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