“Thank you for coming to my presentation of learning. I am the expert on my own learning. I am also responsible and accountable for my own learning. You can expect me to give an honest evaluation of my progress. We will discuss my strengths and opportunities for growth. Thank you in advance for listening and for offering feedback that I can use to improve as a learner.”
This year saw a lot of growth from me as a learner compared to last year, but I’m only 5’8” so there’s still a lot of growth to go. Although the mPOL is focused on improvement and growth, I would like to focus on some positives I have recognized this year. Something I talk about so much in mPOLs is procrastination. I’ve talked about it so much I think I’ve been banned from bringing it up in a POL since grade 9. This year I’ve been quite proud of my time management and my organization. Now this is more than just handing things in on time, since that is the “table stakes”, but leaving time for me to go back and look over what I have created. This has been something I’ve been trying to work on ever since the podcasts, when I was rushing to get those complete, leaving plenty of mistakes, but this year I’ve completed my work and given myself at least a day to think about what I wrote and revise it before handing it in.
Now that the positive stuff is out of the way… let’s get down to business. This year was the unveiling of the brand new state of the art “PLP Learning Plan”, something I actually quite like. At the start of the year I stated in my learning plan that my goal for this year was to finish the year with a 92-95% grade. I also stated that this grade would be a challenge for me to achieve, but not out of reach. I feel that this is still true today. The first thing I can do to reach my target is try to improve my profile in the Creative Thinking competency.
Creative thinking has always been something I’ve struggled with. The weakest project for me this year was definitely the Manhattan Project Project. My project for the Manhattan Project Project project could have been a better project than the project I finished with. I don’t think my idea for conceptual art was executed as well as it could have been. It wasn’t a very original idea (Fraser and Rhiann had a very similar idea). I am still fairly proud with what I came up with, but it was certainly not on that level I am aiming to be on.
Another struggle from that project came in the form of the socratic seminars. I don’t know what happened with those, I just couldn’t find the courage to speak. The pattern that happened was I’d form an argument or statement, second guess myself, let someone else say the exact same thing I was thinking, go home, kick myself, then prepare for the next week. I had good ideas. Many of my classmates were saying the same stuff I was thinking, I just didn’t say it fast enough. I think the biggest obstacle in the seminars was a fear of being judged. Looking back I know that this was irrational; I can’t remember a lot of what was said in those seminars. Looking forwards, I need to step out of my comfort zone. Nobody will judge me for my ideas, as long as they aren’t offensive. Ms. Willemse said socratic seminars would be coming back later in the year, so my biggest goal will be to actually participate.
I’ve really enjoyed a lot of the topics mentioned in class this year. They are all things that I enjoy learning about, or that I have the opportunity to research about in my own time. Recently, my zettelkasten has been quite dry. I managed to maintain a level of activity at the start of the year, but lately I haven’t kept that activity up. I like the idea of the zettelkasten and I think it could prove useful for me in the future, so something non-grade related I want to work on is igniting the flame that is curiosity. If I can routinely create zettels a few times a week I will be much better off in the future.
Looking towards the rest of the year, my biggest goal will be to step out of my comfort zone. Whether it be trying to overcome that fear of presenting my ideas to others, or trying something new when it comes to a project, progressing into the post-secondary world will be easier if I can be confident and clear-headed when trying something new or challenging. For the time being, I think my goal of 92-95% shouldn’t be changed. It is still something that is possible to reach. From now to the end of the year, my main focus will be on communicating within a large group. Something I will do to help this will be to evaluate ideas that I come up with before the conversation to understand them so that I can be confident that what I am saying in the conversation has meaning and value.