College essay topic

Carnegie Melon:
Choose a signifigant event in your life that had a large impact on you, wheter good or bad. How has this event changed you, taught you, or made you a better person, and what have you learned about yourself?

Links to colleges:

United States Air Force Academy: http://www.usafa.org/

The Citadel: http://www.citadel.edu/main/

West Point Academy: http://www.usma.edu/

Virginia Tech: http://www.vt.edu/

Coming of Age poster

Coming of age

Coming of Age

The OIA judo state championship was held at Leileihua last year.  As long as I placed sixth in this competition I would be qualified for states.  So far, I had made it to the finals match.  I was in the warm up room getting ready for this very important match.  I was visualizing all my techniques in my head, replaying them over and over just like you would with a DVD player.  As I visualized them I was doing repetitions of the techniques.  I felt focused, like a lion getting ready to strike his pray.  All the cheering, yelling, and distractions around me were muted.  I heard one of the staff call "Bryson Castro". Finally, I was called to step on to the mat to face my opponent.  I was ready.

As I walked on to the mat, I felt like a there dog was in my stomach pawing and playing with my insides, but when I looked into the crowd and saw my family and team, the dog decided to sit.  I took a bow on the mat and faced my opponent.  I remember thinking, I worked hard to get here, and I can do this.  I bowed to my opponent and the referee said the word that started the match, “Hajime!”

The whole match was a blur.  In the beginning my head was spinning like a carousel going at a hundred miles per hour, but I grabbed a hold of the reigns pretty quickly and was in control of the match.  Soon my adrenaline started to kick in and I could feel my techniques start to activate like a program in a robot.  My body did exactly as I told it and I was dominating the whole time, but just two minutes in the round the referee said the word “Mate” and the matched stopped.  He then called for his two fellow referees and they started talking together privately.  As I waited I stared at my opponent, waiting to get the match started again.  The two referees went back to their seats and the head referee pointed his hand at me and said the word every judoka never wants to hear, “Hansokomake”.   As soon as I heard that word I thought I was dreaming.  It had meant I had been disqualified.

At first I was confused and wondered what I had done wrong.  I looked at my coach for help, but he had no idea what had happened either.  So I took a bow off the mat and accepted my fate of defeat.  I felt as if I had made a bridge with my bare hands, and a huge wave just came and swept it all away.  As soon as I walked toward my coach I fought really hard to hold back my disappointment, anger, and most of all tears, but as soon as I reached the dam which held back the river in my eyes burst.  My coach told me to stop and looked at me.  He told me “I am proud of how I performed out there; you dominated most of the match.” As I listened to his words it went through me like a ghost.  I still felt like I had hit the lowest part of the sea floor.  He told me to go find my parents, and he was going to go find out what had happened.

I looked into the bleachers filled with a lot of people, and spotted my parents seated at the top row.  As I walked up to them I was surprised to hear congratulations and smiles from them.  Even though I lost they were proud of me because they knew that I had worked hard to get to that point.  To see my dad, my mom, and my younger siblings smile and be proud of me made me feel a little better.  In my head, I still felt like a lost.  I kept thinking, “I will know whether or not I really beat my opponent, or if he really would have won.”  I sat with my parents for about thirty minutes, when my coach asked me if I had a recording of the match, which my dad had.  Coach told me that they had disqualified me for unsportsmanlike conduct; the referees claimed that I had pushed my opponent into the mat.  As I walked down with my coach to the referee’s room I got words of sincere congratulations and phrases like “you would have beat him Castro” or “you will always get him next time” all of my teammates.  When my dad and coach went into the referee’s room I waited just outside of the door.  As I waited I thought of all the support I got from everyone on the judo team.  They had all sincerely felt I would have won.  As I thought about it more I felt more positive and didn’t take my loss as a loss.  I felt like I gained and won the care and respect from my team mates.  When my dad and coach came out of the room I knew that they had not lift the disqualification and I would not be able to compete in states.  I felt crushed, but I had gained more that I lost.  I gained friend and respect.

Before I close, I want my readers to know that I had not pushed my opponent into the mat.  Everyone watched the video and I had pulled upwards, even the referee changed his accusation of pushing to pulling away violently, but watching the video is not how I became of age.  I grew up in many ways after that competition.  I had learned that even though I lost something that was important to me, there are people out there who are there to comfort me.  I also learned that even thought I worked hard to get to the OIAs, and got disqualified, people didn’t care whether or not I won or lost, it was about how much effort I put into the competition because they had seen me work hard the whole year with them.  As much as I worked hard I would not have been able to do it without my teammates and on top of that my family.

tourist attractions

Tourist should be responsible when visiting local attractions. For example, when visiting a blowhole in hawaii tourist should know that it is unsafe to straddle it  because it will lead to potential inujuries.  Tourist should also be prepared when going to attractions that are not approved by the state.  If they are going on a hike they should bring rope and probably a guide.  They should also read the warning signs and be aware of dangerous sites.  Just because there are no signs that are visible doesn't mean there aren't any.  Tourist, even locals, should go out to research the attraction and be aware of the warning signs.

Blog revision

This year, to change my header I created it to be a timeline on how, not only me, but my generation has matured and is coming of age through tv shows.  It starts off with the television elmo and ends with the ufc series because we went from watching educational kids shows to violent and mature adult shows.  My previous header ws Words: past, present, future..., but this year i hope that my title,"you can grow up to a certain limit, but with your mind you set your own limit", fits with this years theme which is coming of age.  It means that no matter how old you get, you continue to grow spiritually, mentally, emotionally, and maturely.  Hopefully my header shows my skill in photoshop.  I used the basic tools like cropping, magic wand, painbucket, and used layers.  It may not be as nice as some of the other blog headers, but I did it with what knowledge I had from last year, which shows I have alot to catch up on.  I archived my blog based on their assignment.  I also have separate the assignments I will have this year to the assignments I had last year.  For example, we had three post on the roots and recipes, so I put I named the category Roots and Recipes.  There is also a misc folder for all the assignments I did not complete or for assignments that only had one of a kind, such as my OR card.  Both the misc folder, roots and recipes and other folders pertaining to last year will be under the label Freshmen year '10 - '11.  For this years assignments I created a label called Sophmore year '11-'12.