Nielsen Pantaleoni

Caroline Nielsen Pantaleoni

English 120-01
Professor Bruner
04/02/2015
I Believe In My Second Serve
Growing up comes with the realization that the perfect world
we all once lived in isnt always perfect. We all go through moments
of pure happiness, but we also experience painful downfalls.
Through experience we also come to understand our true values
and what we believe in. This then shapes who we are.
Only recently have I had an experience that has caused me to
believe in something new, the power of a second chance. My story
revolves around my fathers influence on my life. My father would
come home late and leave early in the morning for work. I always
had an image of him in his suit: he was a very busy and important
man who I didnt want to disturb. I struggle to find memories of us
together as I barely saw him during the first 15 years of my life. This
was mainly due to the fact that I was busy with school as well as
tennis, while he focused on his job, which took up a lot of his spare
time. The image of him in my mind was very formal and at times,
scary, which to me, made him unapproachable. Of course when he
came home he would always ask, how was your day (Nielsen,
2/4/10) and the usual response consisted of something simple and

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polite. He didnt have time for any of my problems; he was a busy
man with lots of other, more important things to worry about. His
job was to provide for us and pay for our schooling, thus I
respected him and his decisions. Through all this, my father still
made his expectations clear, he wanted excellent grades and good
behavior. Weakness was simply not an option. I wanted to impress
him. I tried to make him proud so that I could maybe receive some
attention when he would say, well done Caroline (Nielsen, 6/7/11).
At the time, tennis was a huge part of my life, thus, I focused a lot of
my energy into training and producing good results in my attempt to
get his attention.
Last year, as I arrived here, being so far away from my home
and my family, I realized how important they were to me and how
much I valued them. Throughout my life, I have experienced a lot of
changes in culture as I have lived in many places. However, I didnt
think coming here would be as emotional. Moving away from a
homey environment at boarding school where you always have
people looking after you, I found that being here, it all depended
one me. The feeling of being alone was new to me; I previously
always had a support system looking out for me. Sooner or later, my
father realized what I was going through and changed his ways. Now
we have close contact and I talk to him about almost everything. I
feel that our relationship has strengthened and we have become a
lot closer. In my opinion, I could have chosen to be angry at my
father for not being there for me when I was younger, but I feel I

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made the right choice in forgiving him and giving him another
chance to be part of my life. After going through everything
together, I feel our relationship is now stronger than ever.
Looking back, I realize that I myself have been given a number
of second chances in my lifetime. At one point, I was excluded from
my family as I was prioritizing tennis tournaments before family
time. As soon as I realized the mistake I made, I immediately
rectified the situation and asked for a second chance. I learnt from
my mistake and thus, wasnt going to make the same mistake
again. I believe that the second chance I received was one of the
most powerful learning experiences as I learnt about my priorities as
well as my values in life.
In my opinion, we experience second chances everyday and
we constantly learn to forgive and accept that sometimes things
dont turn out the way we want them to. We all have the power to
give others a second chance. I believe weve all learnt from our
mistakes and received a second chance at one point in our lives.
Thus, I believe we all have similar beliefs and values when it comes
to giving others a second chance. Other similar experiences consist
of Diane Cushman-Neals second chance at life. Her doctors had
given her the prognosis where she knew she had only six months to
live because of the severity of her asthma. Her second chance was
realized when Cushman-Neal's condition improved and was soon
able to reduce her medications. In addition to that, a few years
later, she skied for the first time and ran a 10-kilometer race. She

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was slowly returning to her normal life. Today, shes thankful for her
understanding of second chances and the experience of living
everyday like its your last.
Another example and comparison is Missy Franklins miracle.
Missy at first rejected the idea of becoming a college athlete as she
decided to sign with an agent in order to become a professional
swimmer. Once she got diagnosed with an eating disorder, she
realized she had made the wrong decision as she couldnt make it as
a professional athlete. In the end, after a lot of work put in by her
family as well as herself, she was given a second chance at a
college experience.
Nevertheless, I believe in second chances due to the fact that
we, as humans, learn thorough experiences. Everyone makes
mistakes; it is how we come back from them and what we do to
make up for them that determine who we are. Time and reflection
will always allow realization and learning to take place. This is why I
believe we all deserve a second chance; it is similar to the second
serve, which gives me another opportunity to put the ball in play
and win the point.

Works Cited
Crouse, Karen. "A Choice, and a Second Chance." The New
York Times. The New York Times, 28 Dec. 2013. Web. 03 Feb. 2015.

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Martin, Richard. "Life, Death, and Second Chances." U.S
National Library of Medicine. U.S. National Library of Medicine, 2007.
Web. 03 Feb. 2015.

Reflection Letter
From the start, the hardest part in writing this essay was
getting my ideas down whilst also trying to be clear and maintaining
a good, flowing essay structure. During the brainstorm stage, I had a
lot of ideas. This meant I had to ensure I was getting them all down
in a arranged manner to ensure I was taking the reader on a
journey. I started off by writing all my ideas down, and then with
the next drafts, I made sure the essay made sense and flowed well.
This was the most significant change I made after revising my first
draft. The feedback I received was mainly positive apart from the

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structure of the essay, which could be improved by using
connectives and reorganizing my main essay ideas. With more
time, I would have liked to be able to listen or read more This I
believe essays because, the familiarity and understanding that I
would have gained would have hopefully given me a better idea on
how to write and structure my essay from the start.
The most useful input to me was the peer review as it gave
me an idea of what I needed to work on and whether I was along the
right lines. The peer review also allowed me to read other essays
and see what other peoples strengths and weaknesses were, to
hopefully learn from them and apply the strengths to my essay.
In my opinion, the best part of my paper is my personal story. I
tried to convey a lot of emotion in order to get the reader involved
and thus, be able to understand and relate to my situation. My
intentions with this were to engage the reader and therefore, make
him/her want to read on. I also feel like I gave a lot of detailed
descriptions that allowed the reader to really feel what I felt and
thus, understand my story to a further extent.