Column: Don’t be negatively influenced

This past week at Girls on the Run we started our lesson by looking at a picture.

So you can get a visual, here are some details. There was a blond haired woman, who I guessed was a model, advertising some kind of shampoo. I know the details I gave are a little bland, but I am trying to make a point. Seeing how beautiful her hair was, we assumed it was because she used that shampoo. This influenced us to want to buy that shampoo so we can look as gorgeous as her.

Influences can be good or bad. The advertisement I mentioned is a great example of this. It can be good because it’s encouraging to buy that shampoo so your hair will look gorgeous. It can be bad because you get the impression that your hair is not good enough as it is and it won’t look good until you buy that product. Don’t let things influence you in a bad way. My coaches and teammates are good influences because they’re always pushing me forward. Bad influences are people who make you feel bad about yourself, like bullies. My point is that we need to be good influences.

This week we also did our community outreach project. We decided to help within our school. As a team, we did things like picking up trash and rearranging, cleaning, and organizing classrooms.

To do all of that in one afternoon we divided into groups. My group rearranged my teacher’s classroom for her. Another group helped organize the fifth grade teacher’s classroom. One group even swept a whole classroom. I know that doesn’t sound like much but it is. Before you get too worried, we did get permission from the teachers of the participating classrooms. In the end our community outreach project was a success and we learned a valuable lesson about influences.

This story was originally published November 16, 2015 at 9:33 AM with the headline "Column: Don’t be negatively influenced."