9th August 2017

A life less ORDINARY

New Zealand Rowing Championships!!

Information

  • You will deliver your speech to an audience of your peers and your teacher(s). You
    will speak for at least six minutes.
  • You will be assessed on how you develop, structure, and sustain your ideas and how
    you use oral language features to demonstrate a sophisticated understanding of
    purpose and audience.
  • Reflect on what you have gained from these experiences, what skills you have
    learned, and what values or understandings you have developed that have shaped
    you as an individual and that you will take with you into the future. What makes a life
    less ordinary? What gives humans a sense of purpose and meaning?

Construction of speech

work out the main ideas of your speech and organize them so they are
structured and sequenced
• aim for an overall effect that is inspirational, striking, and integrated with the
purpose of your speech, for example, what ideas and details will you select from
your experiences to achieve the purpose of your speech? (see Resource A and
Resource B)
• at all times, consider your audience and use devices and signposts that will help
them engage with and follow your speech (see Resource C)
• identify oral language features that you can use to make your delivery more
effective and more enjoyable for the target audience (see Resource C)
• you will be more likely to command your audience’s attention if you speak
confidently and fluently – consider how you could use cue cards and/or
audiovisual aids to support the fluency of your delivery

  • You are writing as if you were explaining, telling or showing something to someone. It doesn’t have to be perfect sentences. We don’t talk like that.

Brain storm

 

 

Words

  • experiences that have shaped you
    as an individual.
  • gained from these experiences
  • “You will have failures in your life, but it is what you do during those valleys that will determine the heights of your peaks.”
  • The beauty is that through disappointment you can gain clarity, and with clarity comes conviction and true originality.”
  • Success is not like rain that falls from the sky equally upon everyone. Success is what you reap when you sow with passion and optimism
  • clear path to happiness
  • That’s what building a body of work is all about—it’s about the daily labor, the many individual acts, the choices large and small that add up over time, over a lifetime, to a lasting legacy.”
  • Failure is nothing but the first step to sucess
  • Key•  Leading•  Best•  Pioneering•  Primary•  Finest•  Dominant•  Passionate•  Easier•  Powerful
  •  Serious•  Triumphant•  Game-changing•  Best-ever•  Buzz•  Buzzy•  Fantastic•  Brilliant•  Stellar•
  • Transform

Lesson to be learned/ purpose of the speech

Push through the tough times and over come the fear of commitment and failure.

Speech

intro – about myself and what pushed me through the tough times

paragraph one –

paragraph two

paragraph three

summary

Introduction (tell them about yourself) –

” Remember why you started, don’t give up, find a way “

 

“It ain’t about how hard you hit, its about how hard you can get hit and keep moving forward. How much you can take and keep moving forward ” – Rocky

It was my last season, I had been in rowing for the past 2 years and I wanted to go out with a bang. New Zealand Nationals was a few months around the corner. We were reaching into peak season training. Hill sprints, 2km erg tests the lot, anything you can think of we did it. As much as my aching body screamed at me, I knew I couldn’t give up now, I had come so far, I couldn’t leave with out making a name for myself. To go through the all the blood, sweat and tears for what nothing? That was not an option. I had more to give, I was driven to become the best. I wanted to walk onto that podium so badly, standing along side my team and get my first medal.A thought I could never famine.

Rowing is unlike any other sport. It challenges you not only physically but mentally. It would tear you from the inside out if you let it. It is a very competitive sport, although we were competitive as a team we were competitive individual competitors against each other, every row determined out a position in the national boat, each one of us strived for perfection. To become the best you had to train like you were the best. We trained day and night, on average we trained 5 hours a day. Not to mention the number of hours we trained outside of the club. We woke up to rowing and fell asleep to the exhaustion from rowing. The weather did not determine whether we trained or not. We trained no matter what the circumstances were, whether it was a hot summers day or a cold stormy day.

My closest friend hated the number of hours I spent training. Every reply back to a missed call or text would be “sorry I missed your call or sorry I can’t make it, I had or have training”. Got to the point where I stopped talking about rowing to her and eventually separated myself from her because she would never let me forget how I was the friend who choose rowing over our friendship. I would think she would be proud of me and appreciate the dedication I devoted to rowing. Sad really, it was something I was passionate about and excited about, I wanted to share with her but she didn’t understand.

My mum was against rowing the moment I placed my foot into that boat. I was raised with strict parenting, mum taught me right from wrong. My mum was so focused on raising me into the perfect child, she forgot to build a relationship with me. She lost authority over me at a young age. I turned from being the responsible child to the rebellious devil. She had no involvement in rowing, which meant she had no control over me. I made rowing my life.

I literally kicked mum out of the picture and took life on my own back from the young age of 15 years old. Rowing wasn’t cheap and there was no way I was going to ask mum for help. So I got a job and worked as many hours as I could.  I would wake up and drive myself to Rowing. Buying a car diffidently contributed to me being more independent. In light of that, Rowing did give me the independence and responsibility I needed, it taught me the difference between being a weak or strong individual.

The normal every day for me involved waking up to an alarm at 5am in morning, drivng down to the rowing club. I might have had seen the odd car but there was hardly ever no one on the roads at that time. Get to club straight onto the water or erg. I always cut time fine but was hardly late.

Morning train, School, study with what energy I had or I would just sleep on the bench in the changing rooms until training. Trained at night. Training was intense, a session would go up to 2hours.

You could say my life was a mission Half way through the season, my coach gave up on me for a period of time and didn’t think I was cut out for it. Coach didn’t care if we didn’t have enough sleep the night before or

Half way through the season, my coach gave up on me for a period of time and didn’t think I was cut out for it. To know he had given up on me and devoted more time into the other girls. Deciding who to replace my position in the Nation Team drove me to be the person I am today.  Coach didn’t care if we didn’t have enough sleep the night before or

The pain of bluster hands, they were not soft touch. I had trained so hard my body was failing on me, i was pushing it to its limits.

My coach made me from scratch from being a novice rower to a national powerhouse rower

They don’t believe in me. I’m not fit enough. I’m no where near where i need to be to compete. Time is running out. I cant do it. I’m in pain. I’m exhausted. Feels like the life has been sucked out of me.

Life may be hard. It may bring you to your knees. You may feel you cant move any further. You can conquer that fear. Its through the power of determination. I’ve done it, so can you.

I watched my body transform into this machine.

Don’t let the perception of others thoughts determine what you do and don’t do with your life. Don’t let them hold you back. choose your own faint.

I worked my ass off on and off the water.

I trained hard and pushed myself past limits I couldn’t imagine.

I never truly understood the meaning of team work until I started rowing. I’m sure most of you play a ‘team sport’ such as a game of rugby or hockey, if you’re good enough you don’t need the support of your team to get a try or goal, you can get it by yourself, I know I’ve done it. But in rowing if one is not pulling their weight, you’re not gonna win that race.  “don’t forget to pass the ball, there is more that one of you in the team”.  but in rowing that If your, not a team player you might as well jump out of the boat and swim yourself across the finish line.

I clashed with my mother but I didn’t let her narrow vision determine my future aspirations. I wanted to go one way and she wanted me to go the right way. I used her discouragement and disappointment, to push me on to prove her wrong. To show her I was cable of making something out of myself. To fulfill a life of what I enjoyed. To be able make my own decisions. I had enough of the her pushing and shoving towards what she wanted me to do. I’ve let her do it long enough, she needed to accept I was nothing like her but my fear of commenting myself to rowing, petrified me because i couldn’t

I went to an open day at the rowing club with my dad, I liked the challenge rowing with held upon itself, not only physically but mentally. Battling these challenges in as a team brought the rowing squad closer together. We became a family, we fought through all the blood, sweat and tears together. The club became my family, and the escape i felt when on the water, I was a different person. On a bad stressful day I would, We trained together day and night. I woke up to rowing and fell asleep to the exhaustion of rowing.

challenged me not only physically but mentally. Battling these challenges in a team environment has taught me a lot through all the blood, sweat and tears.

I started with out the support of my parents

I’m not just saying it can be about sport it can be about anything in your life

Living to the expectations of your parents. “Don’t do this but do that”, “Do better”, “Still not good enough”. Living in the shadow of myself isn’t the most uplifting feeling. Mum created a perfect figure image of me and waited till I filled it. In makes becomes to get just a bit all but exhausting. Why live a life in someone else’s dreams.

I had enough of the disappointed looks and the sad faces.

 

 

Join the conversation! 1 Comment

  1. This is a great planning doc, Soph!

    Look to attack your writing now 🙂

    Reply

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