Ward Basketball can be extremely competitive or simply hilarious. When both teams actually know how to keep the flow of the game it can be competitive. But when some of the players are having... pretty much their first game ever, the mistakes made are great. That's what makes it exciting, you never know who will show up, the experienced baller's or our uncoordinated friends. Before a game you never really know what to expect- it's a Saturday morning.

Sometimes the competitive games come from the single kid on the other team who has perfected a horrible shooting form and somehow just keeps making the three pointers. Then there's the one tall kid who gets all the rebounds but can't score anyway. And then there's always the numberless uncalled fouls on both sides. But despite the difference in skill levels, as one would judge, the score somehow stays close.

On the other end of the spectrum from competitive is the hilarious. Some of the most common mistakes are dribbling with two hands at once, scoring or shooting on the wrong side, and the head on collisions. The funniest part is watching the reactions of the players. The expression of the player's face that has just scored a basket on the wrong side changes from elation to a look of the downtrodden after his team mates yell, "noooooooo!" and the basket falls through the hoop.

The great thing about Ward Ball, is that when it's all is said and done it can be nothing but fun.

Education is a great deciding factor for a person in the civilized world. It determines the future in their life. Some young people have an enormous amount of pressure on them to succeed. Pressure, to an extent, can be good but too much pressure seems to take away some enjoyment in life. It puts so much stress and you can't relax. Sometimes you see people like that and it gets you stressed out just being around them.

In my own family there is also some pressure to succeed; each of my five older brothers and sisters have been accepted to BYU and I feel that pressure on me. But when most of a person's learning is based on a test (SAT or ACT) it doesn't seem to correctly assess ones academic ability. For those of us who are slow test takers it is harder to do well on them.

The pressure to do well is sometimes a good motivation to do better. For me, I think that most of the time the pressure I have helps to motivate me to do better. But when pressure is given and success is not met, there is greater sadness from disappointment. To put pressure on someone for success can motivate but too much pressure is can become overbearing and make a person do worse than otherwise.

We discussed an interesting thing in psychology today. We talked about a scenario of a person who bought two tickets for $15 each. They were for a movie he and a friend were going to go to later that day. When he went to the theater he found that he had lost his tickets, he still had $30 in his wallet. The question is now posed, if it were you would buy two more tickets for $30, or would you, because you already paid for tickets once, leave the theater. Most people say that they would not buy tickets again. Then we changed the scenario a little. This time the person had not bought the tickets yet and still had $60 dollars in his wallet. But when he arrived at the theater to buy the tickets he found that he was missing $30. Now, most people would buy the tickets.

So even though same amount of money is lost, why would a person not buy tickets in the first scenario and would in the second? This is called Loss Aversion. I think the reason a person wouldn't buy the tickets after having lost them, is that having lost what he already paid for he thinks "why should I pay for them again?" It doesn't seem just to him. But it's not the money that effects his reasoning, it is the fact that he bought and lost them that changes his action as we see from the second scenario.

It is interesting to see the pitfalls in human reasoning. It really doesn't make sense when you look at it outside both situations because the loss is the same, but for some reason our actions are changed.