Drag Racing Dreams
The heat was unbearable as I pulled up to the starting line. The
smell of exhaust gases and burned rubber filled the air. The starting
light received my fullest attention, zoning everything out of my conscience.
3...2...1...green light! I stomped my foot on the accelerator as I side stepped
my clutch. Shifting into second gear, I flipped the switch to my nitrous
oxide system. Instantaneously I was thrown back into my seat. All of a
sudden a loud pop disturbed the smooth roar of my engine. Halfway down the
track my engine shut off and forced me to coast the car to the finish line.
My teammates were already waiting at the end of the drag strip. Unable to
restart my car, we pushed it back to our pit area. My hopes were crushed
as I went over the fact that my day of racing was already over.
Drag racing is a big part of my life. All of my spare time is
spent working on my 1996 Honda Accord. With a big import drag racing
approaching quickly, I spent most of my waking hours for a week tuning my
car. Sweat and hours of hard work finally prepared my car for racing. The
interior was stripped down to the sheet metal and contained only the
driver's seat to reduce weight. The whole exhaust system was removed to
gain that little edge of power, which is essential for racing. My car was
finally race ready, waiting to tear up the track.
The following day, our race team met up at the track. In the pit
area, we changed out our street tires for high per...
... middle of paper ...
...p; Even though I made it to the final rounds of elimination I lost the
final and most important race. However, I didn't care about the loss
because I knew that instead of making it this far, I could have been
standing on the sideline with a broken car instead of racing. I realized
that any obstacle would be overcome if you pursued it hard enough.
Pursuit of happiness and achieving goals is an important part of
life. Difficulties and a lack of results should not discourage one's
strive for happiness. If the desire to accomplish something is great
enough dreams can be achieved no matter what the hardships or the time it
takes. Difficulties will make the achievement of a goal much more sweet
because of the rewards of overcoming the little kinks and knots of life.
In relation to leadership and women, historically women who wanted to seek leadership roles were often seen projecting the traditional masculine model of leadership. This model means to be rational, unemotional and analytic. It also, means in order to succeed traditionally women needed to look and act like a man to be taken seriously in leadership positions. Women in the past often dressed up in suits and ties and anything feminine was seen as an internal “weakness”. To be a leader in power meant to exude confidence in masculinity and shy away from anything remotely girly. As opposed, to the feminine model which casts power as focused on connection and harmony instead of power over something, someone. This power can be skilled through collective gain or physical attractiveness (Kruse 22).
Bradbury effectively warns about the potential dangers that can arise from constantly paying attention to the technology in your world rather than the real life around you. When Mildred overdoes on pills and almost dies, this shows that despite claiming to be “happy” she was in fact suicidal or she was so distracted by the TV that she “took two pills and forgot and took two more… until [she] had thirty or forty of them”. Either way, the fact she does not remember her near death experience further shows the apathetic nature of people and how they are only interested in what is entertaining them, rather than the world around
The reading assignment for this unit included reading several articles and one book in particular, The Female Advantage, by Sally Helgesen as an introduction into varying leadership styles. Leadership, as a honed craft is practiced continually in different ways and varying circumstances, no two individuals will have the same leadership style. Certain distinctive traits brought into the forum and on display for followers to observe. Some traits can be visible, clothing or skin color as examples, others, however, are not as visible such as upbringing or family situation. Each of these factors could play a role in the leadership style of a leader. One trait that the author of the book uses to distinguish leaders is gender. As much as men and women must be treated the fairly and equally, it cannot be denied that outside of the biological aspect, men and women are slightly different. Each gender brings a unique approach to leadership situations.
Powell, G., Butterfield, D., and Bartol, K. (2008). Leader evaluations: A new female advantage? Gender in Management: An International Journal, 23, 156-174.
“Ability is what you are capable of doing. Motivation determines what you do. Attitude determines how well you do it,” (Lou Holtz). Anyone is capable of doing anything they set their mind to as long as they are working towards that goal or aspiration. If you motivate yourself, you will see the positive outcome of your hard work and dedication. You have to remember to encourage yourself no matter if you fail or know you’ll succeed. Track and Field has been beyond meaningful to my life. Not only has it taught me many valuable lessons, but it also helped unearth potential I didn’t realize I had. Track and Field is my sport because challenging myself and my body
In the American society, we constantly hear people make sure they say that a chief executive officer, a racecar driver, or an astronaut is female when they are so because that is not deemed as stereotypically standard. Sheryl Sandberg is the, dare I say it, female chief operating officer of Facebook while Mark Zuckerberg is the chief executive officer. Notice that the word “female” sounds much more natural in front of an executive position, but you would typically not add male in front of an executive position because it is just implied. The fact that most of America and the world makes this distinction shows that there are too few women leaders. In Sheryl Sandberg’s book “Lean In,” she explains why that is and what can be done to change that by discussing women, work, and the will to lead.
In Sheryl Sandberg’s essay “Lean In: What You Do If You Weren’t Afraid?”, she talks about how women are afraid to strive for leadership that men pursue for. She mentions how women are afraid to be leaders even though they outperform men academically in their degrees. Women are discouraged to enroll in leadership in the workforce because “they are less valued in the workplace” and “overwhelmingly stocked with men”(Sandberg 646). More importantly, Sandberg points out that the reason women don’t seek for high positioned jobs is that they aren’t “ambitious” as much as men. Not being ambitious allows women to not show themselves that they don’t have a strong desire to obtain the highest leadership. Women aren’t as ambitious than men because they
Formula One racing is known all around the world but just not known that much in the United States. As an internationally ranked sport, Formula One racing is ranked the world’s second most watch sport coming after soccer, which is number one. The most popular area for the Formula One race was at the Australian Grand Prix in Australia, which had almost 300,000 people in attendance for the race. The season for a Formula One driver last 36 races, which are raced all over the world from the United States, Monaco, Abu Dhabi, and Shanghai.
As we pull into the racetrack I look around. There are a ton of trailers which means a ton of cars, which also means a ton of people. Aside from all the diversity we all love the same thing, racing. We all unite together, we are all there for the same reason and we all have the same goal. To win the Kyle Larson Outlaw Kart Showcase. One day, two Nascar drivers, three classes, over 225 cars. The biggest outlaw kart race in history to ever be held, and I’m apart of it. I can feel the tension of everyone around me, whispers of people talking about all their set-up ¨secrets¨
... M. (2000). The Vatican Mediation if the Beagle Channel Dispute: Crisis Intervention and Forum Building. In C. C. Conflict, M. C. Greenberg, J. H. Barton, &
It was November 5th, 2013 – it was my cross country league meet. I was running the hardest, the fastest, and with more intensity than I have ran with the first three years of my cross country career combined. It was the hardest course in Michigan, but it seemed easy to me as I practiced on it every other day. The competition was at least thirty seconds behind me as the three-story hill was too big of a challenge for them. The screams and cheering of the crowd fueled my adrenaline and I hit my runner’s high. I had tackled the hill for the final time and the crowd was screaming louder than I have ever heard, which caused me to power up the hill, then I stopped in my tracks. I realized what they were screaming about. There was someone, or something, hunched over my coach’s body. It looked human, but there was something off about the figure. The “thing” turned around and looked at me. It was pale, fit, had red eyes, and was covered in my coach’s blood and intestines. My heart stopped. What the hell? Then, I ran. It chased me. I didn’t have time to think about where I was going or what I had just seen, I just ran as fast as I could and as far as I could get. I heard screaming from the other runners and other onlookers, and when I glanced back to see if the thing was behind me, it wasn’t. I ended up in the parking lot, hotwired an older car (by popping
Moreover, not only did I not comply with the speed limit, I did not obey my
Ott, Marvin C. "Mediation as a Method of Conflict Resolution: Two Cases." International Organization 26.04 (1972): 595-618. JSTOR. Web. 3 Dec. 2013.
Wilson, Marie C. Closing the Leadership Gap Why Women Can and Must Help Run the World. New York: Viking Adult, 2004. Print
This is not about being nasty or nice – it is entirely about being achievement oriented by focusing on performance and organizational goals. Being achievement oriented, leaders have to recognize that they have to be mindful of and accountable for the choices they make because they are setting the model of what’s appropriate and inappropriate. Words matter, they are as much a form of expression for leaders as they are to poets, singers, and writers. According to Posner and Kouzes(p. 59) to be a leader, you got to awaken to the fact that you don’t have to copy someone else or follow a script and you don’t have to wear someone else’s style. Currently, there are an increasing number of women who are in leadership roles in the workplaces. It is a generally accepted as true that woman are supposed to use feminine ways of doing leadership. However, this is not always true. In some cases, women also use masculine ways of leadership. In this paper, Miranda Priestly illustrates how a female leader breaks traditional gender stereotypes and uses masculine leadership style.