Like A Girl

I will be doing my rhetorical analysis on this video Like A Girl. I am really excited about this topic as I am a female athlete that is constantly being told, "you throw like a girl."It is very inspirational and I think will make for some great research.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XjJQBjWYDTs

Adventure

I am one of those people that can never sit still or be cooped up indoors. I usually go crazy during the winter if I don't go and do things outside or go to work out. I love adventure. I am a thrill seeker and I love adrenaline rushes. Anything from white water rafting, to amusement parks, I absolutely love. I have been to the roller coaster capital of the world in Cedar Point, Ohio. It is an amusement park called Cedar Point. It is home to some of the fastest and highest rollercoasters in the world. The biggest is the Top Thrill Dragster. It takes off at speeds of over 120 miles per hour and goes over 300 feet in the air. We waited in line for two hours to experience ten seconds of gut clenching thrill. It went so fast that my started watering and it looked like I was crying. It is still one of the best rollercoasters I have ever been on. In Hawaii we went zip lining when we were on one of our cruises. The course  weaved its way through the rainforest and spanned huge cliff drop offs. Several of the lines were over 1000 feet long. It is also home to one of the longest zips in the world and one of the only water zip lines. There were single and tandem lines meaning you could go side by side. On the long zips you had enough time that you could flip and hang upside down. At the water zip you held onto a bar that went off over a cliff and dropped you into a natural waterfall. You could also jump straight off the cliff if you wanted to. I have went cliff jumping in several places. There are a few spots that are around 30 feet high around my home and then I have gone on several vacations. Whitewater rafting in West Virginia had up to level three rapids and a rock at about 40 feet that you could jump from. I think it would be so much fun to go sky diving or bungee jumping. I couldn't imagine how much your stomach would roll as you free fell through the air. I don't always do crazy things. I love to go hiking in the mountains and in the desert. Usually anything outside that is active I would want to try. At my grandparents house we go tubing on their lake when it is warm and go ice tubing behind a snowmobile during the winter. I am terrible at skiing and snowboarding but I think it is a lot of fun and have tried several times. Most of my fun usually revolves around some kind of water. Swimming is one of my favorite things to do and I also would way rather be in the warmth than the cold. I love adrenaline and will never turn down a challenge or opportunity to have some crazy fun. Traveling all of the country and to different parts of the world has exposed me to so many amazing things that you can do. I know for sure as I get older I will continue to travel to try and quench my thirst for adventure.

Music

One thing about me that people quickly find out is that I love music. I listen to many different kinds and in general will listen to anything. My favorite type of music is alternative rock. Now this isn't the hard metal head banging rock that people usually think of or the goth punks. It is kind of the middle ground. It has some rock and grunge but mostly it is kind of hipster. Speaking of hipster another one of my favorite types of music is reggae. I love the Dirty Heads. I listen to them a lot when I am studying or going to bed because it is so mellow. I used to absolutely hate country until about a year ago when I started hearing it more around one of my friends. Then I moved here and our team listens to a lot of country and now it has grown on me a ton and I listen to it the most when I am studying. I always go through phases where I will be obsessed with a type of music and then move on after a couple months. In high school I loved 2000s rap and hip hop from Nelly to 50 Cent. I still love to listen to them when I am working out and doing anything active. When I was a freshman I asked my dad for tickets to a concert for my birthday. It was just a small concert but it was so much fun and I was hooked. For my 17th birthday I got to see Justin Timberlake. I loved him in his boy band, to say the least I was a fan girl and then saw him perform his Smoke and Mirrors tour. It was such an amazing concert. He had a stage that moved all around the Excel Energy Center in Minneapolis. I went to several smaller bands at a venue called First Avenue in Minneapolis. I have seen New Found Glory, Smallpools, and Neon Trees there. Usual concerts have two smaller opening bands that warm the crowds up for the headliners. These concerts are fun but nothing compares to going to a festival. I went to my first festival this past summer in Grant Park Chicago. Lollapalooza is one of the original festivals and is also one of the biggest and best that you can go to. It is three days of straight music and bands playing. Bands usually would start around 12 in the afternoon and changed every hour until ending around 12pm when the park closed. I saw over thirty different bands play in three days. My favorite had to be my favorite band Twenty-One Pilots. They have all kinds of alternative bands but also have hip hop, some rap, and even current pop music. The biggest headliners that we saw were Metallica, Florence and the Machine, The Weekend, and Paul McCartney. There were thousands of people there and it filled the entire park. There were two main stages that were about a mile apart with five other smaller stages surrounding the walk back and forth. There was a huge DJ stage, the Samsung Galaxy stage, the Bud Light Stage, and four smaller ones spread through some smaller groups of trees. This was one of the coolest experiences of my life and I get to go to another one this summer! For Christmas my parents gave me tickets to a festival in Tennessee called Bonaroo. It is a huge festival just like Lollapalooza but instead of the park closing and staying in a hotel you camp at the grounds. It is a four day festival and I am so so excited to go and see so many more amazing bands play.

Exercise

One of the biggest aspects of my life is fitness and exercise. I have to be the strongest and most athletic that I can be to be able to compete at a very high level in athletics. Division one is very very demanding and it took so much work to get where I am today, yet I still have so far to go. When I was in about seventh grade my parents started me in strength and agility classes to give me an edge in the sports that I played. Ever summer I worked out three or 4 times a week on top of playing basketball and softball. It was one of the best decisions and completely changed my life. I used to be overweight, slow and not that agile. I was naturally gifted but by getting in shape I was able to excel even more. Weight lifting is by far my favorite form of exercise. There is a certain feeling that you get when you are lifting that motivates you and pushes you to want to work harder. It is my favorite way of stress relief and being able to escape everything from school and homework to things going on in my daily life. I have worked with several strength coaches at our gym, the Rochester Athletic Club (RAC) that specialize in different types of lifting. One coach is very into lifting heavy, getting deep in your range of motion and trying to make us sore. Another it more focused on plyometrics, agility, stamina. This means that we will do a lot of cardio along with lifting in a very high rep range. There are three rep ranges that people will lift in. The highest is for tone and stamina and typically has between 12 and 15 reps. The middle zone for stamina as well as building muscle is between eight and twelve. This is my favorite zone to lift in because you are still doing a lot of reps but you can lift heavier weights. The low rep range is from three to six. This is very heavy weights that you will barely be able to lift the three to four times. You typically lift in this rep range at the end of your program when you are getting close to maxing out. Maxing out is finding the highest weight you can do with good form from a certain lift. For softball this year we maxed out in squats, bench, and cleans. In high school I maxed a lot of other lifts but we only focus on certain ones here at NDSU that we base most of our training around. I really don't like cardio very much so I tend to bike, elliptical, or do the stair master when it comes time to build up some stamina for conditioning. Working out has changed my life and my habits. I eat so much better because I want to get the most out of the workouts that I am doing. I have learned so much about how to eat, portion control, and the importance of meal planning. Exercise and good eating will always be in my life even after I finish my softball career because it is just something that I have to do anymore it is a lifestyle.

Softball

The biggest reason that I am here attending NDSU is because I play for the softball team! I never would have thought I would go somewhere that is even colder than Minnesota. Originally I had crossed North Dakota off of my list to even look at just because of where it was located. Then I started talking to Jamie and fell in love with the school. I came on a official visit to meet the coaches and team and knew that I would probably be coming to school here. My freshman year of softball has been unlike anything that I have ever experienced. In the fall I thought four hour practices were long and dang was I wrong. We came back after winter break a week early and had practices for nine hours. Yes nine! We did everything you could possibly think of for defense, hitting, base running, and lots of conditioning. I have never felt so old and sore in my life before. Every night after practice all of the team would go to ice bath and then have team dinner at Darren's or go out to eat. Most of the time we got olive garden or some type of pasta so that we could have energy for the next day. I really did not think that it was possible to be that tired and sore. It was a super long week but I felt like I improved and learned so much in just one week. We now live and breathe softball and school, we don't really have time to focus on anything else. In February we will start traveling all of the country to play teams. We get to go to the coolest places this year. WE start out playing at the University of Texas, then will also get to play against Alabama, Stanford, Hawaii, Maine, Maryland, Louisville and Baylor. Our coaches said that this is probably the toughest pre season schedule that we have ever had. So we have been working super hard. It is crazy to think that in less than a month the actual season will start and we will get back to playing games. After just practicing for about five months it gets you really excited to think about going somewhere warm and actually getting to play on dirt again. After preseason traveling we will get into our conference schedule that determines our seed for conference tournament which is our bid into post season. The team has won conference the past three years so there are a lot of expectations for how we will do this year. We want our seniors to always go out as champions so we will have to really come together as a team and play our best for that to happen. Not knowing what to expect is scary in some ways but so exciting in others. It is so intimidating to think of the big name schools we will be facing but then again it is just softball, a game that I have been playing since I was eight years old. Three weeks to practice as hard as we can and improve so that we are ready to bring it when it is go time.

Traveling

One thing that my family has done a lot of ever since I can remember is travel. I have been to so many places from such a young age that I can't remember them at all but I can say that I have been there. Our obsession with traveling stemmed from my dads passion for baseball. He decided one year that he wanted to visit every MLB (Major League Baseball) stadium in the U.S. With this goal they began to plan week long vacations that would take us to one or two stadiums and also allowed us to visit all of the cool places around that part of the country that we were going to. Most of the time these were all driving vacations. I can't tell you how many hours I have spent in a car. This summer alone our longest drive in one day was eight and a half hours! Riding in the car so much when I was young made it not seem so bad now because I am used to it. We have driven everywhere from California to Texas, Florida, and even New York. Every trip is completely different and we do so many cool new things depending on where the stadium is. My favorite stadium is of course Yankee Stadium. I am a huge Yankee and Diamondback fan so of course I like their stadiums the most but there is just something about the tangible atmosphere that surrounds Yankee Stadium. My favorite traveling trips are always ones that are close to the ocean. I love the beach and surfing in the waves. We have done so many crazy things on these vacations as well. In Kentucky we stayed in a cabin and went hiking in these huge underground caves. One vacation to see the Blue Jays stadium we drove all the way around the Great Lakes and got to see Niagara Falls. I couldn't tell you a favorite out of all of the trips we have taken because I have so much fun doing all of these crazy things. My family finished all of the baseball stadiums when I was in seventh grade so of course my dad had to come up with something new to base our vacations around. Now we are broadening our travels and going all over the world. Our favorite way to do this is by cruising. I have been on five different cruises that have taken me many places all over the Caribbean. We have been to several ports in Mexico, the Bahamas, Jamaica, Roatan, Belize, Grand Cayman and several other smaller island nations. I love going on cruises because every night you go to bed and wake up in a totally different place ready for a day full of brand new adventures. The best cruise I have been on was around the Hawaiian Islands. We went zip lining, whitewater tubing, swam in and jumped off of waterfalls. There was no other way to explain it other than simply amazing. Over Christmas break my family recently went on a cruise to Jamaica, the Bahamas, and a few private islands. The waters are crystal clear making it perfect for snorkeling. I am an outdoor fanatic and there is so many things to do in the ocean. My favorite has to be snorkeling. The bottom of the ocean is so mysterious and interesting I could spend hours diving around looking at all the the fish and sea creatures. The next cruise that we want to go on is to Europe to see Spain, France, Italy and so many other places. I love that my family travels everywhere and I have had the chance to make all of these amazing memories with the people that I love.

Intro

Hi,
My name is Vanessa Anderson. I am a freshman at NDSU in English 120. Writing in color will turn normal words on your page into pictures in your head.