Journal 7 - Brooke

The profile that has meant the most to me so far is that of Marat Kogut, the NBA referee. I connected to it mostly because of my love of sports, but also because I am very prone to injury. I used to play soccer, volleyball and basketball and do cheerleading and gymnastics. When I was in 8th grade, I had to drop all of them except for cheerleading. My heart was simply to weak to handle the physical activity of these sports. I stuck with cheerleading because I thought it would be the easiest one for my heart to handle because I did not want to give up EVERYTHING I loved all because my organ feels like giving up on me. That does not seem fair, does it? Cheerleading was something I truly loved so I pushed myself anyway. In the profile Marat talks about how he got injured and that tossed him in the direction of being a referee. To his calling. During my junior year, I broke my feet after I did not land a tumbling pass properly. This caused me to miss half of football season and I wore a walking boot on my right foot for 11 months, (only supposed to be worn for 4-6 weeks). I went to 5 doctors, 2 hospitals, had 7 different pain meds, 20 x-rays, 2 MRI's and 2 rounds of physical therapy. Nothing healed. I was in a boot from the second week of junior year (Sep. 7th) until the august of the following year. During this time, I was a large part of the coaching side, since I obviously wasn't able to compete. My team viewed me as a leader, I never let my head down and I was dedicated to the program. I created competition routines form the sidelines and we ended up in 1st place in three different categories at the competition. In the profile when talking about how he likes to be in the middle of the action, Marat states, "When you're a referee, you're the one controlling the game," (Isay 27). I relate to this because many of the times I was not competing but I was easing into coaching and I loved it. While reading I noticed that Marat is very confident and passionate and he firmly believes that he will become an NBA referee and he will do what is necessary to reach his goal. When talking about his mom being against this career path he states that his mom is concerned about his marriage later in life and says, "Who's going to take a guy who's going to be a referee?" so I researched the salary and found out that it pays about $150,000-550,000.

What I want most out of my job is a flexible schedule and I want a job that I have passion for. I don't want to wake up and dread going and be miserable while working because then I will likely not do the best job and I want to be invested in my work and know that I am truly doing my best one hundred percent of the time.