Traditions that change me

There were many different traditions at my high school that changes the way a person thinks about the world. One tradition that every freshmen student does is a cleanup of White Rock Lake. White Rock Lake is notorious for being a very dirty part of east Dallas. The entire freshmen class comes out to white rock lake and cleans around the entire lake. Some of them paint the walls and others walked around the lake cleaning and picking up trash. Every class experiences this to help the freshmen come together as a class easier. This experience is humbling for many of the students because many of them come from homes where picking up trash around their house is done for them and they never had mowed their lawn before.

Also every year for homecoming the Friday of the football game, the day is classed ranger day. It is a day where each class competes against the other classes in different events. As a freshmen ranger day is only cool because you do not have class, but you are picked on and never win any events because the games are fixed so freshmen can’t win. The senior make fun of all the classes and especially the freshmen class at the pep-rally. The senior are handed the keys to the school mostly and control how the day is going and what events are played and by who. This teaches the underclass men to look to each other for a fun and enjoyment and not to just stay with the status quo of being humiliated at the pep-rally. Also each freshmen home room builds a chariot and they race around the track as the last competition, where the home room senior big brothers are pulled by the freshmen. The freshmen home rooms are forced to become closer in building the chariot, the struggles of building a chariot is a moment where someone has to depend on some else to help them.

The First Football Game

The first Varsity football game I played in was my sophomore year, and it was against Euless Trinity the future state champions. I was scared to death because the starter got hurt in the game before so I was brought up to play if the back-up became injured. During the first four plays of the game he became hurt. So when the second series came along I went in to play. I was so scared, I almost didn’t want to go in but since we were at home and all my friends were in the crowd I went in. My confidence was lacking a little bit, because I was facing a man bigger faster stronger and older then I was. I think my mom was scared more then I was. But I played fine I kept one of the best defensive linemen in the area at bay for most of the game. But that was one of the growing up experiences that presented themselves during my high school days.

Since I attended an all male high school sports were a very big activity, and especially football, on Friday night the school became alive with excitement and fun. Since we were playing such a good team everyone in the school came and the stadium was packed. So the excitement from everyone else made me play better and grow up a little bit during the game.