Hi! It’s that time of year. MPOLS! A time where I get to talk about myself for seven minutes. This is honestly a really valuable part of the year as Its a time where you’re forced to think really deeply and reflect on your work. This year has been going by so fast MPOLS is like a freeze frame to think about you and your work ethics. This post is going to be mainly on the opportunities I have for improvement, but there will also be some highlights of the year so far, and ending it off with a laser focused question that I need answers to!! I like MPOL’s. They remind me, no matter how many times I do this, I will never run out of thing I can improve on and learn... First though, here is the POL deceleration. 

“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 weaknesses. Thank you in advance for listening and for offering feedback that I can use to improve as a learner.”

GOAL #1 STOP TRUSTING MYSELF 

You may be thinking, uhhhhhh, what? When you read that caption, but let me explain. I trust myself when it comes to school. I know I can get done what I put my mind to. This trust has grown over the past 4 years of high school, and you would think its a good thing but its not 100% good. Its good in the way where I have high self efficacy in my school category, which helps me succeed, but it’s bad where It kind of ruins my days. I think Ive mentioned this before but I can do a lot of work in the mornings before school. I sometimes find my mind is most awake then, and the pressure of the 8:30 school time makes me go 10x faster than I would normally. Thats good I guess, I can produce quality work in the mornings. Some of my best blog posts have been written in the morning.

Why its bad is because the homework I have to do is constantly hanging over me like a sad rain cloud, and I sometimes just loose overall motivation to actually do it in the morning. Or, I don’t have enough time. A goal I made in PGP was to get my work done right away at 3 while I’m still feeling motivated, and I am going to try really hard to stick to that. I want to be nicer to myself by not leaving homework to the morning. 

GOAL: #2 MAKE IT ATTRACTIVE

While reading atomic habits, It gave me a new perspective on the way I personally approach schoolwork. I’ve noticed that I’m way more likely to do something when I’ve made myself excited for a certain aspect of it. The 2nd law in atomic habits is all about that. Its called “MAKE IT ATTRACTIVE.” Ive kind of had this overall idea in my head for a while, but never laser focused my thoughts and actually developed something connected to the idea. My goal is to use some of the rules from this law to help me gain more motivation to do my work.

Something I really liked that the author said was to pair something you WANT to to with something you HAVE to do. Ive found that if I switch up the way I do my assignment, like writing it on paper instead of my iPad, or just making a bunch of coffee/tea and settling down while doing my work. I need to attach an attractive and positive activity with the work I need to do, or I honestly lose all motivation. An example of me doing this since I read atomic habits is during this new Macbeth unit. I find Shakespeare quite hard to enjoy and understand, but I’ve been taking notes at home on the scenes writing it out and drawing things connected to it makes me actually enjoy reading Shakespeare in class. 

What project did you struggle with?

This year has been full of projects that aren’t necessarily my favourite “genre” of projects. I like really open ended projects with not a lot of creative constraints. I find thats the best way I learn, as its an attractive and fun thing but also forces you to get to know the unit content really well. This year they have been very writing based, from the New Mexico book (partially creative as it includes photo and video) to the Lord of the Flies Essays, to The poetry book, its been a lot of writing. I have expressed before that I have a hard time with writing as I just don’t like it that much. But obviously, I am still going to need to do it. The Lord of The Flies unit was quite challenging for me in the motivation category.

Writing is something I get better at every year, but it takes a lot. To see progress, I need constant critique, motivation, and dedication to revise. This unit I was missing the critique and motivation. It was a lot of writing assignments, and I’d write them and think they were great, then a week or so later get a bunch of critique on them and feel disappointed and have little to no motivation to revise and I couldn’t even remember my thought process. This was a very mentally challenging project for me, and I think it was because I just simply didn’t enjoy it and that caused no motivation. I lacked the motivation and inspiration to create and write. I handed in a lot of stuff late, and felt like I was always behind. Writing isn’t something that comes to me naturally, and I need to remember thats okay, I’ll just have to work a little harder.

So, what am I going to do to make sure this type of thing doesn’t happen again? I need to start relying on myself and ways I can make myself inspired to do something I don’t enjoy. Here’s a book you have to read, you don’t really like the book, and you have to write about it. A lot. I want to be able to take that un enjoyment as an opportunity to find something I enjoy about it. I don’t know how Ill do that yet, but I’m going to test out some ways as the year continues. For this project I could have taken a large interest in the film aspect of LOTF as that’s something I love, or even just taking notes each chapter to keep me motivated. 

What project surprised you? 

In the beginning of the poetry unit, I expressed my weird dislike of poetry. I didn’t hate it, just never felt an interest or connection to it. So, that’s why this project surprised me so much, because it was my favourite project out of all of them this year. I think it was a perfect combination of history, poetry and creativity.

 

I liked the amount of openness we had and freedom to do anything we wanted. Like I said earlier, writing doesn’t come easy for me, but once
I wrote a few poems and got over my weird fear of writing about poetry being cringe, it came pretty easy. I think the most nervous I’ve been all year was before a dress rehearsal in our class. I had to read 2 poems I wrote just in front of my classmates and Ms Maxwell. I was so so so so scared for some reason and remember feeling my heart beating out of my chest. I think I was so nervous because poetry is so personal and reading it out loud can be hard. 

After the dress rehearsal, my eyes opened up and I really decided I was going to take this poetry unit as an opportunity to take risks and do things I normally don’t like. This project was a learning lesson for me as well as a successful project. I learnt I need to always go into a project with an open mind, and take risks!

Laser focused question!

So we have to come up with a question to ask our parents and teachers, and mines more about you than me. I want to know how you handle a situation I personally struggle with, so I can learn from it and help myself. I find hearing about how others deal with something can help inspire me 

When motivation is lost, what route do you take to re-inspire yourself and get it done?

I know as adults you guys must be plenty of things you don’t want to do, but you have to do. I experience that more and more as I get older and I want to know what you guys do, because it would really help me out.