Paper 1 - Educational Narrative Final Draft

How I learned to snowboard

            I started snowboarding when I was in ninth grade, so when I was about fourteen years old. Many of my friends participated in ski school, which was offered through our junior high and high school. I had seen how much fun they had, so I decided to give it a try. Ski school was on Saturdays and they started very early in the morning. We had to be to the bus by 5:00 am so we could make it up to the mountain and have plenty of time for snowboarding.

            The first Saturday of ski school is the one I remember the most. Being a teenager I loved to sleep in, so getting up at 4 am was not the most ideal situation. However I wanted to learn to snowboard, so I got up and made it to the bus on time. The bus ride to Stevens Pass was about 3 hours and in order to save time we had to change into our ski clothes on the bus. Being almost six feet tall at the time this was rather difficult, because I hardly had enough room to get everything on. Although, it did prove to save time and before I knew it I was off the bus and ready to get on the mountain.

Thankfully, as a part of ski school I had lessons and that was the first thing we did. The lessons were about two hours long and because I was in the beginner’s class and it was everyone’s first time snowboarding, we started by learning how to get up. When you stand up on a snowboard you almost immediately start moving, so even though this sounds pretty simple, it proved to be rather difficult. The first fifteen to twenty attempts, I would stand up and within ten seconds fall right back down to the ground where I had started. Eventually I got the hang of standing up. The next thing we learned was how to go down the mountain. This was way more difficult than standing up, because it required us to maintain balance while moving and to control where we were going. Unfortunately for this first lesson we were only able to learn a little bit of this, because after about forty five minutes of it our lesson was over.

            After my lesson I met up with some of my friends who had already done ski school for a couple of years and we went to lunch. This was exactly what I needed, after just a couple hours of snowboarding I was already tired, and this let me recharge my batteries. However, little did I know that how I would really learn to snowboard was still to come. You see after lunch I went out with my friends, but they did not want to go on the boring beginner runs that I had been doing and was more comfortable with. They wanted me to go with them and told me I’d do fine on some of the intermediate runs. Now don’t forget this was my first day ever on a snowboard and intermediate runs were steeper, longer, and had narrower trails than beginner ones. The thought of going on an intermediate run was intimidating and felt like I was attempting an expert run. I was definitely uncertain about it, but after talking with my friends, they somehow convinced me to go.

            The first challenge I had to deal with on the intermediate run was the chair lift. The hard part about chair lifts for snowboarders is getting off, because we only have one foot strapped in. It is very easy for your other foot to slip off and make you fall right in front of the other people getting off at the same time. The difficulty was the speed of the chair lift, because on the beginner run the chair lift was much slower and gave me more time to get off. Now I was on a much faster lift and one that felt like it hardly slowed down so I could get off. So I was very worried and of course fell as I got off.

            After falling, I moved to the side, strapped my other foot in, and was ready to go. My trip down the mountain took about a half an hour due to my constant falling. I honestly couldn't tell you how many times I fell on that run, but it was definitely a lot. I fell so many times that I found myself getting frustrated and thought that when I finally get down the mountain I was never going up again. However, I did notice as I got farther down the mountain I was learning from each of my falls. I found myself able to stay up just a little bit longer than when I started the run. My progress at the time felt painstakingly slow, but it was progress.

When I finally reached the bottom and met my friends, who had made it down the mountain in about five minutes, they told me to go again. I was very hesitant, because of how much I fell on the first run. However, I realized that falling was a part of learning, so I agreed and went back up. I fell even fewer times the second time down the run, which was very encouraging, so I continued to go down it all day. Each time falling less and improving my snowboarding skills.

            The reason this experience was significant to me was because I didn't just learn to snowboard that day. I learned that not giving up is important and can make you successful. I also learned that sometimes taking a risk, which was going down the intermediate run in my case, can be frustrating, yet rewarding. If I hadn't gone down that run I would not have learned to snowboard as fast as I did. I would probably have stayed on the beginner run and learned at a much slower rate. The saying “you learn by doing” was absolutely true in my case.