Throughout this class I have really felt good about how my topic has evolved. With the prospectus and counter-arguement it really helped me fine toon my research question and what stance I have in the matter. Recently we started on the Vingette draft, linked draft, and synthesis draft. These drafts really had me confused about what we were trying to accomplish and how this helped my progress towards my final paper. I feel like these recent papers actually made me take a step back in regards to my progress towards my final paper. That was until I finished my synthesis draft after meeting with Natalie and really hashing out what has gone on so far. After that I was really able to make sense of this and build a strong start to my final paper.
The reason I am interested in this topic is because I am currently a football coach in high school but my end goal is to coach in college. It is important for me to know how stressful this profession can be on the coach himself and the family members of the coach. Since I do want a family I want to do everything I can in order to support them during my career as a football coach. I also want to be able to inform my future spouse about what it means to be the wife of a football coach. I want her to know what she is committing to and make sure that its something she is willing to participate in. Like anything else I want to be prepared for what I am about to take on in my life and the better prepared I am the more successful I will be.
Tuesday, March 5, 2013
Week 8 Reflections
For this week I found a youtube video about one of the greatest football coaches in the history of sports. His name is Vince Lombardi and this is just a short clip from the HBO documentary done about him. Vince was so important to the game of football we named to super bowl trophy after him.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WEELeovGCa8
If you can ever watch the full Vince Lombardi video I highly reccomend it. This man had suck great passion for the game but almost to the amount that it was unhealthy. Vince could barely rest at all because his mind was constantly thinking about the next game or the next practice. They would have parties after the Packers won a game and people would see Vince start to sweat and worry about the next game. He wasn't even able to enjoy the victory for five minutes. This sounds crazy to most people but coaches really are a different bread. We are highly competitive human beings that have a desire to win at all costs. To me long hours and hard work is the exciting part of being a football coach. I do unsterstand that with these long hours come some sacrifice from my family but I am willing to do this because of how much I love the game of football.
Discuss two new key terms that have emerged in my research. The first key term is work-life balance. I want to discover what this actually means to people. Do they live to work or work to live? Is there suck thing as a balance? Do we actually want it to be balanced? I would say most americans would prefer an unbalance work-life favoring the life part. The problem with this is that coaches in my opinion are the other way around. We obsess about working and the preparation that goes into winning. The other word that was introduced is communication. This is probably the single most important attribute that a family needs in order to be successful. A coach endures long night and several days a week away from home so communication is key. A coach needs to communicate on a daily basis about what is going on in their life in order to make the spouse feel included and important. This is important in life aside from coaching but extremely important for a coaches family.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WEELeovGCa8
If you can ever watch the full Vince Lombardi video I highly reccomend it. This man had suck great passion for the game but almost to the amount that it was unhealthy. Vince could barely rest at all because his mind was constantly thinking about the next game or the next practice. They would have parties after the Packers won a game and people would see Vince start to sweat and worry about the next game. He wasn't even able to enjoy the victory for five minutes. This sounds crazy to most people but coaches really are a different bread. We are highly competitive human beings that have a desire to win at all costs. To me long hours and hard work is the exciting part of being a football coach. I do unsterstand that with these long hours come some sacrifice from my family but I am willing to do this because of how much I love the game of football.
Discuss two new key terms that have emerged in my research. The first key term is work-life balance. I want to discover what this actually means to people. Do they live to work or work to live? Is there suck thing as a balance? Do we actually want it to be balanced? I would say most americans would prefer an unbalance work-life favoring the life part. The problem with this is that coaches in my opinion are the other way around. We obsess about working and the preparation that goes into winning. The other word that was introduced is communication. This is probably the single most important attribute that a family needs in order to be successful. A coach endures long night and several days a week away from home so communication is key. A coach needs to communicate on a daily basis about what is going on in their life in order to make the spouse feel included and important. This is important in life aside from coaching but extremely important for a coaches family.
Week 7 Reflections
"Question"- What makes a good question? My question is how coaching affects the family members of the coach. Often times the intimate family members of the coach are forgotten because the main focus is the children being coached. I don't disagree that the main focus is the children but the families of the coaches go through tons of stress and are rarely recognized. As a coach I want to explore the stresses that families and spouses go through to better prepare myself for that sort of lifesyle. I can imagine that with the long hours coaches put in it will put a major strain on personal relationships but I will assume that communication is the main atribute a coach and family must have.
The fieldwork that I will be doing is an interview with the spouse of a coach. My uncle was a coach in major college football for 30+ years and I will be interviewing my Aunt. She has been with him from just about the beggining so if anyone is familiar with that lifestyly she is. The things I really want to hear about is her perspective about being a coaches wife and what problems she encountered. I want to hear about what worked for her and what didn't. I want to know if there were times that she felt left out or unimportant. How did my uncle show her that she mattered and did he make her a priority?
The fieldwork that I will be doing is an interview with the spouse of a coach. My uncle was a coach in major college football for 30+ years and I will be interviewing my Aunt. She has been with him from just about the beggining so if anyone is familiar with that lifestyly she is. The things I really want to hear about is her perspective about being a coaches wife and what problems she encountered. I want to hear about what worked for her and what didn't. I want to know if there were times that she felt left out or unimportant. How did my uncle show her that she mattered and did he make her a priority?
Monday, February 11, 2013
Relfection
Since the counter arguement and perspective essay I don't really think much has changed. I think once I did the counter arguement I was ready to change my question all together then I was kind of talked off the ledge by my teacher. It was really hard for me to take another perspective on my topic and not adopt that view. I am a passionate guy so by taking the time to write about something it makes me fully engulfed in that view. It really helped me to see a different view but just assured me of my topic and the question I wanted to research.
I will be writing about a freewrite we did in class on 01.09.13 which also happens to be my birthday. In this write I finally locked down the question that I was going ot work off of for my final paper. My question is How the stress of coaching affects the spouse of the coach. I also wrote about what perspective I would write from. Would I write from the coaches perspective, the spouse, or kids. I started off by saying that coaches need to find a work-life balance from the rigorous world of coaching and still maintaining a family. I talked about how I am going to interview spouses that I know from my network of coaches that I know. Some key terms that I came up with were: Commitment, family, balance, pressure, maintaining, and stress.
The next freewrite I will be talking about is the one on 01.11.13 called "binary things in my life". Something going on in my life right now is that I am attending Bellevue College. One thing that I get a lot of is homework. Should I do homework during the day with my time in between classes or should I take that time to rest and do the work at home? I think in the end the right decision was to take advantage of my time in between classes and get all the homework done that I can. That is my normal Monday through Friday.
The last freewrite I am going to talk about was done on 01.16.13. This was right after we turned in our first stasis theory. I talked about how repetitive it seemed and vague. I said the questions seemed short and very general. The one interesting thing that came from all of it is thinking about all of the different parties involved. When you think about coaching you don't really think about all of the families involed. The family that is ignored the most is the coaches family.
The next freewrite I will be talking about is the one on 01.11.13 called "binary things in my life". Something going on in my life right now is that I am attending Bellevue College. One thing that I get a lot of is homework. Should I do homework during the day with my time in between classes or should I take that time to rest and do the work at home? I think in the end the right decision was to take advantage of my time in between classes and get all the homework done that I can. That is my normal Monday through Friday.
The last freewrite I am going to talk about was done on 01.16.13. This was right after we turned in our first stasis theory. I talked about how repetitive it seemed and vague. I said the questions seemed short and very general. The one interesting thing that came from all of it is thinking about all of the different parties involved. When you think about coaching you don't really think about all of the families involed. The family that is ignored the most is the coaches family.
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