Hi, welcome to my third roller skating in-depth update!

Progress Update:

              One of the main focuses of the past two weeks was really solidifying all the skills I’ve learned so far. I should get very comfortable with the basics before moving on. This is because a lot of the skills just build on the balance and movement of the skating, I’ve learned so far. That part of the project has been fun because it means I get to just skate around and I am finding that a nice kind of break from my day.

I have been also learning a few more basic skills to add to my list. Those include one-foot glides, weaving back and forth and turning around. All these skills are helping me become a much better skater. The one-foot glides are really helping me build up balance skills as well as helping my legs get stronger. The weaving is helping me with weight shifts and remembering to stay low. The turning is very useful for when I am skating in smaller spaces because it helps with smooth and quick direction changes. Overall, the skills I have been learning lately have been helping me improve my skating faster than I expected it to go.

The last important skill I learned from my mentor recently was how to adjust my skates. In our last meeting, she taught me how to adjust my skates to make them best for the skating we were doing. She taught me how to test my trucks and wheels and how to tell when I need to. She also taught me a fun fact about roller skates when we were talking about trucks. “The truck design actually originated in roller skates and was then copied to be used on skateboards.” I found that fact very interesting and noticed how it tied into the chapters being a piece of information added related to the topic of discussion.

How to Have a Beautiful Mind:

Being Interesting:

My mentor made it quite easy to apply the being interesting chapter to our meeting. During skating, there is lots of time for us to talk as well. I also found adding interest to the conversation helped the conversation flow naturally.

During our conversation lots of the different aspects of the chapter. One of those was #2 talking about interesting personal experiences. When we were talking, we don’t only talk about roller skating sometimes the conversation will branch off to something that might have happened recently which is a good way to get to know each other more. This mainly happened because of making connections from what we were working on in the lessons to other experiences skating related or not. I also tried asking my mentor about her experience in roller skating and the styles of roller skating she liked to come up with new conversations to have.

Another one of the aspects in the chapter was #5 speculation. We discussed what good skating activities I could do once I improved and the weather got nice. This included places to go skating and more complex skills to learn. These activities would depend on my future skill level and what style of skating I really dive into but one activity that sounds perfect right now is going along the sea wall.

Responding:

Responding was a skill I wanted to build up in my meeting this week. I think it was very important to having conversations with my mentor to make sure that they are having a good time as well.

There was one part of our conversation that I found related to this chapter of the book. During our conversation, we were discussing working toward goals and I used #3 to respond. My mentor was talking about finding moves to work towards a goal. I fully agreed with this and was able to add to her idea. I mentioned how this method had worked for me in the past when learning other skills. This led to us deciding that I could find different tricks I thought looked cool and then we could plan to work towards them.

Thanks for reading. See you in two weeks!