How to be a national champion part 2

           

Finally its time for the competition season to begin. You must attend a few competitions before nationals just so you can see what the judges like and don’t like. Make changes to your show and always be looking for ways to make it better. The most important part of having a knock out show choir during competition season is being a good sport. You must always cheer for the other teams and standing O’s are a must even if you didn’t like the group’s show. You also always stand and clap when they are giving awards. You stand and give every group their moment because they worked just as hard if not harder than you. They deserve some applause.

            Finally it’s time for nationals. Now how will you get there? You have to focus on raising money throughout the season because for some families it is very difficult to pay their Childs way through a show choir season. You must offer fundraisers and make as much money for the trip as possible to lower the cost for the students. If you cant afford to bring the entire group you obviously will not achieve your goal of winning national champs and having as much fun along the way as possible.

Now that your there it is completely essential that you remember everything you have ever worked on. You must give all the energy in your body over to the show and leave everything out on that stage. After day rounds you must remember everything the judges told you to work on and do as much as you can before finals to make them like you more than any other group at the competition. Don’t go crazy and change the entire show but just try and do something so that the judges will know you are trying to improve on the points they gave you.

The last step is accepting the awards. Now you have made it this far and you might get national champs you might not, so don’t let yourself get too cocky. When they announce awards always clap for everyone. You must be a great sport in order for people to like and respect your group. If they have come to the first runner up and you still have not been announced you can be excited but remember until your name is called you are cheering for they the other groups and not yourself. If the second place is announced and you have won you cannot cheer! Give the second place group their moment in the sun and let them be happy for their accomplishments. Finally when, and if, they yell your name for national champs you may cheer but remember that you must always congratulate the other groups when you see them. They worked hard too and everyone will have done a great job.

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How to be a national champion part 1

          

Just last week the Kennedy High School show choir, Happiness Inc., achieved the title of National Champion! We attended the national show choir competition in Nashville, Tennessee, and came home with the first national championship in Happiness’s history. The season was so fun and successful but there are many important things we did along the way to achieve our goal. Anyone can be a national champ you just have to put in all the work.

            Perhaps the most important part of preparing a show is having parents willing to back you up. They will be providing food, making costumes, and cleaning up after everyone so you must have some great adults willing to take on the job. You must also have parents who can help build props and who can be in charge of the Tec. crew. Although these are usually dads, moms can feel free to help too. The parents will be there for you throughout the entire season so you must grow to appreciate them and say thanks any time you can.

The Second step you must accomplish to win a national championship is you must have a great show. For the directors this can often be the hardest step because they have to determine what songs the show choir will sing. This is difficult because you always have to take the group into account. For example if you only have three tenors you cant pick a song that has a lot of tenor solo moments or where the tenors often have the melody. Also you have to be sure you pick songs that have the potential to have good choreography and wont wear out the singer dancers to quickly.

            The next step in achieving a national championship is choreography. In order to win competitions in the light of making it to nationals you must have a great choreographer. Someone who stresses precision and doesn’t make moves so fast and hard that they are impossible to clean. They must devote as much time to the group as they need and choreography camps in the summer time are always a must in order to get the dance moves down.

            Now comes the most important step. Singing. Even though show choir consists of singing and dancing, and you are scored on your singing dancing and band, singing is still by far the most important part. For example if you have an ok voice but a rocking dance ability you might not get in. if you have a fantastic strong voice but a very minimal dancing ability there is a much higher chance of you getting into a show choir. Singing is so important and you must have a great director who gives you lots of dynamics and tells you to grow on every single note. You must learn your songs and remember every little detail the director tells you to do.

            One of the last steps is practice. Once you have learned all of the songs and choreography you must practice putting both together with a band. You have to clean till your arms hurt from holding them in a certain position for so long you have to pay attention and remember everything that is cleaned in rehearsal. You also must learn to add faces to the choreography! If you go through a song singing your heart out and dancing with all the energy you have you still just won’t cut it if you don’t have good facials. You don’t want to look dead on stage. Something that always helps the boys is makeup. They MUST wear it!

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Normal Football v.s. Arena Football

            When you go to see a football game there’s certain things you expect. You expect it to be outside or in a huge dome. You expect the field to have one hundred yards. You expect the team playing will be big. You expect there will not be very many fowl balls. However for Arena Football all these things are false.

            When you go to see the Iowa Hawkeye’s, the Chicago Bears, or the Dallas Cowboys play football you always expect for the game to take place outside on a closed in field. Arena football is very different, last night when the Iowa Titans arena team played against the Green Bay arena team the game took place inside a hockey arena. They had coved the ice with green turf and Hung goal posts from the ceiling on either side. When I arrived and found they would be playing on an indoor field I was completely shocked for I didn’t know that football teams could play inside!

            Another major difference from normal football and arena football is the field size. When you attend a football game you always expect the field to be one hundred yards long. However for arena football the field is only fifty yards long! The field was so short and thin I thought there was no way a football game could ever take place there. The field isn’t the only thing that was shrunk down in size. The goal posts on either side of the field were also much smaller that a goal post you would find on a traditional football field.

            One thing I always expect when going to a football game is a big team! I’m not talking big people on the teams but just the number of people on the side wearing a uniform. For an NFL team fifty-three players is the maximum amount a team can have. So most teams have a big number of players pretty close to that. In arena football however the teams were very small! For arena football there is only allowed to be twenty active players! Another difference is when going to a NFL game you will see eleven people lining up on the field for each play. Unlike the NFL an arena football team only has eight people on the field at one time.

            The last major difference in arena v.s. normal football is the path of which the ball travels. When you attend a football game you expect there to be minimal if any fowl balls. Now when I say fowl balls I mean balls that travel off the field and into the stands. In arena football this is not the case. At the one arena game I attended I saw not one but about five fowl balls! The teams would take a kick and WHAM! It would hit some lucky fan in the face! The teams would make a long pass and WACK! A very fortunate fan would have a new souvenir to bring home to their family. There were so many fowl balls is began to get a bit ridiculous!

            So long story short a normal pro football team is VERY different from an arena football team. And truthfully I don’t know how anyone could prefer arena football over a good NFL game.

(553 words)

The Mermaid Chair

I decided to read The Mermaid Chair because I am a big fan of romance novels and the title of this book caught my eye. After reading the back cover and hearing from other people who have read it and liked it I decided I wanted to read it too. This book was challenging to read for a few reasons, there were quite a few words I didn’t know the meaning of, there was a religion I wasn’t familiar with, and the island where the book takes place had a lot of history that was hard to remember. Still, this book was a very good read and I would suggest it to anyone wanting a good romance novel.

The most difficult part of reading this book was keeping track of the religion practiced by the main characters. The mother in the story lived right next to a monastery and so religion was a very dominant part of the story line. For one they kept talking about multiple saints. Ones of which I had never heard of but were very important to their religion. They would explain the stories behind the saints once and then bring them up periodically throughout the book and some of the things they would say wouldn’t make sense until I would flip back and read the story belonging with the saint again. Also, throughout the book they would use jargon words like cowl or penance and I had too look up both the words to find that a cowl is a hooded garment worn by monks, and a penance a punishment undergone in token of penitence for sin.

Another difficult part of this book was the vocabulary. The author would often use words I didn’t know and I would have trouble understanding what the characters were saying or thinking. I would often look them up in order to better understand the story line. For example some of the words they used were battening, which means to feed gluttonously or greedily, Pagan, which is a person who is not a Christian, Jew, or Muslim, and perfunctory, which means performed as a routine duty; hasty and superficial.

The last challenge I had to over come while reading this book had to do with location. The island where this book takes place was located in the Caribbean islands, but in reality the island doesn’t actually exist. There was a lot of things you had to remember about the island in order to understand the book such as the history of the monastery on the island, and the Indian burial ground. There were also legends of mermaids coming up onto the island with out their fins and roaming about. There was also a story about how the mermaid chair came to be.

Even with all the challenges presented by this book it was still a very interesting read. I really enjoyed learning about monasteries and saints and also I’m just happy to have read another romance novel. I would defiantly recommend this book to others who enjoy a good love story and don’t mind learning some new vocabulary along the way. Over all this was a very good book and I never wanted to put it down.

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         In my opinion animal lovers can be classified into 3 groups. The cat lovers, the dog lovers, and everyone else who either hates all animals or just has a weird obsession with some random animal of their choice. I myself am a cat person.
       One group of people in our population likes cats. Most of the people who like cats more so than dogs or any other animal like the quietness of a cat or a cats ability to cuddle up close and make you feel better. Cats are also very independent and they can, for the most part, take care of themselves. Cat people are usually very confident in themselves and are usually working people who aren't home very much during the day. This is why part of the population is fond of cats. You can be gone all day and not have to worry about coming home and letting them out or having to take them on walks. All you have to do as a cat owner is be home twice a day to give them food. Plus you still get the perk of having something to come home too rather than an empty house.
       Another very large portion of our population is the dog lovers. One common characteristic of dog lovers is a person who likes to feel needed. Or someone who enjoys doing things for others. This fits with dogs because they need to be taken out multiple times a day. For someone who likes to feel needed having an animal who depends on you to take them outside multiple times a day definitely fills that need. A second characteristic of a person who likes dogs mores than cats is the athletic portion of our population. They enjoy dogs because having a dog gives them an excuse to go out for a walk or take a run with their favorite running buddy. Dogs almost never run out of energy and for a person who loves physical activity this is definitely an upside.
      The last group of people in our population are the people who don't like dogs or cats. These can be people who either travel often or aren't financially stable but also germifobes. A lot of people who don't like cats or dogs end up also not liking other types of animals. This is often because they may think animals are dirty or they carry bugs and germs. These types of people are usually very clean and neat and don't like the hair that the common house hold pet leaves behind. There is also people in this group who like a different animal other than dogs and cats. These people usually pic an animal because it shares some ability or characteristic with themselves. For example a person who loves to swim or be in water might love fish because they feel they can connect with that species better than any other.

   

To Blog, Or Not To Blog

      For the past TWO TERMS in AP Language and Composition my classmates and i have been allowed a choice between reading and blogging on our free days every week. Today however my teacher informed me that i was not allowed to read until i had finished one blog. I have always considered myself very productive on free days because i stay in the room, usually by myself, and read to my hearts content. Today however, i feel more unproductive than i ever have in this class.

      Every free day i come to class excited to be able to sit down with a nice intriguing book and read about a beautiful love affair or an exciting thriller novel. Today however, I am not excited for this free day. Rather than sitting in the warm sun outside reading a book about a forbidden love, i am being forced to sit at a cramped computer and shell out a blog that frankly, i do not even care about. Usually during a free day i am happy and easy going! Today however i am feeling quite bitter, more so than I have ever felt at school, especially in this class.

      Usually on free days i am sitting reading as much as possible hoping that time will freeze and i will be able to sit and read all day, rather than for just one short fifty five minute period. Today however i am waiting, and WAITING for this period to end. Fifty five minutes has never seemed so long and three hundred words has never seemed like so many. I would normally be sitting in a nice cozy rocking chair reading my time away. Instead I am sitting in an old squeaky plastic chair. My bum is asleep, and I can not wait until its 1:45.
(301 words)

Best Day Ever Part 2

After working with Bret, most of our opener sounded great! There were a few small changes he made that some others and I didn’t like as well, but whatever! Either way we sounded way better than before! Rehearsing the ballad was the highest point in my day. We sounded sooooooo beautiful, more beautiful than anything else I had ever heard before, and I was just basking in the beautiful sound we were making. These moments are the ones I live for. Singing Soprano1 is so fun, and the high notes in our ballad were just made for me. I loved singing it so much and I wish we never had stopped.

            After our workshop, my best friend, her mother, and I went out to dinner at Noodles and Company! It was super delicious and it definitely filled me up! We then scurried back to school to start to set up for our competition the next day!

            I had to decorate a room for McKinley Show Choir and even though I was not the oldest, I was definitely in charge! We finished up in no time and everything looked beautiful! Then it was time to wait. We weren’t allowed to set up for our competition in the gym until the basket ball game was over, so we had quite a bit of time to spare. My friend Adam and I insisted that not everyone in happiness had stayed (when we were all supposed to) so we decided to go on a secret mission! We started at one end of the school and commenced to go into every room and say “chhhhh ROOMS CLEAR, OVER chhhhhhh” we did this though the entire building. It was so stupid, but soooooo much fun! We didn’t find anyone that we thought had left, because a lot of people had been playing Ultimate Frisbee and we hadn’t seen them.

            Now we had finally wasted enough time and it was time to start setting up the gym. When racks of chairs were emptied, me and my friend, Adam would grab them and run and slide on the wheels all the way across the school. It was soo fun, and not to mention dangerous, but we had so much fun! Also, when transporting things two and from the gym, we would only grab things on wheels and we have so much fun racing other people and doing crazy things with the carts. This probably lasted about an hour, but it had to have been one of the best hours of my life!

The day was almost over! It was finally about 11:30 at night. We were all still at school and all the things for the competition were finally set up. We all got on stage and did a sound check to make sure all the mics were in the right places. We were finally done!

            It was midnight and we were all excused to go home. It had been a truly amazing day and I had had the time of my life! I got to bed at 1 am and woke up the next morning at 6. But that my friends is another story for another blog!

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