Insecurities

Bigotry and judgment are the height of insecurity.

Jasmine Guy

The book Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe describes how life is all about your insecurities and how it is important to overcome everyone one of them. But before you can overcome insecurities, you must discover them first. This book, shows the life of Okonkwo and his struggle to discover himself.

Okonkwo, is a well known man in his tribe who had both wealth and status. Along with his status, came many wives, many children, and many problems. He hid his insecurities the same 
way as modern leaders do today. On page 144 of Things Fall Apart, Nwoye betrays his father by saying “He is not my father.” Okonkwo kept this to himself and did not tell anybody about this experience. He wanted to hide all of his insecurities and everything that made him feel like a failure.

Life is about discovering the person that you are, and following the set of values that you create for yourself. Many people find out what they believe in during their adolescent years. I believe that this is the time that people discover how they feel about the world and every problem in it. You begin to discover your life, because you have begun to experience it. You begin to understand all of the horrible things that can happen to yourself and other people. At this point in your life, the actions that you make, have consequences.

Being a child, consists of copying idols, wanting to be exactly like your parents, and learning from the mistakes that you make. As a child, in most cases, you have very little responsibility. As you grow up, things that were told to you in your childhood are put on display. Some of these things have different meaning now. You set different goals for yourself then your parents had for you. Your adolescent years, are about discovering these goals. Okonkwo discovered his goals for his life a little bit earlier than most people. He described his father as a failure. On page 13 of Things Fall Apart, Achebe describes this by saying "[Okonkwo's] whole life was dominated by fear, the fear of failure and of weakness." The rest of the book follows about revealing the person that Okonkwo was.

The entire plot of Things Fall Apart describes how a person finds himself. Okonkwo pushes his goal to never be a failure or to be somebody who is was lazy and opinionless to the maximum. Slowly but surely, he begins to fall apart. He tries to make his son feel the guilt of not being a true "man". The culture that Okonkwo was raised in, made him believe that because his father was not the most powerful, and although he did not always speak his honest mind, he was not a man. One of Okonkwo's sons begins to follow in his fathers footsteps and he has difficulty dealing with it. This was one of Okonkwo’s insecurities.

Life is short which means that by the time you find yourself, you have little left to live. It is not possible to be your honest self when society and people that you love are constantly expecting change and better things from you. Society causes you to become more insecure with your struggles within yourself. Everybody has a clear destined path, but it takes time and experimentation to find out which path that you belong on. Every mistake that you make on your quest to find your path can become an insecurity if you let it. Overcoming insecurities, requires you to be 100% devoted to the goals that you set for yourself. Being confident in yourself, your likes, and your goals, is most important about being secure with yourself.

Ethnography Preconceptions

Jillianne Hovland and I will cooperate together in the completion of our ethnography project. The main focus of this project is to observe the differences of our experiences throughout youth hockey. Both Jilli and I grew up playing hockey in Buffalo but as we have gotten older, the program has changed dramatically. We grew up playing girls hockey through the Buffalo Youth Hockey Association. Girls and boys programs are completely different in this association.
The goal for the project we are beginning, is to identify how the Squirt Player Development Camp is run, how the boys react, the atmosphere of the people playing and observing along with their comments, and also the ice sheet and how it is used. To complete our observations, we will be observing their practice and conducting interviews with three to four of the boys and also two coaches. We will be in contact with the coordinator of the Buffalo Civic Center as our broker.
As I have grown up in the association, I know how much of the girls program is run and how it works. I do not have any brothers or any relatives that play boys hockey for our association. USA Hockey has implemented  ADM  (American Development Model) into youth practices. Both girls and boys use this model in certain practices that are usually done weekly. Another thing that happens in youth hockey is that before tryouts there is a series of practices that are considered "clinics" to prepare you for tryouts.
I have many preconceptions as I begin to think more about how this observation will go. First off, I believe that at the beginning of practice the boys will come out and show off all their moves and spend the beginning of their practice socializing with their friends. The better stronger players will line up towards the front of the lines. Next, I would assume that because it's a development camp, the majority of the practice will be individual skill based. I believe that at least 10 minutes of the practice will be competitive games and races. When we interview the players, I feel as though some will feel stressed with the thought of preparing for tryouts and finding out the teams that they will spend their year on, where as other boys will feel excited for the season and not have a worry in the world to which team that they make. The coaches that we interview will share a different take on these camps. They will notice all the incorrect forms and "bad" things that the kids they are coaching are doing wrong.
Overall, I feel prepared to start observing and learning about the boys youth hockey program. I have quite a few preconceptions that may or may not be true. Playing girls hockey, I have a background that will help me piece together what is happening on the ice and understanding the reactions with different people.