Journal Six- Castillo

Arturo Castillo

English 1109 at 1:30 M-W

10/21/2020

Journal Six

 

 

                This book was a great read since it taught us so much from the perspective of Maurice Clarett. The first takeaway from the book is hard work and commitment. Clarett taught us that life is not fair but if you work your ass off success will come. He worked to be a freshman starter for OSU, hustled to where he is today through hard times even with having jail time on his record.           

            The second takeaway that got me was the weirdness in this world. We all live different lives living in the same country to achieve the American Dream. We as people all have a different set of hands or lifestyles in this world and some people aren’t that blessed as others. The part the hit me the hardest in this book was when Clarett in the chapter “Champion” where he could not attend his friend Juan’s funeral since he came from a negative background. He said “When you come out of that, just to survive and escape it is like a full-time job. It is traumatic. That level of stress is literally causing trauma to your brain. You’re dealing with so much hate and tension and dysfunction and death that you don’t realize how dysfunctional it is until you go and try to live a normal life.”( Clarett 135 ). I lived a weird life in the Air Force in these words really hit me hard that I see myself in a similar boat at times.

The last takeaway I got from the zoom meeting was success. Clarett said in the call was that success is different for everyone. We all as individuals have different meanings of success in our minds. It could commonly be just getting through college and getting a great paying job. Like he said it changes as we get older and I agree with that statement since my view on success was different from when I was younger.