have to think of doing something different during my recess in my further years. I will miss the people I play recess basketball with, I will miss having no fouls, I will miss just playing recess basketball. I love playing it and hope I will keep on playing it as much as I can.