As a part of a division 1 college cross country team, I am true thankful for the opportunity that others could only wish for... Unfortunately, theres always a dark side to everything that happens in my life. As a freshman, I ran terribly. I was nervous, scared, and always depressed. I was varsity but with terrible times. I grew and matured as most college kids do and by my sophomore year I was leading the team. I consistently ran in the low 19s and led the team with an iron will to win. The down side is that my coach despises me because I am not the type of athlete who sucks up or lays at some ...continued...

Ariana felt the warm sand sliding between her toes, heard the distant crash of the water smashing on promontory rocks. Not for her the water's edge. The vastness of the ocean was a strange and fearful thing, and creatures lurked beneath it; she'd heard the sailors' tales when she worked the tavern houses and inns, and did not wish to find herself bewitched beneath the waves. And yet, her eyes kept straying there. So beautiful and savage was the sea. Swirling and surging now with a contained rage, blue and green and gray by turns, and powerful, flecked with the gold of a high mor ...continued...

Happiness is not being pained in the body or troubled in the mind. There was a time not so long ago when I could barely walk or move easily at all. My livelihood was being taken from me and I was depressed and miserable. Doctors told me that my arthritis could be managed but that it wouldn't get any better. Well it DID GET BETTER. Because I did something about it. I educated myself, I learned to lap swim. I listened to my body and developed a bodyrolling technique. i experimented. I found myself out of necessity chasing arthritis relief nearly everyday. I also found that with out a doubt a ...continued...

Mom was my best friend and though I feel her presence around me often, it is always strongest during Mother’s Day. Two years ago I was in a very dark place, overwhelmed with the chaos in my life I decided it was time to work on my office at home, trying to find and create order. As I opened a file drawer to clean it out, inside was an old blue folder with papers inside. Keep or throw I wondered as I opened the folder. Inside was a copy of the Constitution of the United States, the one mom helped me memorize in 8th grade. Ne ...continued...

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In 1993, I thought of the next 5 years as being light years away. The only things I were planning was when and where I would meet for happy hour on Friday and what girl could I could meet while I was there. In 1998, that is exactly what I had become: happy hour and non committed relationships. I had received exactly what I had thought about over the previous 5 years. Nothing more. Nothing less. Thoughts Whatever you believe our creator to be, it has given to us the undeniable ability to choose our thoug ...continued...

Watch Out For Bears Read any literature from Yellowstone National Park today and you’ll find all sorts of warnings about feeding the bears or otherwise interfering with their normal beary kinds of activities. Occasionally you may see in the news a sad story about some unwary hiker, or worse a tale of some misguided nature nut who thought he could commune with the wild beasts, who gets mauled by a bear. People know, for the most part, anyway, that they need to stay out of the bear’s comfort zone. Which is why I just can’t under ...continued...

I was born in London in 1952 to Irish born parents. They both came from Monkstown, a pretty village on Cork harbour about eight miles from Cork city. It was here that I spent my first twenty summers. This wonderful experience caused me to view Ireland through rose-tinted glasses for ever more. Before the opening of Cork airport, in 1961, our annual pilgrimage started on a train from Paddington Station, in London. It took us to Fishguard, a port on the Welsh coast. Then we boarded the Innisfallen ferry, which passed Monkstown on its way up the river Lee to the docks in Cork city. The first p ...continued...

This question was often asked of me while I attempted to get my first “serious” job. It was a difficult, philosophical question to answer. Looking back on those times, I wonder if the enquirer had asked it because he could not remember why he himself had chosen to become an accountant. Nearing retirement, the job interviewer hoped that this young, fresh-faced interviewee might retrospectively give meaning and justification to the previous thirty years of his working life. Unfortunately, there was no blinding flash of wisdom from the mouth of this babe accountant. Shortly after I ...continued...

I do believe I am an open-minded person and it is very important to me to understand and respect all different kinds of cultures. I think providing equal services to all clients and patients is important, because due to their race, culture, language barrier, gender, sexuality, etc... all of that is important to understand and take into account- but not to discriminate. It would be misconduct to treat a patient differently due to those factors. For example, for question 18. Some symbols—a positive nod of the head, a pointing finger, a “thumbs-up” sign—are u ...continued...

~~A BOOKWORM AT GIRL SCOUT CAMP In the 1950’s my family moved from a little Missouri town to the small town in Indiana where my father grew up. We lived with our grandparents for a few months while my father started a new job and we found a house to rent. My little brother and sister, ages six and five respectively, roamed my grandparents’ big back yard and the neighborhood, but I asked if I might read the old books I saw in the parlor bookcases. My grandmother, usually so strict about us not touching her possessions, gave me permission. I read from books that far exceeded my s ...continued...

Today we woke up to more of the same. A howling wind and violently flapping tent walls. We discovered that the wind, which is from the north, is rapidly pushing us back to our start location from yesterday. We call it a hamster wheel when the ice beneath our feet moves as quickly south as we move north. Since we are tent bound I have felt a survival mode kick in with both of us. I found myself hoarding the last of my Pop-Tarts as I secretly tried to eat them inside my sleeping bag, denying their very existence when questioned by Mike over the noisy wrappers giving me up. From the crunching ...continued...

As a child, I lived in a poor neighborhood but I always wanted to help others even when I was unable to help myself. I grew up with an innate desire to one day to be able to help others to be all they could be in society. In the course of my teen years I made some mistakes that later I counts as blessings. I became a teenage mother who dropped out of school and married. My marriage was not successful so I got a divorce. I wind up working in textiles to support my children. One thing remained constant over the course of my life was the fact I never lost the desire to help others. To fast for ...continued...

I had a best friend while we were living in Gold Hill. Her name was Gail Stevens. We were really close. She's part Native American. She told she was part Cherokee. One day while we were at recess, we decided to sneak off and go across the road over to the cemetary. To this day I'm stillnot sure why we did it, I guess we were just curios. Well we were walking around and came up to a shed. All of a sudden we heard a noise, it sounded like a ghost, being only 6 years old you would think that we were scared, well we weren't. Next thing we know the grounds keeper jumped out ...continued...

I always felt intrigued by her. She had a bad reputation, and I knew the reason why she got kicked out of the school I went to. She was friends with a group of people I used to hang out with, but that was just about it. We never had a conversation or anything, and I thought she didn't like me at all. She always gave me weird looks and such. We were 16 when we had our first conversation. That day, we connected. I never thought we would ever have a conversation, so I was really surprised about that. The few bad things I knew abou ...continued...