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In all aspects of life, whether it be sports, your job, or even daily life, I believe that it is important to positively imagine yourself doing them to help you be successful. I learned this message from one high school football coaches, who believed that if you can visualize yourself making a play on the field, then only you are stopping yourself from making something happen. As I played played safety and he was our defensive back coach, we ended up spending a lot of time together during my four years. Before we began practice against the scout offense, he would tall us all to remember the film we had watched before, and visualize ourselves going up against the opposing team. To imagine what the players you are responsible for covering are going to do and where that means the ball is going. I found this strategy to not only help me with my vision on the field, but I also found it to boost my confidence before games. This use of external imagery allowed us to think of different situations that may occur in the game, and what we needed to do in response. So when game time arrived, we were ready to look for the visual cues we had already practiced against.
I chose an image of Charles Woodson to represent mental practice because he was one of the players that my high school coach would relate great vision and field imagery with.

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During my first two years of high school track, I found myself stuck in the middle trying to decide what kind of athlete I wanted to try and work to become. I was trying to decide whether I would continue with the distance running I had faired well with the past, or try and try my hand at hurdles and sprints as I had started to become faster. What my coaches and I came to agree upon was a mixture of them all. For most of the year, I competed in the 300m hurdles, 4x800m, and either the 200m, 400m, or the mile. This then led to some challenges in practice, as the coaches didn't know what group I should have been working with. They started with the idea that I would take turns with each group every other day, going from distance one day, hurdles on the next day, and then sprints the day after that. This training led me to start feeling very tired after a week of long practices. I began performing poorly at meets, and started to feel as though my practice methods had something to do with it. I spoke to the head coach about my concerns and he recommended that we try out having me work with multiple groups during a single practice and try and schedule it so I'm not involved in multiple hard workouts in a row. After using this practice method for a couple following weeks, I began to perform at a higher level in competition. It also helped that I was starting to rotate meets where I would do distance races or sprints every other week. This is a good example of Contextual Interference, as I saw improvements in my ability to retain my practice at a higher level when I performed random practice techniques compared to blocked techniques. This scheduling of going back and forth with different groups in practice had me working through higher interference, meaning that I was working through more variables such as my hurdle form, starts from the block, and utilizing different breathing techniques.
I chose this image to portray my hurdling form, which was just one of the variables I had to practice along with sprinting and distance running.

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I have always carried myself as someone who enjoys the years that bring long winters, for I find a lot of joy in numerous winter activities. One of those activities I particularly found myself devoting a lot of time to is skiing. I started this hobby at a young age, where I began ski lessons at a small ski hill in upper Iowa. I started out just as many others do, very clumsy with horrible motor control. My learning of this skill began in the Cognitive stage, where I received a lot of verbal instruction from the instructor, and had to talk myself through each process. I was a quick learner however, as I made large improvements in short time; learning what did and didn't work for me. After a few lessons I began to take on slightly more challenging hills and increasing my speed. In the Associative stage of my learning, I changed my stance and began working on what type of movements for actions like turning or stoping, would be most efficient for me. This stage is where I began to see my greatest improvements in skill, and started to make less errors as I began to become more consistent with my movements. After multiple winters and many ski trips, I have found myself in what is called the Autonomous stage. This is when the actions can be executed without much demand for attention. I started to be able to do more extensive tasks while skiing such as carrying on conversations down the slope, or being more aware of other skiers around me.
This image relates to my gradual transition in skiing from a beginner in the cognitive stage, to a more skilled skier in the autonomous stage.

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All my life I've been told that hard work goes a long way; my dad in particular, reminded me of this on a regular basis. This led me to wanting to work and learn new skills and traits. I began working with my dad for his wood flooring company and learning new carpentry skills that I would use for the rest of my life. When I started at a rather young age, my dad worked with me and showed me how to properly sand the floor while not scratching the wood and prepare it for stain. Being that I was young at the time, I only worked for my dad on special occasions or when he needed an extra hand. One job he had given specifically to me, was whenever we were on a larger job site, it was my job to run out to the van and get the materials we needed next. I was a very forgetful child, and would on multiple occasions forget a certain tool or box of something important. Depending on how far away I had to go to reach the van, I found that I would forget more the farther I'd have to go or when I was given a lot of things to bring back. This example of short term memory is rather qualitative because true short term memory only really lasts about 30 seconds, which is around the time it would take me in some cases to reach the work van. It also shows that the greater number of things I had to remember to bring back, the greater the likelihood that I would forget something as short term memory has a capacity.

I would continue to work for my dad all the way up through high school, and had became a very capable carpenter with a good understanding of what needs to be done for a floor. Now that I'm in college, I have not been able to work for him very often, as I am only home for a small amount of time in the summer. Although, whenever I work for him now I am able to remember most of the steps taken to refinish and install the wood floors. This was at first a surprise to me, but I now realize that after working for my dad for so long, I have acquired the skills I learned in my lone term memory. This is evident as in long term memory, I will nearly always have those memories that I used for a i longer period of time stored away ready for me to retrieve them.
I chose this picture as a representation of the work that required me to remember many specific details, both in short term and long term memory.

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Throughout my youth, I was always willing to try and learn new things. I found that the better I was at the particular activity, the more I enjoyed and wanted to keep getting better at it. One of these activities I truly enjoyed was baseball. I started at a young age with Tee ball, and then began gradually playing more and joining various traveling teams with my friends. I was never much of a fielder, but I could always find a way to hit the ball. My dad had always tried to help me practice any sport I truly enjoyed, he especially enjoyed working with me to improve my skills to hit the ball. Through practice and multiple summers full of tournaments and traveling teams, I eventually became one of the best contact hitters in my town, although I didn't possess much power. I got to the point where I had worked on my swing form so much, that it was seemingly implanted in my memory, almost a part of me as I could do it the same every time without even thinking of my actions. Knowing what I do now it can be said that I had encoded my swing to my procedural memory, meaning that I didn't need to talk myself through the steps of my swing as it was more like "muscle memory".

Playing on multiple traveling teams over a course of a few years means that I've had my fair share of different situations at the end of the game. Many of these games ended closely, and some even had myself in the middle of these critical points. One incident in particular came about in the summer as I was going into the 8th grade. My hometown traveling team was playing at a tournament in Iowa, and we were playing in some very close games. In the last of which, I found myself up to bat with my team down by 2 with the bases loaded. Being one out away from losing the game, I saw it as an opportunity to come through for my teammates. Once I was up at the plate however, I began to feel nervous and lightheaded. I took my stance slow, and waited for the pitcher. His first pitch sent me missing by a mile, maybe the ugliest swing I have had in years, or so said my mom the next day. The next pitch was even slower and more down the middle, once again, swung rather wildly and was late by about a foot. I didn't know what to think of it, I had been batting very well throughout the game, but now that it was nearing the end I felt as though I hadn't swung a bat in years. I eventually struck out after three more pitches, losing us the game. What I can now tell about this situation is how my memory of swinging the bat was affected when I was feeling under pressure. It seems as though that I was trying to remember my swing declaratively rather than with my procedural memory. This can occur in pressured situations when someone who has had a lot practice in a particular skill tries to remember the motions through declarative memory, or knowing what and how to do something; rather than through the procedural memory it was encoded by.
I believe this image gives a great representation of how I was feeling after that attempt, knowing that I had the memory and ability to swing perfectly and make contact with the ball; but choked under pressure trying to remember my swing differently.