Free Falling, compare and contrast

Could you imagine falling out of a plane, and having no way of slowing yourself down? This is something a family friend of my parents named Jeff Schmidt, had happen to him. He attended The United States Military Academy at West Point, for schooling and as a result you owe service to the army for the schooling. One of his training missions consisted of skydiving out of airplanes to get experience. Sky diving was something he had completed numerous other times, but in this one instance everything went wrong. He was planning on it being just another day when his whole life would be impacted.

He was in the plane and it was his time to jump, he jumped and was now free falling, when it came time to open the parachute the unthinkable occurred, it was twisted up and didn’t open the way it was designed to. I couldn’t imagine the thoughts racing through his head at the time, and how he could manage to stay calm. He was twisting around and dropping at an increasing rate, and ultimately smacked the ground. As a result of the fall he broke his legs and everything from the waist up. Amazingly after all of this he is still able to walk today. He told me about a man who came running over; panicked and yelling “where is the dead man.” This event is something that changed his life forever, he wasn’t able to keep being a part of the army, and went into his career in law.
I first met Jeff as I played football with his son in elementary school, and he was the coach. I would end up playing with his son in football until high school. As a result we became close family friends, and all of us went hunting and fishing all the time together. He was and still is a very intelligent and motivational man, with all of his experiences and ways of motivating others. Due to the sky diving accident he had to have many operations and surgeries to get rid of the many injuries incurred from the event.

As he is growing older, more and more problems are coming out, and mostly due to the fall. He suffers from a lot of arthritis as you may expect, and has pain at all times. He can separate his shoulder just by raising his arms, and has learned to tolerate a lot of pain. He is unable to hunt any more due to the gun kicking back on his arm, and risking hurting his shoulder. Another thing that bothers his everyday life is a problem he has developed with his throat. From impact of the fall his throat almost feels like it is collapsing on him. He usually cannot talk for longer than a sentence or two before he has to clear his throat, because it feels like he is about to choke he says. The worst part about that is that the doctors don’t have a way to reverse it or prevent it from getting worse. He was a very successful lawyer and even his career has been affected. From the throat problem, it caused him to need to leave his career on disability. He was unable to speak for an extended period of time in a courtroom, which is vital for a lawyer to be able to perform, causing him to leave his life career on disability. The good thing about Jeff is that he still has his joking personality and seems to always be happy when you are around him.

It is always sad to see people grow older and suffer from different age related problems. To add to the problems everyone gets with old age, Jeff has to deal with the effects of his skydiving accident that occurred more than 30 years back. It was undeniably a life changing event that he was blessed to survive, but along with that there are many consequences that have changed him physically as a person. As you may expect, in order to get into the Military program at West Point, you cannot just rely on your brains, but you must be a very athletic and healthy person, and as a result from the fall it has dramatically affected his previously active lifestyle. This is the type of event that occurs in one person’s life that they feel for the rest of their life.

My Mix

Son's Gonna Rise- Citizen Cope
100 Years- Five For Fighting
Someday-Flipside
Sky's the Limit- Lil Wayne
Heart of a Champion-Nelly
Live like you were dying-Tim McGraw
Life is a Highway-Rascall Flatts
Good People- Jack Johnson
Get Up-50 cent
Headstrong-Trapt


Why are these songs important to you? How or where did you first encounter them? (Through a friend? The radio, television, the Internet, or magazine?)
These songs honestly dont have very much meaning to me. I dont find myself trying to relate to the songs that I listen to. These are just songs that I enjoy listening to. I heard most of them on the radio or my friends told me about them. Most of them are pretty mainstream.

What does your mix say about who you are? How much do your musical choices reflect your sense of self and the subcultures you belong to?

I do you think at times you can tell alot about a person from their music and their personality. I think it may show that I like the type of music that can pump you up, or some country that has a cool lyrics to it. The person who looked at my song list had me right on, he thought that based off the songs that I like sports, hang out with friends alot and that I would dress relaxed. I thought it was kind of funny when I looked at it and he guessed that much correct information from my mix.

What would people learn about you by listening to your mix? What wouldn’t they be able to learn about you?

I guess they could learn that I like the mainstream rap and country that goes around and that I am a into athletics, due to the fact that some of these songs are used for pregame songs for some sporting events. It may be impossible for someone to automaticall ydetermine what type of person someone is by just listening to some of their music, but for some things it may be a good indicator.

What does your mix indicate about your connection to something larger? How is it a reflection of the larger culture?

Im not sure how my mix would relate me to something larger. Possibly that I like to listen to music current with my age group for hte most part, and dont live in the past.

How well did you do making inferences based on your classmate’s list of songs? What did you get right? Wrong? Explain.

I am not sure how well I described the person, based off their music. We didnt get to see the person who had each mix and their inferences made about them. If we would have gone over who each of us had, I do feel like most of the perceptions we got from each others music could have had some truth to them.