Personal Essay – Raising The Stakes
During the summer, we (Grade 11s) were ‘forced’ to read a book of our choosing. While browsing the web on what to read, I stumbled upon Raising The Stakes by T.L. Taylor, which delves into the foreign and mysterious area of e-sports. Many may argue what a sport really entails. However I believe that a sport is anything involving physical or mental exertion and skill in which an individual or teams compete against another or others with the ultimate goal of beneficial competition.
To truly understand why we have sports, the roots of sports derive from our human thirst for entertainment. People have distinctive ways to satisfy this thirst, and my yearn is for e-sports. The sense of community in gaming is something distinct from other activities. “The border between amateurs and new rising pro talent is not as…show more content… The sheer diversity of the fan and player base is incomparable to many other sizeable groups. As explained by Taylor, “[The players] are often still quite young and still very much in the process of figuring out who they are as people… Unlike traditional athletes, which weeds through physicality and segregates… within pro gaming you will find short and tall, skinny and chubby, fit and not”. (Taylor, 114) There is no classic physique dominating the scene. Acceptance is a quality of life that is imperative to me. Acceptance is fundamental to the core dogma of many religions and as someone who values religion over everything, one can imagine its importance in my life. In a perfect place where everyone is open to each other, we can create an environment where we can understand each other fully. In correlation, I have grown a firm rooted and growing interest into e-sports due to its unique sense of community and diversity, both of which are valuable to cultivating a healthy
invalid. These arguments include: “exams detract from the larger goals of education by encouraging teachers to “teach the test.””(Augustine 4), “standardized tests drive educators to cheat” (Augustine 7), and “high-stakes testing places too much