Bartlett, and to my disappointment she told me that the topic was too broad and that I needed to focus on a particular aspect in sports. After careful consideration, I chose to write about steroids and its effects on teenage athletes.
This was the first research paper that I had ever been assigned, so I did not know how or where to get started. This was a time when steroids were a large issue in baseball. Major League Baseball stars like Alex Rodriguez and Sammy Sosa were being busted for doping. There had also been a local issue of steroid abuse in my county. A local high school football team's coaches were distributing steroids to their players to try and gain a competitive edge. I thought I knew a good bit about steroids due to these events, so I thought I would I just sit down and start writing. I was in for a rude awakening. I sat and stared at my computer screen, hoping for inspiration. Days had gone by, and I still had no work to show for it. I found myself getting frustrated and wanting to give up on writing the paper. I would type several paragraphs then delete them, thinking that they were not satisfactory. I was not only disappointed in myself, but also in my writing ability. I felt defeated. I was at the point to where I wanted to quit before I even got started! These were some of the frustrations that I often felt in the past with writing assignments. In fact, these frustrations that I was feeling were the reasons I hated to write. .
The next day I went into class ready to let all my frustrations out on my teacher, but something stopped me as I walked into class that day. Up on the board, Mrs. Bartlett had written a quote by Jim Tully that said, "Long patience and application saturated with your heart's blood-you will either write or you will not-and the only way to find out whether you will or not is to try." I had a weird feeling as if the quote was put up there specifically for me.
