Diary of a Sailor: From Actively Participanting to Actively Observing

Hello again everyone,

It’s been a fun week and hopefully another’s to come! March has been really hectic so far and it seems like the end of freshman year is already right around the corner. I’ve learned pretty quickly that high school is going to blow by in an instant, already selecting courses and making decisions for next year. Seeing that our tennis season ended in November and now that the boys are beginning makes it seem even hastier. It really makes me wish we could have tennis season year-round and not have the girls matches be over by the second month of school.

Still, this past week our Newport Harbor boys varsity tennis team’s preseason began, and of course, the girls’ team is there to support. They started out strong with an 18-0 win over Estancia, but unfortunately were blown away the next day 14-4 by Corona del Mar. This past weekend they competed in an on-going tournament with several different schools and hopefully will come out on top. All Sailor fans can come show their support this week when the boys play Laguna on Thursday!

In other news, I mentioned that I already have to select what courses I will want to be taking next year. I was talking about making the decision between taking AP World History or AP European History. Both classes seem interesting to me and I liked both teachers, but I think I’m leaning more towards AP Euro because I will enjoy the curriculum more. Personally, I’m more interested in learning about the Renaissance than what occurred before Christ with civilizations like the Incas and Aztecs. Plus, the class gets to take a trip to Europe, which sounds like a great experience.

Lastly, I wanted to talk about my Chinese Mandarin course that I am taking online and the feeling of a virtual classroom. To anyone interested in taking any sort of online course, I have a few pros and cons from my perspective. As far as pros, I think that taking an online course is really fun and it’s exciting to interact with people from across the country or even the world. I also think the process of submitting your work is very simple and easy to comprehend. It can also be a great way to take a course like health that you don’t want to take in a real classroom or if you want to jump ahead in a class’ level of difficulty. Luckily, there are few cons. The only negative aspect I would say is that it is hard to get all of your questions answered and you probably won’t get as much one-on-one time as you would like.

Wrapping up, hope that everybody has a fantastic week!

Kate

(Editor's note: If you are a student-athlete at Corona del Mar, Newport Harbor or Sage Hill and would like to write a weekly diary for Patch, please contact sports editor Bob Rohwer @ bob.rohwer@patch.com.)