Football

On Saturday, October 26, I played my last football game.  Even now, almost a week after the game, I still don't think the fact that my high school football career is over has hit me. I don't know if I want it to. Every fall for the last six years my life has been dictated by practices, games, and recovery from said games. It has taught me to learn from my failures and be respectful in victory. It taught me that teamwork is the key to success. After six years of being on a football team, one third of my life, I will probably never put on pads again. Probably. 

One of the varsity sports offered at the Naval Academy is sprint football. Sprint football is exactly like regular football, except everyone has to be 172 pounds or lighter. This makes everyone on the field around the same size. I would have to drop a little weight, but according to some sprint football players at the Academy I talked to, if someone really wants to play they can get down to the weight requirement. I am going back and forth on the pros and cons of trying to play. Obviously I love football and continuing to play it would be amazing, especially at the varsity level. I am concerned about the weight restrictions, however. I've heard of wrestlers who keep their weight at a constant number in order to stay in their weight class but end up stunting their growth in the long run. This is something I have to spend some time thinking about, and I have plenty of time to make a choice. 

What I Learned From My Shawshank Project

I learned many things about modern prisons and solitary confinement during this project. I never knew how big of an issue prison overpopulation is until I began researching it. I learned that solitary was invented by the Quakers as a way to force a criminal to come to peace with himself or herself. This sounds good, but after all my research, I believe that current solitary practices alone can not help an inmate become rehabilitated, and in many cases can actually hurt the inmate more. Solitary is used freely to combat prison gangs and violence, but gang activities and violence have increased in spite of it. I believe that solitary, while sometimes necessary, should come second to active rehabilitation programs that work towards helping the inmates re-asses their morals and reintroducing themselves back into society.

Learning about solitary helped me understand parts of Shawshank for several reasons, mostly because solitary was commonly used as a punishment for the inmates. Prisoners could be punished for things like talking back to guards, not doing work, or fighting. The actions that warranted solitary at Shawshank were not set in stone, rather it was up to the guards who went to solitary and how long. While solitary was a popular punishment in Shawshank, it was never talked about in detail. Learning about modern prisons also helped me understand a little about life inside Shawshank. While there were no "gangs" in Shawshank, the Sisters would be close to one. I'm sure there are guys in modern prisons who are similar to Red in that they can smuggle things into prison fairly easily.