Leeza Vernon
English 1109 at 10:30 M-W
October 20, 2020
Journal Six
Meeting Maurice and Bob on zoom was an amazing experience and I personally learned a lot from it. I was able to get a better insight into who Maurice Clarett is and how he and Bob worked together to write this book. While asking questions and Clarett giving answers, I was able to learn what books and reading did for him and I was able to learn what motivated him to write One And Done. In the zoom call, we all learned that Maurice and Bob have a past even before writing the book.
One of the biggest takeaways that I got from the zoom meeting with Maurice and Bob was the way you portray yourself and carry your self matters. Before this meeting, I never really thought about how the things I say can affect my future and can be manifested. In the meeting, Maurice talked about how he started to get into a habit of saying his goals out loud to himself and got into the habit of speaking them into existence in a way. Another thing he said that he got into a habit of, was how to spoke about himself. Some may call these affirmations, but he talked about how saying positives out loud about yourself will get you into the mindset of thinking positively about yourself, just like if you say negative things you will get into a habit of thinking negatively about yourself. This really got me thinking and brought light to something I really never took the time to focus on in my daily routine.
While reading One And Done, one of the biggest things I learned and took away from this book was how your mindset of making a name for yourself can change over time. At the beginning of the book, Clarett wanted to make a name for himself by running the streets and selling drugs. As he started to play football and realized he had a talent, his mindset changed and he wanted to make a name for himself by playing football. Towards the end of the book, making a name for himself wasn’t a huge deal to him as it was in his past. After his sentence was over, he wanted to help kids who were in similar or worst situations like he was in once.
Another thing I learned and took away from the book was how the influence of others can impact you and change you. At the beginning of the book, Maurice was influenced by his friends stealing cars and that got him into it. Some may say they are a bad influence others may not. Later on in the book, once he got suspended from Ohio State, he picked back up the hustle of selling drugs and drinking again. Towards the very end of the book, Maurice talks about how a book that a guard had handed him. He says “I would have read anything. At that point I would have read the dictionary” (Clarett 216). The influence of books changed his mindset on how he saw things in life and how he saw himself personally.
I liked how you looked more on a broader scale, a theme throughout the whole book which was watching him change over time in the good and the bad. I think it is important to look at a persons character and ask why are the way they are today because many things influence us as humans and change who we are which Clarett I feel is a good example of that. I never had really thought out that before, like it was a given but I didn't dive deeper into it.
ReplyDeleteI do have to say that Clarett's mindset through the books changed big time. One of the critical moments in where he found himself in prison was where he finally was admitting to change and now he incorporates what he learned throughout prision into his normal routine is quite admirable.
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