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A personal experience is that I do notice that people that don't work are lazy or they get everything they want so they involved in gangs, or they have depression.

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A personal experience I have with this narrative is that when I was a freshmen last year I had the opportunity to tryout for the freshmen soccer team. I didn't prepare, I came into tryouts tired and drained. And I wasn't conditioned, I didn't make it. The next year was completely opposite. At the beginning of August I had a different mindset. I was prepared, conditioned, hydrated, focused, I was ready.  But unfortunately a family  situation came up and I wasn't even able to tryout. those were two major soccer set backs in my soccer career.  Soccer star Lionel Messi loss major three finals in a row. The FIFA World Cup 2014, the Copa America 2015, the Copa America 2016. This is how I related to this narrative.

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Chris Arnold; Soccer Shocker: Lionel Messi Says He's Retiring From Argentina's National Team

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Lionel Messi says it's over. He's retiring from Argentina's national team.

After losing three previous Copa America finals, Lionel Messi on Sunday night had another chance to win. Argentina and Chile were locked in a scoreless tie, and the match would be decided by penalty kicks. Messi bent down to adjust the ball and backed up to get a running start. The five-time FIFA Ballon d'Or winner licked his lip, gave the goalie a quick appraising glance, and sent a cannonball-like shot over the goal, missing for Argentina when it mattered most.

In a promo video before the game, Sports Illustrated called Messi the "greatest soccer player ever" and compared him to Muhammad Ali, Babe Ruth and Michael Jordan. He has had a celebrated career with FC Barcelona in Spain. He's famous for breathtaking shots, often taken after a blur of footwork to get past defenders.

But aside from an Olympic gold in 2008, Messi has never been able to bring home a major international championship playing for his home country.

He was clearly devastated by Sunday night's 4-2 loss to Chile and the part he played in it. The BBC quoted Messi after the game as saying:

" 'For me, the national team is over,' he said after defeat by Chile in the Copa America final. 'I've done all I can. It hurts not to be a champion.' ...

" 'It's been four finals, I tried,' added Messi, who made his debut for Argentina in 2005 and has played 113 times for his country.

" 'It was the thing I wanted the most, but I couldn't get it, so I think it's over.' ...

" 'It's very hard, but the decision is taken. Now I will not try more and there will be no going back.' "

That sounds pretty final. But maybe not. The BBC also quoted Argentine goalkeeper Sergio Romero saying he hoped Messi would "reflect" on his decision to retire and reconsider:

" 'I think he spoke while he was heated, because a beautiful opportunity escaped us,' said Romero. 'I can't imagine a national team without Messi.' "

Fans around the world are undoubtedly hoping the same thing. And the sports press is speculating that Messi's "retirement" might be short-lived:

The remarks by Messi followed reports that he'd been frustrated by mismanagement of Argentina's soccer team. When the team's chartered flight was delayed for several hours on its way to New Jersey for the final game, Messi posted on his Instagram account, "What a disaster the AFA is, for God's sake."

As if the stakes weren't already high enough for Messi and his team, Argentine soccer legend Diego Maradona said before the match that they shouldn't bother coming back home if they didn't win. As Yahoo Sports puts it:

"Many fans believe that Messi cannot be considered as great as Maradona until he wins a major honor with his country like Maradona did in the 1986 World Cup."

Even if Messi does go through with his retirement from Argentina's national team, he will presumably continue to play for his club team Barcelona.

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Soccer Shocker: Lionel Messi Says He's Retiring From Argentina's National Team

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Lionel Messi says it's over. He's retiring from Argentina's national team. After losing three previous Copa America finals, Lionel Messi on Sunday night had another chance to win. Argentina and Chile were locked in a scoreless tie, and the match would be decided by penalty kicks.

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A personal experience is when about 1 year ago my nice was born that totally made things a lot more difficult around the house and the everything has just became a fun experience. My other  personal experience is a sad one about 1 year ago my aunt passed away of bone cancer so that chance my lfe

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Muhammad Ali shared that he would compete with others in foot races and would sprint from store to store training to become a boxer. He said that he never thought that he could lose and that he was better than everyone at everything. His competitive nature was the facilitator of his career.

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This I believe- Saying Thanks to my Ghosts: Amy Tan believes in ghosts. She had based a book on her grandmothers suicide without knowing about it. Until her mother told he the truth. She is grateful and wants to say thanks to the ghosts for giving her something to believe in.

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A personal experience I have with this narrative is that I also believe that the internet is one of the best but unsafe places. I enjoy messing around on the internet and I think the internet is sometimes looked down upon because of how easy it is for random people to know everything about you but as long as you're careful what you say yes and no to then you're fine.

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The personal experiences that I can relate to in this narrative is when I went and played in like a mini Olympic tournament that was for baseball. Even though baseball isn't an Olympic sport(which it should be) they made the tournament by adding more games. There was about 10 teams at the start and were guaranteed 2 games. That didn't seem fair so we all got to play 4 games and then were placed into the bracket. This is just like this article because it gave the chance for kids that didn't play much to actually play more than they are used to

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Luis Urrea Life Is An Act Of Literary Creation he believed that in life your the narrator and that your the one to change how it turns out. He believes that every thing has a use and that's what life is a story

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I believe God is a poet; every religion in our history was made of poems and songs, and not a few of them had books attached. I came to believe the green fuse that drives spring and summer through the world is essentially a literary energy. That the world was more than a place. Life was more than an event. It was all one thing, and that thing was: story.

I was in a small house in Cuernavaca with old healer women. We were eating green Jell-O. One of them told me this: "When you write, you light a bonfire in the spirit world. It is dark there. Lost souls wander alone. Your inner flame flares up. And the lost souls gather near your light and heat. And they see the next artist at work and go there. And they follow the fires until they find their ways home."

Aside from thinking my old Baptist preacher would not be amused by this kind of pagan talk, I recognized the beauty and awe, the deep respect in a woman who didn't read, for the act of literary creation.

Now, if it is all story, I believe we are the narrators. Many writing instructors will tell you that to be a great writer, you must be attentive. Shamans will tell you the same thing: If you want to be a good person, a whole person, wake up! Pay attention! Be here now! Zen monks will go so far as to hit you with a stick. Look!

I used to approach writing like a football game. If I went out there and aggressively saw more, I'd know more and I'd capture more, and I'd write better. Hut, hut, hut: First down and haiku! But I found out something entirely different. I learned that if I went into the world and paid attention (in Spanish, you "lend attention," presta atencion), the world would notice and respond. I would have demonstrated my worthiness to receive the world's gifts. It's a kind of library where you lend attention and receive a story. Or God will toss off a limerick for your pleasure.

In South Carolina recently, I was telling my hosts before a speaking engagement all about this idea. I told them that Story comes on the wings of hummingbirds and dragonflies. My host told me to turn around. A hummingbird hovered outside the window, three inches from the back of my head. After the event, I was in the street enjoying the silence. A dragonfly came and hovered over my head. Both times, all I had to do was look.

Independently produced for Tell Me More by Jay Allison and Dan Gediman with John Gregory and Viki Merrick.

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Mexican-American novelist Luis Urrea used to think that simply being a good observer would make his writing better. But over time, he's come to believe that being a good writer and a good person comes from paying attention to the world around him.

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Cat videos and all, the internet may be humankind's greatest masterpiece. Heffernan believes the internet is a work of art.

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When you look up at a starry night sky, it may make you feel small and insignificant - but it's also beautiful and awe inspiring. That's the feeling author Virginia Heffernan thinks we should be getting when we behold the Internet.

"Google organizes all the world's information," Heffernan tells NPR's Rachel Martin. "There's no way that one small person in our small, fathom-long bodies, could imagine containing all that information."

But instead of feeling impressed, the Internet makes us feel inadequate. "Instead of saying, 'wow' ... we end up beholding the Internet and then telling ourselves that we must be brain damaged because we can't take all this in," she says.

Heffernan believes the Internet is a work of art. In her new book Magic and Loss, she describes the web as "the great masterpiece of human civilization."

Heffernan talks with Martin about the history and collective culture of the Internet, and explains why we must allow the Internet to be bigger than we are so that we can stop "sell[ing] our souls to try to approximate it."

Interview Highlights
On how she reviewed TV in the arts section of The New York Times, when elsewhere in the paper, TV was treated as a public health hazard
We were publishing articles saying television shortens your attention span, fattens us up, makes us lazy, makes us lethargic, keeps us from our studies, and then on the arts pages talking about palette, talking about structure, talking about language, talking about characters, talking about pacing and music - all the things that you associate with art criticism. I decided to make a virtue of that. [I ] think that television, and later the Internet, gets some of its virtues in opposition to a culture that also calls it diseased.
On how being "bad for you" can be good for an art form
It's very energizing for a new art form or energizing for a new cultural form - like it was for punk music, like it was for Shakespeare's bawdy plays and comedies, like it was even for sentimental novels to be called "bad for you" - what makes you indulge in it more. It drives up the price of it so people start writing better and better and with television it ended in these so-called "bingeworthy" shows ... that are maxi-movies and certainly on par with the best movies in the theater right now.
On tweets as poetry
Our description of a tweet [is that they] are like the diseased firings of our addicted minds, but when you get the sensory, emotional feeling of producing and consuming tweets, you're slaving over a very short-form kind of communication that you have to keep to characters. Anyone who experimented with writing - forget even about haiku - but really challenging acrostics or villanelles, knows that there's something fun about trying to fit a thought into a tight form like that. ...

In this century we are so literate, such fanatical readers ... that you will risk a fatal car accident to continue texting - literally interacting with text, reading it, writing it.

These 140-character-long epigrams - they could get people fired, they could get people elected, they can divide friends, they can unite friends, they can brighten someone's day or wreck someone's day. ... It has power. ... Slaving over language to make it consequential, writing very formally and writing for a potentially big audience with impact - that sounds like we are in the age of poetry. It's hard to think of a time when poetry was more powerful.
On whether we are more or less literate than the generations before us
I think we are reading more than ever before. ... The 20th century associated literacy and learning with a love of books: the codex that has a right-left page, and has a cover, and can be collected, and can collect dust, and be in libraries. That was a 20th-century phenomenon. In this century we are so literate, such fanatical readers - let's put it this way - that you will risk a fatal car accident to continue texting - literally interacting with text, reading it, writing it. Apparently driving while texting is now a bigger problem than driving while intoxicated. It is our chief intoxicant: writing and consuming words.

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Cat Videos And All, The Internet May Be Humankind's Greatest Masterpiece

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When you look up at a starry night sky, it may make you feel small and insignificant - but it's also beautiful and awe inspiring. That's the feeling author Virginia Heffernan thinks we should be getting when we behold the Internet. "Google organizes all the world's information," Heffernan tells NPR's Rachel Martin.

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I Am Still The Greatest- Muhammad Ali believed he was destined to become the World Heavyweight Champion and win a gold medal ever since he was in High School. He believes in himself with an immense amount of confidence and has a great work ethic.

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I have always believed in myself, even as a young child growing up in Louisville, Ky. My parents instilled a sense of pride and confidence in me, and taught me and my brother that we could be the best at anything. I must have believed them, because I remember being the neighborhood marble champion and challenging my neighborhood buddies to see who could jump the tallest hedges or run a foot race the length of the block. Of course I knew when I made the challenge that I would win. I never even thought of losing.

In high school, I boasted weekly - if not daily - that one day I was going to be the heavyweight champion of the world. As part of my boxing training, I would run down Fourth Street in downtown Louisville, darting in and out of local shops, taking just enough time to tell them I was training for the Olympics and I was going to win a gold medal. And when I came back home, I was going to turn pro and become the world heavyweight champion in boxing. I never thought of the possibility of failing - only of the fame and glory I was going to get when I won. I could see it. I could almost feel it. When I proclaimed that I was the "Greatest of All Time," I believed in myself. And I still do.

Throughout my entire boxing career, my belief in my abilities triumphed over the skill of an opponent. My will was stronger than their skills. What I didn't know was that my will would be tested even more when I retired.

In 1984, I was conclusively diagnosed with Parkinson's disease. Since that diagnosis, my symptoms have increased and my ability to speak in audible tones has diminished. If there was anything that would strike at the core of my confidence in myself, it would be this insidious disease. But my confidence and will to continue to live life as I choose won't be compromised.

Early in 1996, I was asked to light the caldron at the Summer Olympic Games in Atlanta. Of course my immediate answer was yes. I never even thought of having Parkinson's or what physical challenges that would present for me.

When the moment came for me to walk out on the 140-foot-high scaffolding and take the torch from Janet Evans, I realized I had the eyes of the world on me. I also realized that as I held the Olympic torch high above my head, my tremors had taken over. Just at that moment, I heard a rumble in the stadium that became a pounding roar and then turned into a deafening applause. I was reminded of my 1960 Olympic experience in Rome, when I won the gold medal. Those 36 years between Rome and Atlanta flashed before me, and I realized that I had come full circle.

Nothing in life has defeated me. I am still the "Greatest." This I believe.

Independently produced for All Things Considered by Jay Allison and Dan Gediman with John Gregory and Viki Merrick.

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I have always believed in myself, even as a young child growing up in Louisville, Ky. My parents instilled a sense of pride and confidence in me, and taught me and my brother that we could be the best at anything.

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Work is a Blessing- Russell Honore belives that work is blessing because he was in the U.S army and he has seen that people with out jobs are not free. He stated that people that don't work their involved in terrorism, poor health, depression and social arrest.

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Weekend Edition Sunday- The Olympic comitee is adding 5 more games to the Olympics in Tokyo to make the games fair

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The International Olympic Committee is adding five sports to the Tokyo 2020 games. Olympic historian David Wallechinsky tells us which sports used to be in the Games and which he'd want to bring back.

AILSA CHANG, HOST:

Track and field is, of course, a staple of the summer Olympics. It's been around since the very beginning, but new sports campaign to get added or re-added all the time. And earlier this week, the International Olympic Committee approved five new sports for the 2020 Olympic Games in Tokyo, including skateboarding and surfing.

DAVID WALLECHINSKY: The International Olympic Committee decided that it was important to expand the kind of sports that were included in the Olympics to make them more relevant around the world and also to a youth audience and a TV audience.

CHANG: That's David Wallechinsky. He's the president of the International Society of Olympic Historians.

WALLECHINSKY: We don't really know how long these different sports will last. But it would appear that a sport can be included for one Olympics, two Olympics and then removed.

CHANG: Which made us wonder how many sports have suffered that fate.

WALLECHINSKY: The plunge for distance, swimming obstacle race, polo.

CHANG: Rope climbing.

WALLECHINSKY: Not the most telegenic sport considering it takes them less than three seconds to get there.

CHANG: And golf, which is back this year after a century-long absence.

WALLECHINSKY: At the 1900 women's golf, there was one paying spectator.

CHANG: But the one Wallechinsky was saddest to see go...

WALLECHINSKY: Tug of war.

CHANG: It made a couple of Olympic appearances but then was removed after some controversy.

WALLECHINSKY: There was an argument between the Americans and the British because the rules said you have to wear normal shoes. Well, the British police showed up in their work boots, and they said, well, that's what we normally wear. The Americans said that that was cheating. And so to avoid all these horrible controversies, tug of war was dropped from the Olympics.

CHANG: Wallechinsky says tug of war should be brought back. It's relatable. It's simple.

WALLECHINSKY: You pull the other team across the line. You win.

CHANG: But if the IOC really wants to appeal to the masses, it should accept a sport that nearly everyone plays or thinks they can play.

WALLECHINSKY: Bowling - I mean, come on. Lots of people bowl. If you can have curling in the Olympics, you can have bowling in the Olympics.

CHANG: Dressage, though, he says can go.

Copyright © 2016 NPR. All rights reserved. Visit our website terms of use and permissions pages at www.npr.org for further information.

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As 2020 Olympics Looks To Add New Sports, Which Events Would You Bring Back?

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The International Olympic Committee is adding five sports to the Tokyo 2020 games. Olympic historian David Wallechinsky tells us which sports used to be in the Games and which he'd want to bring back. AILSA CHANG, HOST: Track and field is, of course, a staple of the summer Olympics.

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The art of being a neighbor- by eve birch.
eve believes in neighbors being their for you when you need them

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What personal experiences are conveyed in the narrative? Upload an image or video that would represent one aspect of the personal experiences.

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Write the name, title and belief of the narrative.
Elisa Nadworny-  Mrs. Nadworny believes in starting the new year off right. She believes in family values and encouraging her students.

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Like many schools, Gibson Elementary in St. Louis had big problems with attendance - many students were missing nearly a month of school a year.

Melody Gunn, who was the principal at Gibson last year, set out to visit homes and figure out why kids weren't showing up. Her biggest discovery? They didn't have clean uniforms to wear to school.

Many families, she found, didn't have washing machines in the home, and kids were embarrassed to show up at school wearing dirty clothes. The result was that often, they didn't come.

Gunn thought this was a problem she could fix. She called Whirlpool, which agreed to donate some washers and dryers. Gunn had them installed at the school and then opened the doors for parents to use the machines. If folks couldn't make it during the school day, the school would offer access to the laundry machines after hours.

It hasn't made every kid show up, but Principal Gunn says it's working.

Chronic absence - defined as missing more than 10 percent of the school year (or just two days a month) - is one of the most destructive forces in a child's education. Yet more than 6 million students in the U.S. miss three weeks or more of school each year.

Research shows that such students are way more likely to fall behind and, eventually, drop out. Addressing the problem goes way beyond skipping school - a mix of truancy entangled with illnesses and family problems.

Getting kids to school is especially important at the beginning of the year. One study, from Baltimore, found that about half of students who missed two to four days in September went on to miss about a month of school for the whole year.
Identify the kids who aren't there
The most important thing a school can do is figure out which students aren't at their desks.

A few years ago, the Grand Rapids, Mich., school district undertook a big data project to identify kids who were chronically absent.

The data mining showed a big problem: Of 17,000 kids in the district, nearly 7,000 were missing a month or more of school a year. District officials were super transparent about the numbers - they put 8-foot poster boards in every school, so folks could see if their numbers improved.

This highly visible information on chronic absence helped schools and community organizations step in to start addressing why kids were missing.
Outreach
Experts say an important component of any attendance program is talking to the adults at home. Parents understand that attendance is important, but when you get down to specifics - like how many days kids can or should miss - there are a lot of misconceptions. New research from the Ad Council found that nearly half of parents thought it was OK to miss three or more days of school a month, but experts say missing that many days is harmful to student achievement.

Another widely cited factor in improving attendance: Parents and students need to feel comfortable. I visited a school in Baltimore where the principal stands outside every morning - rain, shine, snow - and greets every kid and parent. They've seen attendance numbers shoot up.

The interesting thing that happened in St. Louis, at Gibson Elementary, is that when the school opened up for parents to wash clothes, those adults became more engaged. Parents could wander around the school, meet staff and get comfortable with the building.

"It was an unintended consequence. They saw we cared," Principal Gunn says.

Experts point to mentors as one of the most successful strategies: Pairing kids who are chronically absent with an adult in the community - a college student, a firefighter, a teacher.

So, washing machines may be a good idea at Gibson Elementary.

But it may not work everywhere. Research suggests that, in order to improve attendance long-term, schools should use many strategies together. Strategies that will get everyone involved: parents, community partners, teachers and principals, and the students.

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A New School Year Brings Renewed Focus On Attendance

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Like many schools, Gibson Elementary in St. Louis had big problems with attendance - many students were missing nearly a month of school a year. Melody Gunn, who was the principal at Gibson last year, set out to visit homes and figure out why kids weren't showing up. Her biggest discovery?