This I Believe
I believe in the power of evidence. I think I must have started writing nearly a dozen other attempts at this essay before I reached this topic, and the reason as to why I didn’t like the essay topic was always the same. I simply couldn’t find enough evidence in my daily life that I was writing about beliefs that truly defined the way I look at the world. They may have been noble, or idealistic beliefs, but when it came down to it, I simply do not view the world in such a manner as that. I am a cynic, and I am a skeptic, and I can see the evidence for both of those in how I live my daily life.
Growing up, I was always taught that there isn’t any shame in not knowing the answer to something. I was taught that the greatest question to ask is “Why?” and to keep asking it until I found an answer that satisfied me. Unfortunately for my teachers and parents, I was not an easily satisfied child. I always wanted to know more. Even today, I still have a boundless curiosity to know things. To me though, the key was always how they explained it. Wanting to know so many things made me wary of things like generalizations and flimsy answers. This led me over the years to realize that evidence is powerful because it is the key to understanding something. Knowledge and understanding are created by evidence, and without evidence, it is nothing more that information or opinions being tossed around.
Evidence takes many forms, and it can lead to knowledge or understanding of anything that it relates to. Evidence can be emotional. It can be scientific. It can be from observation, or it can be from secondhand inference. Although where these come from might all be different, they all serve the same purpose in my world; they help me to interpret what is around me. What’s important about his to me, is that everything I see is just evidence adding to my interpretation of the world, and that makes my interpretation (at least somewhat) unique. Evidence is powerful to me because it brings about knowledge and interpretation about the world around me, and guides the way that I interact with it. Most of all, it leaves me content with how I act. What more is life than the ability to be content with what you do?
Growing up, I was always taught that there isn’t any shame in not knowing the answer to something. I was taught that the greatest question to ask is “Why?” and to keep asking it until I found an answer that satisfied me. Unfortunately for my teachers and parents, I was not an easily satisfied child. I always wanted to know more. Even today, I still have a boundless curiosity to know things. To me though, the key was always how they explained it. Wanting to know so many things made me wary of things like generalizations and flimsy answers. This led me over the years to realize that evidence is powerful because it is the key to understanding something. Knowledge and understanding are created by evidence, and without evidence, it is nothing more that information or opinions being tossed around.
Evidence takes many forms, and it can lead to knowledge or understanding of anything that it relates to. Evidence can be emotional. It can be scientific. It can be from observation, or it can be from secondhand inference. Although where these come from might all be different, they all serve the same purpose in my world; they help me to interpret what is around me. What’s important about his to me, is that everything I see is just evidence adding to my interpretation of the world, and that makes my interpretation (at least somewhat) unique. Evidence is powerful to me because it brings about knowledge and interpretation about the world around me, and guides the way that I interact with it. Most of all, it leaves me content with how I act. What more is life than the ability to be content with what you do?
Final Presentation
My seventh significant lifeline event that has occurred here at UC is joining the UC club hockey team. When I originally came to UC, I thought I had decided over the summer that I wanted to try and focus on just my studies. This was a particularly big decision for me because it would have been the first year since elementary school that I had not played hockey. However, when I got to UC, my mind was changed by attending the exhibition of club sports and other clubs. Stopping and talking at the hockey table convinced me to try out for the hockey team when I realized how much I missed playing.
This event was significant for a number of reasons. For one, it made me realize how much I want to try and keep hockey in my life throughout it. Be it playing in college, an adult league, or coaching a youth team, I love the game of hockey, and want to be able to share that with other people throughout my life. A second reason that this was significant is that joining the club hockey team was my first venture into meeting new people outside of my classes and dorm. The hockey team has helped me to expand my group of friends, and meet people from other colleges within the university. Overall it has helped me to round out my overall college experience by adding a much larger extracurricular component and increasing the social component as well, while also helping me to realize something important about myself.
For my visual medium to represent this, I chose to create a short slideshow of pictures. The main reason I chose this is because there are a number of aspects of the event that I wanted to represent, and pictures allowed me to display them all. Furthermore, pictures are a unique opportunity to give viewers insight into what I experienced.
This event was significant for a number of reasons. For one, it made me realize how much I want to try and keep hockey in my life throughout it. Be it playing in college, an adult league, or coaching a youth team, I love the game of hockey, and want to be able to share that with other people throughout my life. A second reason that this was significant is that joining the club hockey team was my first venture into meeting new people outside of my classes and dorm. The hockey team has helped me to expand my group of friends, and meet people from other colleges within the university. Overall it has helped me to round out my overall college experience by adding a much larger extracurricular component and increasing the social component as well, while also helping me to realize something important about myself.
For my visual medium to represent this, I chose to create a short slideshow of pictures. The main reason I chose this is because there are a number of aspects of the event that I wanted to represent, and pictures allowed me to display them all. Furthermore, pictures are a unique opportunity to give viewers insight into what I experienced.
Mock Experience proposal
Full Name: Kyle Arens
UC Email: [email protected]
College: College of Engineering and Applied Sciences
Major: Computer Science
Title of Project: Special Needs Hockey Coaching
Thematic Area (choose only one): Community Engagement
Expected Project Start Date: May 1, 2014
Expected Project End Date: August 15, 2014
Abstract
For nearly all of my life, I have played hockey. Even from when I first began playing in the third grade, I have always had a passion for the game of hockey. Hockey is something that I want to keep as a constant in my life throughout its entirety. Not just playing it, though. An enormous part of the tradition of the sport is being able to pass on your love for the game to the next generation of players. Either through formal coaching, or just informal mentoring, being able to pass on a love of hockey to the next generation of players is one of the greatest parts of the culture surrounding hockey, and something that I both enjoy greatly and find highly rewarding.
For my self-designed honors project, I am going to help coach a special needs hockey team over the summer of 2014. Back in my hometown of Westerville, one of my neighbors is a child who is severely autistic. His parents are heavily involved in finding him ways to enjoy himself, and socialize with other people, and one of the ways they’ve recently found to do this is through his participation in a special needs hockey team. Approximately a month after I started playing for UC, I approached them with an idea. They were looking for more help in coaching and mentoring the players on the team, and I was interested in the position. After talking with them, and a few interviews with the coaches, they said they would be happy to have me on as a part of the coaching staff. After realizing how much I love the game of hockey earlier in the semester, this is something that I am greatly looking forward to, because it is a chance to give back to the community and share what my coaches and mentors did for me when I was learning to play.
This project will involve approximately 80 hours of direct involvement with the players, in addition to any time taken for reflection and transportation. This is composed by the two hour and a half long practices each week, and the two games each weekend that are about two hours long each, for a length of about 14 weeks. For reflection, I think that keeping a blog would be the most effective way to reflect, as it will allow me to reflect after each time that I work with the players. This would put me at either 3 or 4 reflections per week, depending on how the games were grouped over the weekends. This reflection would include discussion of personal growth, the developments of the players, and my interactions with them.
Connection to Community Engagement
· Possesses awareness of purpose of service, including need for reciprocity, understanding of social issues, and ability to see those issues from multiple perspectives.
· Relates, communicates, and works effectively with others towards sustainable social change.
· Participates in community and understands own role as citizen of community.
All of these outcomes are things that I think I will experience significant growth in, and make progress towards. Many times, people with disabilities, be they mental or physical, both are on the team, have stigma held against them or to them in society. They can sometimes be considered as a type of second class citizens. However, working closely with them gives me a new viewpoint with them, that most of the rest of society doesn’t have. It has a humanizing effect on them, which highlights the social issues they face. Furthermore, if I can help spread that effect to other people, I will be helping to move towards sustainable social change in the capacity of fighting discrimination against those with disabilities. Lastly, by helping to coach the younger members of my community, I am participating as a citizen, and moving towards my eventual role as a mentor that will develop more as I age.
Connection to Goals and Academic Theories
A. This project relates to my personal development through my want to be more involved in my community and my love for hockey. Sharing what I know about the game of hockey with younger players allows me combine these two things by helping the younger members of my community grow as people through my mentoring and coaching.
B. One aspect of my project is helping to empower disabled youth by teaching them and giving them something they love to do. Something that would help me do this much better would be an increased awareness of the social problems they face. In particular, the UN does a fair amount of research and awareness in this area. They put out a publication called the “UN Youth and Disabilities factsheet” that can be found here (http://social.un.org/youthyear/docs/Fact%20sheet%20youth%20with%20disabilities.pdf), and is greatly informative to readers.
A second part of my project is obviously coaching. In particular, the coaching of disabled players often requires different techniques and approaches than are traditionally used. One of the major governing bodies of hockey, USA Hockey, actually puts out a manual regarding this, and its use would help me to be more effective in reaching the players that I am coaching, and in helping to keep a strong team dynamic. It can be found here (http://assets.ngin.com/attachments/document/0042/2194/DisabledCoachingManual_FINAL.pdf).
Initiative, Independence, and Creativity
As a coach on the team, I will be charged with designing drills for the players to do, and with interacting with them in a constructive fashion in order to help them grow. What makes my ability to contribute to this unique is that I will be the only member of the coaching staff currently playing hockey at a competitive level, and will also be the person who has competed at the highest level of hockey within the coaching staff. Along with that, I bring the experience of playing hockey competitively for over ten years thus far, and all of the learning about the game that I have accumulated in my years playing thus far.
Reflection
For this experience, I will be keeping a blog of reflections from the time I spend working with the players. I intend to make a reflection for each day that I spend working with them. In order to actively think about what I’m accomplishing, I will talk about a number of things. What did I learn about myself today? How did I connect with the players? How did the players improve today? In addition to the daily thoughts, I will also try to give overviews of the player’s progress over the long term.
Dissemination
For this experience, the method of reflection that I have chosen will also serve as an effective way to disseminate my project to the wider public. In addition to this, there is the public coaching component of my experience, which will enable me to act as community leader. Lastly, I have a working relationship with a number of the sports columnists in the Westerville area as a result of my playing hockey there, and I intend to ask a number of them to do a piece on the special needs team to raise awareness about issues and the team. The second two in particular are important because the two places I am trying to make an impact are the general public, and in the lives of the individual players, and these allow me inquest into both of those areas.
Project Advisor
My project advisor for this experience will be my coach on the UC team, Tyler Kangas. He will help me in a number of ways. For one, he has played hockey at an exceptionally high level, and can therefore share his knowledge on the game with me to then pass on to the team I will be coaching. Furthermore, he has been coaching for a long time, and can also provide me with advice in that area.
Tyler Kangas
[email protected]
513-702-9732
Budget
There should be no significant expenses for this project on my part, as I am volunteering my time and knowledge.
UC Email: [email protected]
College: College of Engineering and Applied Sciences
Major: Computer Science
Title of Project: Special Needs Hockey Coaching
Thematic Area (choose only one): Community Engagement
Expected Project Start Date: May 1, 2014
Expected Project End Date: August 15, 2014
Abstract
For nearly all of my life, I have played hockey. Even from when I first began playing in the third grade, I have always had a passion for the game of hockey. Hockey is something that I want to keep as a constant in my life throughout its entirety. Not just playing it, though. An enormous part of the tradition of the sport is being able to pass on your love for the game to the next generation of players. Either through formal coaching, or just informal mentoring, being able to pass on a love of hockey to the next generation of players is one of the greatest parts of the culture surrounding hockey, and something that I both enjoy greatly and find highly rewarding.
For my self-designed honors project, I am going to help coach a special needs hockey team over the summer of 2014. Back in my hometown of Westerville, one of my neighbors is a child who is severely autistic. His parents are heavily involved in finding him ways to enjoy himself, and socialize with other people, and one of the ways they’ve recently found to do this is through his participation in a special needs hockey team. Approximately a month after I started playing for UC, I approached them with an idea. They were looking for more help in coaching and mentoring the players on the team, and I was interested in the position. After talking with them, and a few interviews with the coaches, they said they would be happy to have me on as a part of the coaching staff. After realizing how much I love the game of hockey earlier in the semester, this is something that I am greatly looking forward to, because it is a chance to give back to the community and share what my coaches and mentors did for me when I was learning to play.
This project will involve approximately 80 hours of direct involvement with the players, in addition to any time taken for reflection and transportation. This is composed by the two hour and a half long practices each week, and the two games each weekend that are about two hours long each, for a length of about 14 weeks. For reflection, I think that keeping a blog would be the most effective way to reflect, as it will allow me to reflect after each time that I work with the players. This would put me at either 3 or 4 reflections per week, depending on how the games were grouped over the weekends. This reflection would include discussion of personal growth, the developments of the players, and my interactions with them.
Connection to Community Engagement
· Possesses awareness of purpose of service, including need for reciprocity, understanding of social issues, and ability to see those issues from multiple perspectives.
· Relates, communicates, and works effectively with others towards sustainable social change.
· Participates in community and understands own role as citizen of community.
All of these outcomes are things that I think I will experience significant growth in, and make progress towards. Many times, people with disabilities, be they mental or physical, both are on the team, have stigma held against them or to them in society. They can sometimes be considered as a type of second class citizens. However, working closely with them gives me a new viewpoint with them, that most of the rest of society doesn’t have. It has a humanizing effect on them, which highlights the social issues they face. Furthermore, if I can help spread that effect to other people, I will be helping to move towards sustainable social change in the capacity of fighting discrimination against those with disabilities. Lastly, by helping to coach the younger members of my community, I am participating as a citizen, and moving towards my eventual role as a mentor that will develop more as I age.
Connection to Goals and Academic Theories
A. This project relates to my personal development through my want to be more involved in my community and my love for hockey. Sharing what I know about the game of hockey with younger players allows me combine these two things by helping the younger members of my community grow as people through my mentoring and coaching.
B. One aspect of my project is helping to empower disabled youth by teaching them and giving them something they love to do. Something that would help me do this much better would be an increased awareness of the social problems they face. In particular, the UN does a fair amount of research and awareness in this area. They put out a publication called the “UN Youth and Disabilities factsheet” that can be found here (http://social.un.org/youthyear/docs/Fact%20sheet%20youth%20with%20disabilities.pdf), and is greatly informative to readers.
A second part of my project is obviously coaching. In particular, the coaching of disabled players often requires different techniques and approaches than are traditionally used. One of the major governing bodies of hockey, USA Hockey, actually puts out a manual regarding this, and its use would help me to be more effective in reaching the players that I am coaching, and in helping to keep a strong team dynamic. It can be found here (http://assets.ngin.com/attachments/document/0042/2194/DisabledCoachingManual_FINAL.pdf).
Initiative, Independence, and Creativity
As a coach on the team, I will be charged with designing drills for the players to do, and with interacting with them in a constructive fashion in order to help them grow. What makes my ability to contribute to this unique is that I will be the only member of the coaching staff currently playing hockey at a competitive level, and will also be the person who has competed at the highest level of hockey within the coaching staff. Along with that, I bring the experience of playing hockey competitively for over ten years thus far, and all of the learning about the game that I have accumulated in my years playing thus far.
Reflection
For this experience, I will be keeping a blog of reflections from the time I spend working with the players. I intend to make a reflection for each day that I spend working with them. In order to actively think about what I’m accomplishing, I will talk about a number of things. What did I learn about myself today? How did I connect with the players? How did the players improve today? In addition to the daily thoughts, I will also try to give overviews of the player’s progress over the long term.
Dissemination
For this experience, the method of reflection that I have chosen will also serve as an effective way to disseminate my project to the wider public. In addition to this, there is the public coaching component of my experience, which will enable me to act as community leader. Lastly, I have a working relationship with a number of the sports columnists in the Westerville area as a result of my playing hockey there, and I intend to ask a number of them to do a piece on the special needs team to raise awareness about issues and the team. The second two in particular are important because the two places I am trying to make an impact are the general public, and in the lives of the individual players, and these allow me inquest into both of those areas.
Project Advisor
My project advisor for this experience will be my coach on the UC team, Tyler Kangas. He will help me in a number of ways. For one, he has played hockey at an exceptionally high level, and can therefore share his knowledge on the game with me to then pass on to the team I will be coaching. Furthermore, he has been coaching for a long time, and can also provide me with advice in that area.
Tyler Kangas
[email protected]
513-702-9732
Budget
There should be no significant expenses for this project on my part, as I am volunteering my time and knowledge.
