Believing in Myself

WhoohoohoohooHOO!!! Although we are in week 9 of this semester out of 13, I have only received back three grades, and the paper I've been waiting for finally got put in my hand today. This paper was my ethics paper. I worked on it for a while, did the research, proofread it, all that jazz, spent time on it, and actually felt like I had handed in something up to my own standard, whereas a couple other things I have handed in I've known I could do better (and my grades have shown that). Now, this ethics paper was one where I felt like I did a good job, but talking to other people, they all seemed to answer it in a different way - everybody. I guess the topic was pretty open ended as to how you could go about answering it, but regardless, I felt like it was a good paper and I was confident handing it in - as long as the teacher understood where I was coming from (I did bring up abortion, which I feel is always a tricky subject to write about). But, as I am sure you could guess by my first sentence, I am so proud of myself! I got a D+!!! and that's a great thing here! It's a Distinction, which is one below High Distinction, which is very hard to get. I guess sometimes I need to have more confidence in myself.

This ties into a race a I did the other weekend...
A couple Sundays ago I joined in the fun of a team "quadrathlon." My family friends here - Jen, her husband Paul, and their brother-in-law Danny, needed a swimmer for the Coogee Beach Ocean Adventure race they were doing. Jen knows I swim, or at least like to swim, so I agreed. Well, I have never "swam" in the ocean. Laps that is. So I got my swim on - swam once in the ocean and once in the pool (I even bought a 10 punch pass which I have yet to use again) to get the feeling of 750m. Not much training for the big day. I was excited, but also scared I would "let them down" in my speed. I have never done an event like this, but have always wanted to. And it was SO MUCH FUN!!! My swim was the first part, so I put my bright yellow swim cap on, pulled the goggles over my eyes, and took off with the rest of the competitors down a stretch of the beach. Whoo - adrenaline rush for sure! It was over before I knew it. I ran my 200 or so metres (haha - I'm picking up Aussie spelling here and there as that is how I have to turn my essays in) to the transition zone and handed off my ankle bracelet with the timer to Danny of cyclist. Besides being attacked by stingers (little jellyfish like things) I was also bitten the the triathlon bug! I can not WAIT for next summer, or even the Stroke and Stride at the Boulder Reservoir. Overall, my team took 2nd out of 6 teams (there were many individual competitors who did all 4 parts themselves), competed against an Olympic triathlete, and had a blast - we are set to do more in the future. I did my 750m swim and 200m run in 15:02 minutes and was one of the first women out of the water! Again - I am so proud of myself!

Believing in myself is something I am working on, but I love proving myself wrong =D
But now, it's time to write that history paper...

Danny, Paul, Jen and me after we were all done with our race! A beautiful, sunny day!