Month: September 2022

This may become a weekly series, so stay tuned on my blog.

Let me begin by singing my praises to Justin Jefferson, the best wide receiver in football. I took Jefferson with the 4th overall pick in my 14-team PPR league, and he put up a mind-bending 39.4 points in Week 1, hauling in 9 receptions for 184 yards and 2 touchdowns. Wild. And he gets bonus points from me as a Bears fan for doing it against the Green Bay Packers. As far as I’m concerned, Jefferson can do no wrong, and he is locked in as my WR1 every single week.

In the second round of my draft, I took Travis Kelce. I was ecstatic that he fell to me here, and like Jefferson he too had a big Week 1 performance, producing 26.1 points as the Chiefs offense demolished the Cardinals. The one-two punch of Kelce and Jefferson gives my team a strong foundation week in and week out, and at the same time a near-limitless ceiling when both players boom. 

At the beginning of the third round I grabbed Tee Higgins, but later traded him in a swap for new Eagles receiver A.J. Brown. In the late fourth I picked up Jerry Jeudy, another solid player with upside. Up to this point my draft was very receiver heavy, and I needed to start snagging running backs. This led me to make the only pick I really regret when I look back on my draft, which was taking Devin Singletary in the fifth round. The Bills lead running back has been very underwhelming thus far despite playing in one of the NFL’s elite offenses, and I might look to move him soon.

Soon after I made that selection, quarterbacks started flying off the draft board, so my focus shifted to making sure I could get an elite one. However, I began to get worried. Allen, Mahomes, Herbert, and Lamar had gone early on. Then Russell Wilson was picked, then Dak, then Trey Lance. With the number of elite QB’s dwindling, I wasn’t sure if one would make it back to me after all. But then it happened. Jalen Hurts fell to me at pick 81. I do not know how it happened, but I did not hesitate to take him. 

In the late rounds I aimed to round out my roster at the RB position. I took Cowboys change-of-pace back Tony Pollard in the seventh, and a few handcuff RB’s later on, namely Nyheim Hines, Alexander Mattison, and Mark Ingram, all of whom could be thrust into a large role if the starters in their respective offenses miss any time. I also took a chance on Falcons rookie running back Tyler Allgeier, intent on stashing him on my bench, and after adding Chase Claypool and Jarvis Landry for some depth at wide receiver, my draft was complete.

Week 1 saw me matched up against Ian Boggs, who has quite a scary team that features Patrick Mahomes, Mark Andrews, and Cooper Kupp. It was an extremely high scoring matchup, with both of our star receivers and quarterbacks putting on absolute fireworks displays as they soared past their projected points totals. I was helped on by a monster performance at tight end from Kelce, and ultimately Jerry Jeudy was able to bring it home for me , breaking free for a 67-yard touchdown against the Seahawks on Monday Night Football and winning me the week 163.32 to 151. 

Week 2 did not go as swimmingly. I was facing Lex Nunnally, and right from the jump things got ugly. Amon-Ra St. Brown had a career game against the Washington Commanders, torching them for 116 yards and 2 touchdowns, and putting up nearly 40 fantasy points in the process. This gave Lex an early lead that proved to be insurmountable. A lot of my players underperformed in their respective matchups, and my team couldn’t quite complete the Monday night comeback despite a spectacular game from Jalen Hurts. I lost to Lex 92.82 to 113.66.

Going forward, I am excited about what my team may be able to accomplish this season. I have multiple big names and playmakers on my team, and when they all go off the sky’s the limit. I got a glimpse of that ridiculous ceiling in Week 1, and though Week 2 wasn’t the same, there were still some bright spots. Hurts’ performance was nothing short of great. Tony Pollard was impressive as well, and he may prove to give me the consistent starting-level RB production that I am searching for. I have a tough matchup in Week 3 against none other than Vishal Yelamanchili, and I will update you all on how it goes.

When I was in fourth grade at Steeple Run Elementary School, my class would visit the LRC to check out books every Thursday. I distinctly remember pushing through my fellow classmates and running through the school library, then transitioning to speed walking when I got yelled at by our school librarian, until I reached the glorious shelf in the back-right corner. The graphic novel section. My eyes quickly scanned the shelf and there I saw it: Bone: Rock Jaw, Master of the Eastern Border. This is the fifth book in the legendary Bone series by cartoonist Jeff Smith, and I had been eagerly looking for it for weeks. The books were very popular among the boys in my grade, and my friends and I were no exception. As such, they were often already checked out when my class would go to the LRC, and I would have to either put them on hold or hope to return and see them the next week. 

This moment, this memory of racing through my school’s LRC reminds me of how much I loved to read as a kid. I would devour books, and I looked forward to when we had free reading time in class. I was supported in my literacy growing up by my family. My parents always read to me at night, and we had plenty of books in the house. I was also motivated by my friends, as we read the same books and series and would talk about them with each other.

My elementary school days would see me read some fantasy novels of epic proportions, many of which remain among my favorite books to this day. These books took me to far away fantasy lands. I visited Olympus, Fablehaven, Asgard, Boneville, and the Underland. I lived in a world of heroes and demigods, with Percy Jackson, Gregor the Overlander, Jack Blank, and Magnus Chase as my peers. In middle school, I began diving into more “mature” books with more “adult” themes, introduced to me through my Honors English classes. Reading these books and discussing them with my peers opened my eyes to a deeper level of literature, a world where there were symbols and motifs and where the author was trying to send us a message through their writing. In eighth grade at Jefferson Junior High, I had a phenomenal teacher named Mr. Sniadecki. He encouraged me to read and think differently than any teacher that I had had up until that point in my life, and I am grateful to him for that. I came into his classroom first period everyday genuinely excited to learn about literature. Looking back on it now, it really was amazing.

In that class we read what I consider to be my favorite book of all time, To Kill a Mockingbird, by Harper Lee. I think that there were a multitude of reasons as to why that book resonated so profoundly with me. Firstly, I liked that the book was considered controversial, and it intrigued me to hear that it was banned in certain libraries and school districts. As I read it, I determined to myself that this should absolutely not be the case. The central themes of racial prejudice, good vs. evil, finding courage, and the nature of morality and justice are striking and powerful. I liked how incredibly deep the book was, how much meaning could be drawn from its 281 pages. Mr. Sniadecki challenged us to come up with our own interpretations of the book and its themes, and I thrived with this approach. I loved discussing my thoughts with the rest of my class and hearing what my peers had to say about it and how each of their perspectives differed from my own.

I think I can identify the specific period of time when my perspective on reading changed. Arriving at Naperville North my freshman year, I was set to take Honors English 1, and leading up to the beginning of the school year I was given work to complete over the summer. I had to read and annotate Boy’s Life, by Robert R. McCammon. I had always hated annotating when I read, seeing it as going against my fundamental belief that reading should be fun. Annotating felt like a chore to me, and over the summer I set aside time to read and mark up 20 pages a day. I found Boy’s Life  by no means to be a bad book, but it did seem a bit all over the place at times. I came into class my first day of freshman year all prepared with my book, feeling proud of the work that I had accomplished. Then we proceeded to briefly talk about the book in class for about a week, write one essay on it, and bam, done. That was it. No annotation grades. When talking to my classmates, I was surprised to learn that some of them had not even read the book, had picked it up once maybe during the whole summer, and seeing as we barely spent any class time on it, I felt as though my time spent on it over the summer had all been a waste. I hadn’t liked annotating it at all, and this annoyed me.

Then, later in the semester, came the turning point. My class was required to read Brave New World by Aldous Huxley, which I consider to be my least favorite book of all time. I just plain, straight-up hated it. The story about artificial babies and a futuristic society of carefree people popping soma every day didn’t make any sense to me. It didn’t resonate with me whatsoever. I didn’t enjoy it. And so, I stopped reading it. I turned to the dreaded SparkNotes, and that was how I got by for the remainder of the unit.

After this point, I could feel my enthusiasm for reading slowly slipping away. Most of the books I have read for my high school English classes I didn’t particularly enjoy. I took journalism my sophomore year and AP Language my junior year, and I learned to look at literature through a more practical lens. I began to see it more as a means to inform, to convey a point of view, rather than a hobby for enjoyment. I found new interests and pastimes, and this combined with my increased responsibilities as I grew older meant that I stopped reading for fun.

Every once in a while, I do still find myself picking up a book in my room and reading to pass the time. Often it is a book about basketball and the history of the NBA, or one of my old favorite books from my childhood. Our discussions about what it means to read in class have inspired me with a newfound passion to try and re-find my love for reading. And that right now is where I’m at in my literacy journey.