So it’s time for yet another SLC. I’ve been able to do three of these already without curling up into a ball and wasting away, so I guess number four will be okay.

I think my cracking point would be about seven.

This year, we’ve done a lot of work…blah blah blah…showcase my work…blah blah blah. I’m sure by now, everyone knows what they’re in for, no? Lets just get started with it then.

This time, I’m supposed to showcase something I’m proud of, something I’m not proud of, and then discuss goals.

Me being proud of something is something that you’ll rarely see broadcasted. Personally, I think it’s kind of egotistical to be super proud of my own work, although I don’t seem to have much of a problem when I see other people do it. There’s always room for improvement, and that’s why I never really finish anything.

Except these.

My blog posts are the some of the only things that I actually sat down and finished beginning to end. That’s what I’m proud of. With these, I can just brainstorm an idea, pick the best one, and spend a few hours doing it. Each blog post takes about 2 to 6 hours to make, depending on what my plan is. I just sit down, and I feel motivated to get it done, start to finish. I actually kind of like doing them, and that’s why I think they’re good. And I think I’ve figured out the reason I like them. It’s all my ideas, I can sit down and do something, whatever I want, completely uncensored.

And example of this is my Deep South blog post. I just kind of wrote about my feelings instead of trying to make a

I think I do my best work uncensored. When I don’t have a project plan to follow, I’m not worried about completing a bunch of stuff that I really don’t care about. Writing a blog post is less like a project and more like when I try to memorize the history of Walt Disney Studios, or spend a week learning about Barak Obama for no apparent reason. Or when Blog posts remind me of when I was in fourth grade, and I would write an essay on Walrus’ for fun.

Or maybe it’s because I don’t really get anything out of the blog posts than fun facts, and I really like fun facts. To quote Jack Arthur: “So you don’t care about scientific facts but you care about which Pixar movies have the best animation, and which have the best story?”

Yup. And by the way, best animation is The Good Dinosaur, while best story will send me into a half hour rant about originality, critical acclaim, impact on the audience, and significance in film history.

Time for what I think needs to stay in the shadows. The things I ain’t exactly proud of. I picked two things, because I am an overachiever at underachieving. But I probably could have bashed every single project I’ve ever made, because I’m not happy with virtually anything I do, so maybe I’m not underachieving. I might just be too picky.

So first, I’m going to start with my Blue Sky.

The thing about Blue Sky this year is I made elaborate plans, and then when they fell through, I forgot about it until it was too late to make a good project. I think a lot of my problem is the fact that I
1) somehow just thought this project would do itself
2) don’t know how to build stuff, so I couldn’t take the easy build something in one evening route.

I’m not going to show my Blue Sky to you because I can’t do that without cringing, and here’s why: it has nothing to do with me at all. Blue Sky projects are supposed to be personal, yet mine somehow never are. They’re the opposite of my blog posts, and always some of the most mediocre projects I do. I guess a way to fix this would be to pick something I truly care about, but this is hard when the the things I’m interested in fall so outside of anything that could relate to a project. I would be happy to just talk about Pixar for hours, but that’s not a project.

Instead I guess I just put minimal effort into a mediocre project. It’s really hard for me to put maximum effort into a project I don’t care about. So I guess my only option is to pick something I am actually interested in for more that five minutes. If that’s even possible.

The second project of mine I am going to bash is my Little Big Story of styrofoam. My problem with this project lies completely in one thing, I did all my research, planned it out, and created the beginning, and then realized I needed to start on my civil rights one and shoved this one to the back-burner. By the time I went back to this one, I didn’t have time to do everything I wanted to do with it. In reality, my shortcomings in this video come from bad time management. I actually think if I had have had enough time, this video would have been really good. I just didn’t beat the clock with this one.

Time to discuss goals. My goal from my last SLC were to do this one without using the words “meh”, “it didn’t suck”, and “it’s not as bad as I thought it was going to be”. I did my best to do that. It’s part of why I only actually showed you a little bit of work. To me, my work is never done, so “finished products” just make me want to defend how bad it is.

I’m also supposed to reflect on the year. It was a good year. I was overbooked in the winter, and honestly because the Panto is doing Peter Pan this year someone really has to talk me out of overbooking again. The overbooking hit my schoolwork hard, but I’m only doing two choirs next year, and one is in timetable, so I’m going to have a lot more free time on my hands. Yeah.
So I guess that opens it up to questions, then.

I don’t really remember when I did my last SLC, I just remember I was like two weeks late because of complications. I know it’s been a long time though. Before I start posting all my stuff, I would like to thank my teachers for not making us post like 5 posts again, because I won’t think I could have handled that. And I probably would just have like.. not done it.

*Mario voice* Here we go!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k900hqBNc14

It took me a few minutes to decide which Mario voice clip to use. So many options.

IMPROVEMENT.

I mean, yeah, I’ve improved over the last few months. Last time, I remember refusing to show any iMovies cause I was worried they were all crap. I mean, they kind of were. I’ll show the first forty seconds of my zoo movie to prove this (this is one of the movies I edited).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lQpwjDisDkg

Greeeeat. Bad pictures with voice over at it’s finest. Now, I can’t say that my most recent video shows that I’ve become a movie editing expert, but I can assure you I’ve gotten better. Especially considering that the zoo movie took three people about a week, and I made this next one in bed in less than two hours.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iecpi3MTkhk

I think this shows that maybe I suck at this less than I used to. That shows learning and improvement, right?

I think these videos show that I really have improved my skills in delivery of information. I’ve somehow learned that it is much better to be conversational in any kind of presenting work than trying to sound all stiff and proper. I know there is a place for professional speaking and such, but it’s so much easier for me to just roll with it. I mean, did you hear that script in the first video? Not that it was me speaking, but I wrote it. It had no emotion whatsoever. Ick.

This has also showed in my blog posts. If you go back to the very beginning, I didn’t show much trace of personality in them until after my first SLC. Like literally right after my SLC. It’s like after winter break I just kind of gave up and became less of a robot. Which is a good thing. If anyone is wondering, I am referencing our first Romeo and Juliet blog post, where all I do is trash how stupid Romeo and Juliet are. I stand behind this argument.

BEST WORK.

Ok, everyone knows highlighting my best work isn’t some my best work. Ha. I have to say, for awhile my blog posts were pretty decent, but I feel like they took a blunder after the napoleon stop motion Joel and I made. I blame my dad for making us watch a stupid movie he ordered while we worked. It really took away from the educational process.

In all honesty I haven’t even seen the stop motion video, I’m just going to assume it’s awful.

Although, my first blog post for the revolutions was actually pretty cool. This was the one where I sang Viva la Vida but changed the lyrics to match my topic. I will play the song, but I will warn everyone that I am pretty out of tune.

I know I’ve made some okay stuff, but honestly I don’t know what to show. It’s hard for me to say what is my best work and all, so I have no idea whatsoever. I’m just going to keep on working at it until I create something I’m really proud of for more than like a day. It’ll probably take awhile. Stay tuned for next year.

But at least I know what my worst work is. TRAINS!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oBw_AGruYEE

That was probably everybody’s worst work, tbh.

GOALS

So, in January, I set some goals for myself. Lets see how those are doing.

Goal 1: My goal for humanities this term is to be able to write efficiently and eloquently without losing tone or meaning. I think being able to write with a larger vocabulary, and faster without second guessing myself, would benefit my work greatly.

Honestly my vocabulary has probably decreased because I have NO idea what eloquently means, but I do think my writing has improved. It shows in scripts for videos and my blog posts. It didn’t improve in the way I thought it would, but I can write without second guessing myself pretty easily. I’ve found putting a lot of honesty in my writing can make it seem more raw and less like a textbook. Honestly, I probably should still increase my vocabulary, but my school blog isn’t Websters Dictionary, so whatevs.

Goal 2: My goal for science this term is to do my work throughly and try to obtain a deeper understanding of my science subjects.

What I accomplished was more like thinking I understood stuff then finding out at the test that I wasn’t too great. I thought I was really good at chemistry until I got 51% on the test. I didn’t take a retest, because I didn’t realize I could at the time, which I regret, but hopefully I’ll figure out chemistry in grade ten, right?

I actually did understand the whole electricity unit. Not putting the wires together and stuff, but I was killer at the formulas. It was probably largely due to the fact that I missed a couple classes, so I actually went over the stuff at home. Funny how that helps. I should have figured that out earlier, but I didn’t.

Goal 3: My goal for personal learning this term is procrastinate less and get more work done (or more drafts) so my final product will have more revisions and ultimately be better.

Hey, I was doing pretty well until concert season. I actually think I improved at this and got my work done better and faster until I had more choir rehearsals and got a job at pretty much the exact same time. I lost week time and weekend time, and I was freaking exhausted. My new goal is figuring out my new time management now that I don’t have whole weekends to get stuff done. I did it all the time when I played ringette, so I must have had it figured out at some point.

ANYWAYS

It’s been a good year mostly, everyone should be glad I didn’t play ringette because yeah my work would have gone downhill with that time loss. I think what I need to focus on for next year is sucking it up when I’m tired and getting stuff done, and probably blocking the entire website that is YouTube, YouTube is my weakness.

At least it’s not Netflix, binge watching is probably worse.

Kirby Out.