This past summer was one that I devoted to purely improving myself physically. My days were simple. I woke up, ate breakfast, found ways to entertain myself, ate lunch, biked to the gym, worked out, biked home, ate dinner with my family, ran around the track and up and down the bleachers at my high school, then slept. By the month of August I was in the best shape of my life, but still I could not truthfully say that I was living a completely fulfilled life. I was missing my friends from college. I spent too much time playing video games. I was bored. Simply put, something was missing.
I realized what my problem was one night in July. It came to me as an epiphany where the light shined brightly and it was at that moment that I finally achieved “true enlightenment.” I was driving home from my high school track after a particularly tough run. My mom, who would join me at the high school and walk the track while I ran, was sitting in the passenger seat. We were having a conversation like any other: talking about how good it feels to exercise, if she hatched any eggs on Pokemon Go during her walk, and whatever was happening in the world of boys’ club volleyball.
Then we started to have a deeper conversation, which isn’t too uncommon in the Bockholt household. The topic changed to the purpose of life and what everyone wants in life. It was then that I realized that everything I had done that summer and everything in life was with one purpose in my subconscious: to connect.
I live to connect with others. Admittedly, I believe that everyone has this purpose as well. People become lonely and isolated when they cannot connect with others. Other people make life worth living. Personal accomplishments are more meaningful when you can share them with those who support you and helped you succeed. Meaningful connections are social in nature.
Being a part of a community is essential to connecting with others. It gives a person a common attribute that allows one to share a piece of their life with others. Meaningful connections occur when one can build many ties with another individual. Not only is being a community member important for one’s ability to connect with others, it is incredibly easy to be a member of a community. Communities can be as large as ethnic communities which encompass entire races of people to as tight as a sports team who have spent years practicing together with one common goal.
At the University of Michigan, I am a member of many different communities. My membership in certain communities is integral to who I am and has given me incredible opportunities to connect.
I am a member of the Athletic Training student community who all share the same major. We understand the challenges associated with taking classes and completing our clinical experiences with the various sports teams at the University of Michigan. This connection makes the college experience seem more manageable as I realize that there are others doing the same thing that I am doing and others who can and will help me succeed as a future Athletic Trainer.
One of my proudest accomplishments in life is my presence as a member of the Stamps Leadership Scholars community. This is a group of incredible intellectuals across many of the University’s schools who aspire to contribute to the greater community after graduation. This group of scholars was also the first people I met when I came to Michigan. A weekend before starting classes, my fellow freshmen Stamps Scholars and I had the opportunity to go on a retreat to get to know each other. The impact of this weekend will be felt until the day I die as my closest friendships were developed on this trip. An excellent example of a connection took place during the Challenge Program when we worked through a high ropes course. As I stood 30-feet in the air with just a harness as a safety, I had to connect with my partner on the ground to ensure that I would be safe. This connection was vocalized through me shouting “Permission to transfer?!” followed by a loud “Permission granted!” from Andrew on the ground, indicating it was acceptable for me to transfer my safety harness to the next line. This connection with Andrew would continue to blossom and is alive today as I can confidently say he is one of my closest friends I have met at Michigan and will continue to be one into the distant future. This community of Stamps Scholars is even greater as I am close with many of the 72 scholars at Michigan, living with six of them this past year and going on memorable experiences with the greater community such as an Alternate Spring Break and a National Convention in Atlanta.
I live to connect with the feeling, the moment, and the experience. This is most apparent for me when I attend sporting events. As cliché as it sounds, I have simply always loved sports; all my life I have had a passion for games that involved teams and a ball. As a child and teenager, I played recreational soccer, basketball, flag football, little league and travel ball baseball, golf and club volleyball.
Personal sport successes amount to astonishing feelings. While it is undoubtedly a great feeling to win a game, I am actually referring to each minor sports success as the true “feeling.” These minor successes lead to a special “feeling” one gets from the release of a basketball that ends up with a perfect “swish” sound as the ball travels through the net. This feeling comes from the vibrations of a baseball bat that hits the baseball just in that sweet spot of the barrel of the bat. It comes from the club contacting the ball on the perfect tee shot on the first hole of a golf course. As a setter on the club volleyball team, I feel this feeling the most when I get under the ball and connect my fingertips softly with the volleyball and proceed to push the ball into the perfect position for my teammate to hit the ball. The feeling I get is one full of adrenaline, relief, and glory. I have connected with the ball in the exact fashion that I needed to so that I can feel a sense of accomplishment knowing that I did the best that I could have done. This feeling is not one that should be written about, but one that must be felt.
Looking back at a certain landmark moment in my life, I realize now why it was so memorable. The moment took place at a Stanford basketball game on February 7th, 2004. It was such a significant moment for me because it represents the first time that I can remember that I truly connected with a moment. Fortunately for you, it was captured and preserved so that we can view the moment today. For most sports moments I share, I feel it is necessary to give significant background to the play, but for this it is only important that one watches and listens to the moment (though there is a great wealth of background that gives the play even more astonishing qualities found here: http://www.stanforddaily.com/miracle-at-maples/ ). The play can be viewed and heard here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nmlTWtxyAhQ . It was a defining moment in my life because I can still picture the exact experience even without watching the video (though I have watched the video hundreds of times). Nick Robinson jumping into the air just a few steps in front of mid court, the ball travelling through the net, the students storming the courts, my Grandma sitting next to me celebrating the miracle that just occurred are all perfectly preserved in my mind. I felt connected with every Stanford fan in Maples Pavilion that night. I felt connected with that feeling of adrenaline and pure glee. I felt connected with that moment. The next morning I had to feel that same feeling I felt in that moment the night before, so I went in to my backyard which had a 5-foot tall Fisher-Price basketball hoop and I practiced that same shot that Nick Robinson made to win the game, over and over and over again.
Moments like the ones I just described show that in order to be meaningful, it is imperative that you feel the sensation in your body. You feel the joy and excitement in your blood as you are overcome with emotion. Almost impossibly, you can feel that same joy and excitement in every fan around you. Being in a social context allows you to share the feelings associated with triumph and defeat which adds meaning to life.
I write to connect.
I write to connect ideas. These connections are directly related to the process of writing and the personal effects it has on me. When I write, I see myself as a being whose mind is swirling with thoughts flying like crazy around in a cloud above me. The process of writing involves organizing these ideas in a meaningful order and making sure these concepts are all connected in one way or another. In this way, I am “connecting the dots.”
In the academic setting, this process can be incredibly easy or ridiculously tough. It largely depends on my ability to connect with the prompt. If a prompt allows me the ability make a connection to my life I have an easier time finding the structure and wording of my paper. It is enjoyable to write about topics that I see a real connection to my life. I love to think about empathy, so naturally I find it easier to write about empathy and compassion. This is certainly evident when reading my Repurposing, which was a piece where the words basically wrote themselves once I made the connection of empathy to the current state of the United States regarding the Muslim Ban.
I rarely write with a non-academic purpose, with the few exceptions being written forms of communication and shotgun writings. I will talk further about the written communication in the next section, but wanted to expand on the shotguns further here. The shotgun writing style was first introduced to me during my Freshman year of high school and then reintroduced during my Junior year when I had the same teacher. The basic process of writing the paper was simple, have a blank piece of paper out in front of you and take a pen and write for 10 minutes straight. Write as fast as your hand will let you and do not stop writing until the 10 minutes is done. This style of writing is just a transcription of one’s train of thought, but I find it to be therapeutic. It eases my mind when I can spew out all my thoughts on to a piece of paper. It is not my intention to write to anyone, but I do write to a “you.” In this way, I am writing to myself and thusly connecting with myself.
I write to connect with others. This is a noteworthy reason that I read and write. If I did not write, I would still be able to have a life full of connections. I would still be a part of many different organizations on campus, each providing unique social contexts to connect with others on deeper levels. I would still have sports that allow me to create meaningful connections based on feelings and emotions.
The thing that reading and writing enable me to do is connect with those outside of my social groups. For example, reading pieces from writers who are culturally different from me allows me to gain new perspectives and interact with new ideas that I would never encounter if I was to only exchange ideas within my friend and family groups. Conversely, I am able to share my own beliefs through writing with people who I would not normally be able to connect with. Without writing, I would have difficulty expressing my feelings toward the Muslim Ban.
Furthermore, reading and writing provide me with information that allows me to make more meaningful connections. I first heard about the Michigan Club Volleyball team while reading about Recreational Sports at the University. As a result of my reading on this club I have been able to connect with my teammates as we practice throughout the year, working toward one common goal to achieve success at the National Championship Tournament in April. One reason that I have become such an active member of the volleyball community in general is because the people are outstanding and thanks to volleyball, I have been able to make numerous meaningful connections with these volleyball players, coaches, and fans. Without the communication of ideas through writing, I may never have been able to make these connections.
I write to express my feelings. This normally is inspired by overwhelming feelings of gratitude. I have found that I can relate to the quote, “Having gratitude and not expressing it is like wrapping a gift but not giving it.” This quote has been the opening line in many emails and letters I have written to teachers, coaches, and impactful individuals in my life. When I send these thank you notes, I generally don’t get a response for a long time, but when I do, they are incredibly positive and powerful. Writing to say thanks is not difficult, but it more than worth it.
Writing gives me the platform to voice my convictions. I get to share my passions with others through writing, just as I have just done through this project. Like I have said, I write to connect and I hope that you connect with my writing.
Why I Connect
