Critique of a Story Pitch

I enjoyed the majority of all of these oral stories for the most part. However, one in particular really grabbed my attention and that was Jen Lugo’s story on how a team mate on her cheerleading squad quit on them because they didn’t win anything for many years, and continued to lose. That character in her story I believe learned the hard way to never give up on something or you could loose your chance to obtain it. She wanted to give up because she was being a soar loser, and in my opinion karma bit her in the ass in the end. Jen stated how her coach said it was her moment to shine and how they practiced a routine, went to nationals and won their competition. Her story really reminded me of the comedy movie “Bring it on” made back in 2000 because of it’s reconciliation with the subject matter of cheerleading. Though I thought this story was really good because it conveyed symbolic material within it on how to not give up on your dreams. There were some things I still would have changed or if anything elaborated on. For example, the girl who quit and wrote a nasty letter to the coach and team on why she did. I feel like her true purpose could have been something more than just because she didn’t win any awards on her team from cheerleading. Maybe she wanted to try something different with her life and was forced into cheerleading by her parents, or maybe she got hurt at a practice one day. Either way I just really felt this character played a key role in Jen’s story. I also wanted to hear a comment on her reaction when she found out the former cheerleading team that she quit on that year won their national competition. I feel that maybe, it could have been Jen all along that should have taken that role of being thrown into the air during their competitions and what not. When I really sat down to think about it I thought that if this girl had been on the squad for years, shouldn’t she have developed better skills for her competitions? Maybe I’m just thinking too much into this story but I just feel like it was really ironic on how the year she quit’s and is being a soar loser, her team goes off to nationals and wins first place in their league. Then again they could have had a new coach, or new team members along with a new routine. All of which again are some other thing’s in this story I feel should have been more elaborated on for the sake of her audience. Still, this story provided the audience with a lesson to never give up on yourself or your team to achieve a goal. It could just come back to bite you in the ass like it did with the girl who quit on her squad in this story.

Assignment 2 (Something I regret)

There are a number of things that I regreat from my past, but there is one in particular that I regret above all else, even although I felt it had a purpose. The action that I committed and regretted took place a long time ago. Way back when I was either a freshman or sophmore in highschool. I have a litter sister named Jenny and she was in middle school at the time. I have a close relationship with my sister, and I remember her coming home from school at the begining of the year telling me how she had a crush on a boy named Jason. After I heard this, I felt some what protective over her. Knowing how guys can be with girls in relationships. Based on my past experience, I told her to play it cool and just be a good friend of his. A month went by and she became close with him and his group of friends in that short amount of time. My sister Jenny would continuously come home and say how much she wanted to be his girlfriend and how much she loved him. I told her “Your way too young to understand what love is, but you will learn from your experiences with relationships”. She then asked me how she could become his girlfriend, and I told her to talk to him in private and let him know her feelings for him. The next day she did just that and luckily for her, he had feelings for her as well. They started going out, I got introduced to him and he was a nice kid. They were together for months and as time went on, I noticed a change in Jenny’s mood when she would come home from school. She would come home upset that Jason wasn’t paying enough attention to her. A week later she came home bawling her eyes out because he had dumped her. I felt so bad because not only had he dumped her, he had dumped her for another girl, and turned his friends against her as well. She told me how he had called her an “ugly anorexic bitch”, I told her to ignore him and that she could find someone better. That night however I witnessed her cut herself with a kitchen knife. After witnessing that I felt obligated to seek revenge on this kid Jason. I tracked him down on AIM made screen names and manipulated every friend and every girlfriend he had that year to go against him. He literally went through seven different girls, but by the end of the year no one wanted him, and no one wanted to be friends with him either. I had made his life a living hell, and I honestly took pride in it. One day however, my pride faded when he told me his parents had gone through a rough divorce. I soon regretted making his life more miserable by doing that stuff to him.