Month: January 2018

It’s that time of the year again! mPOLs, SCLs, whatever you want to call them. It’s a time when I reflect on my learning, see what I did well on, what I don’t do that great on, and talk about what I’d like to improve by the end of the year.

Throughout this school year, we’ve done a lot of projects. The start of the year was a bit rough for me, as I feel like I could have put more effort into the work I was putting out there. For example, my Science Podcast. The idea for the podcast was to use the science (wow) of genetics to answer the question “If two sets of twins got married, and had children, would their children look the same?”.

It was a really great idea, but I feel like I executed it poorly. I could have maybe done more research on the topic to understand it better, and put more effort into the actual podcast to make it sound better. Overall, I think this could have really been improved if I had put more effort into it. *cue that gif from Parks and Rec*

There’s been some projects that has shown my growth as a learner, and for this I’m going to pull out an example from Humanities. If you remember from last year’s mPOL (which was called SCL back then), I talked about my goal of improving on my teamwork. I feel like this year, my teamwork has really improved. We did a podcast on homelessness, with a group that I worked really well with (Robbie, Hannah, and Isobel). Our podcast turned out really good, because we all worked equally and were a good team, in my opinion. Teamwork is a really important skill to have, and I feel like PLP has really helped me improve on that. It took a while for me to really understand the aspects of teamwork, and how I could improve on my own skills, and I hope to continue working on it in the future.

While on the topic of my growth as a learner, I’d also like to pull an example from a math project. I feel another thing that I have worked on, but still have a long way to go, is motivation. I’ve found a theme throughout my work is that if I’m not interested in a project, then I don’t bother to find a way to make myself interested. We did two projects in math this year. One of them I did quite well on, the other not so much. The different between is that one of them I found really interesting. That was the one on the golden ratio. I really like this project, because I got to research things about aesthetics, and what makes something visually appealing, and I got to draw (which is always a plus for me). The final product is something I’m very proud of:

The other project was on angles, and solar panels. This one didn’t interest me as much, so I found my motivation to make it as awesome as my golden ratio project was lacking.

It still looks nice, but I didn’t put in as much effort because I just didn’t feel motivated. So I’m hoping for the future to work on making all of my projects my best work, and find a way to make sure I am interested and engaged in whatever the topic is. It’s going to take a lot of work, but I feel like if I find a way to motivate myself into personalizing my work, it can be a lot better.

Let’s end this on a high note. What’s something that I’m really proud of this year? Well, something I’m really proud of would be my introduction video (not yet released to the public eye). When we go down to California in a few weeks, we’ll be meeting students from High Tech High. To be paired with people that would be compatible with us, we had to make a video introducing us. And something that I feel represents a lot of me would be the fact that I love music. So I wound up writing a song about myself, which included a bunch of small facts about me, as well as my interests. I was really proud of this song, not only because it was fun to make, but because it was a huge risk for me. I usually don’t really like sharing anything that I’ve written, such as songs or short stories, so putting this out there was a risk that I took that really paid off.

So I’m certain, throughout this, you’ve noticed a trend: I need to work on motivating myself and putting effort into things that I might not automatically find appealing. So I finish this presentation/post (however you’re viewing this) with a question: what are some ways that I can’t help motivate myself to do projects that I’m not instantly interested in?

That‘s all for this post, until next time

Read You Later

Sincerely, Me

Let me take you back in time, way back in time. To 2017. Okay, not super far back, but it feels like it is and it makes it sound cooler if I say it’s a long time ago. Anyways, we were told that this year, our Blue Sky project would be a bit different. We were paired with a grade twelve to help tell three different stories. This was all based off of StoryCorps (Which, by the way, is really cool. Go check it out), who’s purpose is to tell stories of people who normally wouldn’t get to tell their stories.

So, I was paired with Kirby to tell three different stories: One from our grade twelve partner, one from a family member, and one we’d record on the night of the exhibition. Getting a story from Kirby was easy, she had a really interesting one about how hurt people hurt people:

Then I had to get a story from a family member. Luckily, my mother had the perfect story, about how her biological mother just only recently came into her life after 50 years. I had a small panic as I accidentally deleted this one, so I had to re-record while I was sick (hence why I sound like I’m dying):

Then came the last one. I personally hate socializing (what a shocker), so I was not looking forward to interviewing random strangers about their jobs and hobbies was not my favourite. We had to organize a list of questions beforehand, and I had two (luckily I had a backup plan).

Then came the night of the exhibit. Willa and I (Do I really need to link her blog? You should know who she is by now) got to share a room, which wound up looking pretty cozy with fairy lights and a couch

(I thought I had pictures. I don’t)

Funnily enough, the person I got a story out of was Kirby’s sister. She used to work at Disney World (I’m envious), and she talked about that and her dream job as a kid:

I really liked this, because I love hearing the stories that aren’t very mainstream, but still mean something to someone. I hoped you enjoyed hearing these stories, and you should go check out StoryCorps (not sponsored)

Read Ya Later

Sincerely, Me

Just kidding, sorry for the disappointment. It’s your friendly neighbourhood blogger! So, first of all, HAPPY 2018!

Okay, now that that’s out of the way, time to talk Humanities. We were assigned homework over the break (luckily not that bad). We had to read the book  Little Brother which I personally really enjoyed. It’s about a teenager called Marcus, who gets blamed for a terrorist attack on the Bay Bridge in San Fransisco. I’ve actually been to San Fransisco, so this was cool to read and be like “oh yeah we rented a house in Mission” or “I have seen the Bay Bridge from a moderate distance”. And the plot was also interesting, though I’m not going to give spoilers (you can probably download the book for free somewhere).

Anyways, we were just assigned a research project. Ms. Maxwell gave us a list of things mentioned in the book, some having to do with coding and cryptography, and some having nothing to do with that. For instance, the Wonderful Willa of Oz did a research project in the Scoville Scale (how spicy something is).

I got the topic of Alan Turing. They mention it in the book because the book is all about coding, which is what Alan Turing really helped advance, by creating the Turing Machine, which would later be known as a computer.

So, for those of you confused, my title spells out ‘Alan Turing’, encrypted by this enigma machine website.

They don’t mention Alan Turing much in the book, just a brief description:

“The Nazi cipher was called Enigma, and they used a little mechanical computer called an Enigma Machine to scramble and unscramble the messages they got. Every sub and boat and station needed one of these, so it was inevitable that eventually the Allies would get their hands on one.
When they did, they cracked it. That work was led by my personal all-time hero, a guy named Alan Turing, who pretty much invented computers as we know them today. Unfortunately for him, he was gay, so after the war ended, the stupid British government forced him to get shot up with hormones to “cure” his homosexuality and he killed himself.”

Excerpt From
Little Brother
Doctorow, Cory
This material may be protected by copyright.

So that’s a brief summary of what Alan Turing is known for. A movie was actually made about him, with Benedict Cumberbatch and Kiera Knightly, called The Imitation Game, Which was really good. I recommend you watch it (illegally online).

So Alan Turing was born on June 23rd, in 1912 (he would have been 106 this year). He was really smart, and started showing it at a young age. His teachers did recognize it, but didn’t really do much about it, which I guess tells you about how great the education system in 1912 was. He went to Sherborne School when he was 13, and got really into math and science. He got into Kings College, Which is now University of Cambridge, and was there from 1931-1934.

While attenting Kings, he actually proved the central limit theorum, and was elected a fellow upon his grad. He studied math and cryptology for the next two years in New Jersey (cue New Yorkers complaining), and he received a Ph.D. from Princeton in 1938

In 1939 he wrote a paper “On Computanld Numbers, with an Application to the Entsheidungsproblem”. For those of you who think that last word was me horribly misspelling something, allow this think to prove you wrong. In his paper, he proposed the idea for the Universal Turing Machine, named after himself. This machine was supposed to be capable of computing anything that is computable. Pretty much Decoder-Ex-Machina.

Then World War II struck, and Turing was called to Bletchley Park (I suggest googling it, the results page has a little secret in store), where he helped code break German cyphers. He made five major advances in cryptanalysis, and he put his Turing Machine to work. Some people have estimated that because of his help to crack the Enigma code the Germans had made, Alan Turing and his team helped stopped the war two years before it would have if he hadn’t been there. His Turing Machine wasn’t small, either. If you complain about the ancient computers from the 90’s being bulky, look at this:

Once the war was over, he moved to London and began to work for the National Physical Laboratory, where he led the design work for the Automatic Computing Engine, And breaded a blueprint for store-program computers. Unfortunately, a full version of his blueprint was never built, but the concept was used by technology corporations worldwide for years. It actually influenced the design of the English Electric DEUCE, which was the first ever British commercially sold computer. Another thing he’s well known for is the Turing Test, or the Imitation Game (roll credits), which  has lead to many of discussions on Artificial Intelligence.

Lets skip forward to 1952, where things started to go downhill for Alan Turing. An ex of his, 19-year-old Arnold Murray, broke into his house. Naturally, Turing called the police, and told them that he and Murray had had sexual relationship. The government wasn’t exactly great back then, and by ‘not exactly great’ I mean they arrested him for being gay. Turing was forced to choose between either temporary probation, on the condition that he got hormonal treatment, or he’d g to jail. Turing chose hormonal treatment.

His life spiralled from there, some saying he even developed depression. He wasn’t allowed to work his job anymore, and the drugs made him impotent. Turing eventually killed himself with cyanide on June 7th, 1954. He was only pardoned for his ‘crime’ in 2013, almost 60 years after he died. They called it the Turing Law, which pardoned over 50, 000 gay men who were convicted. Oscar Wilde was among those pardoned.

Well I really hope you learned something today. This was really interesting for me to research, because it shows just how different things were for LGBTQ+ people back then, as well as he did so much to help us win WWII. I feel like Alan Turing doesn’t get as much recognition as he should.

And that’s all I have for you this blog post! Go watch the Imitation Game, it’s really good and goes into depth about what happened during WWII. And it’s got Benedict Cumberbatch, so you can’t go wrong.

Anyways, read you later!

Sincerely, Me