EPTTable tennis is a joke. That is, it’s certainly the butt of many jokes. See the summer blockbuster “Balls of Fury.” The way it’s depicted in this dazzling docudrama of realism, you would think it required a complex blend of mixed martial arts and ballet…if you were extremely gullible. Suffice to say that in pop culture, table tennis is something of a punchline.
To others, table tennis is simply not a sport. It’s not something that requires genuine dexterity or strength. After all, the players are just standing at a table bouncing a ball across a miniature net. If Forrest Gump can do it, anybody can.
But you need only look at my incredibly huge, ripped, and sexy right arm to know that that’s not all there is to it. Table tennis has gifted me with muscle mass that I may have never attained otherwise; who knows, I may have remained a skinny little Asian boy forever. But now, I’m a somebody. Guys want to be me. Girls want to be with me.
A hotel room. Bass that can render you sterile. Tight black leather pants. A full can of Axe body spray. These were the ingredients I chose to create one of my famous parties. But then I accidentally added some extra components to the debauchery! Discipline. Grit. Focus. Stamina—both physical and emotional. Then the party became a table tennis player. And it made grown men lose bowel control. All the aforementioned traits, party items aside, are essential if you want to win a match, or at least lose without crying like a pansy. Most importantly, however, to improve as a player, I needed to learn a lesson my coach has always tried to impart to his students: to play free, to perform without inhibition or fear of losing. Both these things are crippling to the player locked in intense ping-pong combat. And so I had to muster up my self-confidence and separate my self-esteem from my victories; I don’t need to win to feel that I’m worthwhile. I play not for the sake of standing on a podium but for the pleasure of honing and enjoying my skills earned over years of drills and tournaments. And for the pride I take in knowing I could break a jaw or kill a squirrel with my forehand loop. I play just because that’s how I roll. No matter what the outcomes of my matches are, I’m still going to play like a gangsta, and look good doing it.
That’s what I’ve learned.
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This essay needs a lot of work. It seems a little bit like you are taking this as a joke. Please try to make this article a little bit more serious. You might want to gear the article a little bit more towards how different activities are undertaken at Harker, how we are not all one-dimensional students, that we have various interests that span many different fields, from video games, to table tennis, to playing football at lunch. You don't really say what you learned from this experience, either. You merely state that you are now a "gangsta" no matter how your matches go. That doesn't really tell the reader what you have taken away or how this relates at all to the NHS pillars. You were initially fine, until you reached the "sexy arm" bit. Try toning it down and talk a little bit more about the NHS character side of the activity, rather than the aesthetic value you seem to have taken away from the experience. Please try to remove as many colloquialisms or somewhat crude jokes. Try to represent the values that you think we as a club would uphold. Would you submit this to your English teacher as a real paper? Take the perspective of the complete stranger who might be reading this in the newsletter. Will they feel inspired and impressed by the story you tell? We were hoping that you would use this article showcase our community's "unique" talents.
