On Wednesday March 14, we had a shock trauma assembly for SADD. My first opinion of the assembly was a negative one. It was very graphic, and at times I-and most of the other girls in the auditorium-would look away from a picture on the presentation. I was almost unhappy with the assembly.  Now, however, I realize that the assembly was just what I needed to see.  It was hard to watch, there was no doubt about that, but it showed every girl what she needed to see.  It was better to see it on the screen than to experience it in real life, and I think that was just what the makers of the movie had in mind.

While I was walking back to my homeroom, still kind of shocked, my friend came up to me, and we started talking.  I said that I couldn’t believe that they showed such graphic pictures, and the video in particular.  She said to me that she thought that the pictures and the video were good, even though they were shocking at times.  She said that she thought that would get the point across to us, and that sometimes it is good to show the graphic pictures to show us how serious drinking and driving and distracted driving really is.  I still wasn’t completely convinced after she said that to me, but I realized she had a point.  At first, I thought that just the seniors and the juniors should go to this assembly, because after all they are mainly the ones who are driving in the school. I thought that the younger grades (like the sophomores and especially the freshmen) shouldn’t have had to see this assembly. I thought this because we aren’t driving yet, but if you look forward, most of the sophomores will be driving in a year, and the freshmen only a year after that. Anyway, it’s never too early to learn the importance of driving.

Now, looking back on it, I think the assembly helped and made a positive impact on all of the students.

The Wednesday after the shock trauma assembly, we had an assembly about eating disorders for guidance. I had heard that that what was the assembly was about, and most girls thought that it would be like every other lesson about eating disorders and living a healthy lifestyle. After all, we had just covered that unit in health class, so it was still fresh in our minds. However, the assembly was, I think, very different than we all had thought it was going to be. It is a very different lesson when the person who is teaching about eating disorders actually had an eating disorder.  The speaker was a Towson University student named Lizzie, and she was very energetic. She told us about her eating disorder: how she got the disease and her recovery process. As of this June, she said, she would be three years free of the eating disorder.  The one thing that really struck me from the assembly was the fact that a main part of her eating disorder was excessive exercising.  It may not have started out as a plan to lose lots of weight, but she said that she slipped down into a disorder very quickly. Another thing that I remember from the assembly was when Lizzie said that, during her recovery process, she could have slipped back into the eating disorder within a week, even though it had taken her months to get to the point where she was. She said that she has a friend who has been struggling with an eating disorder for years.  My overall opinion is that I really liked the assembly, and I think it was very informative to all of us.  I also think that having the talk come from a girl who had gone through it made it like a personal story, and it made me realize that this could happen to anyone.