Personal Narrative: My Life As An Outsider

Looking back on my life there haven’t been a lot of times where I felt like an outsider. I always had a group of friends, a family that loved me, and I like to think that my peers always thought of me as a pretty fun to be around person. However last year there was a time where I did feel as though rejection was prominent in my life..

My senior year of high school I was enrolled in a teleproductions class. Basically in this class I learned how to write, shoot , edit, and produce short films. In this class we also covered our schools sporting events as well. My teacher and I would often talk football and he noticed that I really knew football well. As a result I was given the opportunity to do play by play commentary for our school's football team. I was very excited about this until about mid way

through our first game.
The day before our first game I walked into my teacher's office. He had papers all over his desk and was hunched looking over his computer with his back turned to me. “Hey is there anything you wanted me to say, or do while i'm commentating the game tomorrow?” He rotated around in his chair ,looked at me with a perplexed look and said “Uhm no not really, just don’t like swear or anything on air and I think you’ll be fine” I chuckled and said “Yeah I won’t do that” then walked out of the room.
The Friday of our first game was a very hot and sticky evening and I was sitting in a very cramped broadcasting booth with about twenty other people, and our team was playing horribly. We were down by two touchdowns and our quarterback threw two interceptions on back to back drives, and was having an abysmal game. I was sitting in the press box and as I became hotter, sweatier and more uncomfortable. I was very quickly becoming upset with my teams , or more specifically our quarterback's performance. As I looked at the stat sheet from the game so far his stats were nothing short of terrible. He went three for eleven for only ten yards and threw two interceptions, So after I read these numbers I said on the air “I don’t know, if he keeps playing as bad as he is today we might need to look into some other options to take over” Immediately after I said that my teacher came over my headset and said “Uh oh, shouldn’t of said that” I shrugged it off and continued commentating the rest of the game. After the game I was asked to wrap up the broadcast with some final thoughts. I said “Well I'm glad we got the win, but there were some very glaring holes. That need to be adjusted if we want to have a good season”.
The next Monday started off like any other Monday . I begrudgingly got out of bed and got dressed for school just like any other day. In my math class I got the results from a test and I got an A on it. Later on I made plans to go see a movie, and hang out with a bunch of my friends the next coming saturday. So all in all I was having a pretty good day. Until I got to my teleproductions class.
I walked into the classroom and sat at my desk. On the chalkboard our teacher would write down different tasks that we had to complete during the day. When I looked up at the chalkboard to try to get an idea of how to plan my day I saw that the last item on the board read “John meet in the control room after class meeting” After our teacher got done with our class meeting I walked into the control room. The control room allowed us to control the cameras and audio levels for our news broadcast everyday. There were TV’s on the wall and computers on all the desks in the room. Inside the control room there is a platform that's about a foot higher than the floor. There are always two chairs on that platform along with a desk with a bunch of equipment on it and two chairs directly in front of that desk on the floor . In one of two chairs on the platform one of my principals was sitting there. “John have a seat” He said as I entered the room. “How’s it going?” I asked as I sat down in one of the chairs in front of the desk. My teacher came in and sat in the open chair next to me.“We want to talk about some of the things you said during the game last friday” My principal said. “We think you were being really negative towards one of the players” Immediately I thought of when I said that we might have to make a change at quarterback. My teacher explained to me that they were worried parents and fans might think I was too negative and that they want me to put a positive spin on everything I say, regardless of how the team is actually performing. My teacher handed me a sheet of paper. It was an apology letter that I was supposed to read on air. It explained that it was not my intention to offend any of the players, and that I was sorry for doing so. It felt like they were trying to separate themselves from what I said. For the first time in my life I felt like an outcast. At first I refused. I looked at my principal, and then at my teacher and said “What I said was the truth, I’m not reading this.” My teacher looked at me with a restrained look on his face and said “If you don’t we’ll get someone else to, but you won’t be commentating any more games”. I looked at him and with a sharp edge in my voice I said “I specifically asked if there was anything I would need to know before the game and you told me that there wasn’t” He raised his eyebrows and snapped back “I didn't think you’d say anything like this” Frustrated, I got up and said “Alright i'll read it.” My principal looked up at me and said “We just want you to put more of a positive spin on things” I nodded then walked out of the room.
So I needed to make a decision for the next game.

I could either do what my principal and my teacher wanted and just sugarcoat everything. Or I could come up with a new way to say if we were playing bad without singling anyone out, and that's what I chose to do. My plan was to just present the facts without letting too much of negative personal opinion out.

At the start of the next game I bregundely read the letter and then crumpled it up and threw it across the broadcasting booth. During the game, and the remainder of the season. I presented the facts and just the facts. That's not to say that I wouldn’t offer an opinion or a word of advice. But made sure that my opinions weren’t too negative as well as making sure that they were not sugarcoated.

After the season was over people started calling my teacher and asking if I would be covering the basketball games too. When he asked why, most people praised my knowledge of the game as well as me not being afraid to speak my mind if the team was playing poorly. One fan even said “Ya know we had a really bad team this year, but i'm glad I didn't have to listen to some kid trying to explain why we are the best, when we

aren't”
At the end of the day I think I learned a valuable lesson. I learned that sometimes you might not agree with someone but it is important to reach a compromise, and that it's important to find a solution that works for everyone.