Month: June 2019

It’s almost the end of the year. Crazy, right? A whole year has passed since this. But we’re wrapping up our classes, one of this is PGP. This is probably a new term for some of you, as I’ve never made a proper blog post on it. PGP stands for Personal Growth Plan, and is a course to help us get organized in life. We focussed on three main things, on idea for each term. Term 1 was all about productivity, and how we use our time. Term 2 focussed on Goals, how to make them, and what they’re good for. Term 3 went into the 7 Habits, which you can read more about <here>.

I think over all, the most useful thing for me has been Timeblocking. I am, as we all know, not the most organized person . Timeblocking has really helped that, as I have a time limit on things so that I can work out when I need to be doing what. No more 3 am paragraphs (sorry Willemse)

So, to finish this whole course up, we had to do a final project. What was something that we would send back to our past selves so that they could get a basic idea of PGP? What did we wish we knew at the start of the year? I chose to focus on the 7 Habits, which have been super helpful to get my life in a bit more order. The format I chose was a playbill (those things you get when you go to see a play/musical)

Overall, PGP was something I wasn’t a fan of at first, but it really grew on me. I am going to keep on growing the skills I’ve learned in this course, and I think they’ll help me become actually functional.

Read you later,

Sincerely, Parker

Welcome back! For those of you who are reading this online, this is my TPoL, or Transitional Presentation of Learning. I went through the first half of the year last time, so let’s pick up where we left off: I wasn’t a fan of PGP, I felt confident in myself. Oh, how things were going to change.

We started our civil rights movement unit and I was excited. Social justice is something I’m passionate about, and I wanted to learn more in depth about what was going on socially in the 50’s. It wasn’t too different to how it is now: straight, white, cis men had all of the power. I felt confident that I would do well.

For the most part it was fine, but my project with Hannah fell flat. It was there, it was a complete project, but it wasn’t something to put on a pedestal. It was mediocre. It felt a bit like a step down, which sucked, because it was a project I was passionate about.

Things didn’t get much better in our writing unit. Once more, I went in feeling confident. I love writing, writing is what I know. And then I was handing in prompts late, not really doing the assignments. I let my confidence overtake me. I had the attitude of “I know this, so I can take it easy.” It was a learning opportunity, because I figured that I probably should have worked harder. I knew what I was doing, so I should have used that and expanded in areas of writing I wasn’t that good at.

Meanwhile, PGP was back with a vengeance. My Time blocking had gotten much better (show difference) and I had ticked off a lot in Things. The workbook was helpful to me, actually. I got to take a deeper look into things like “how do I handle self care” and the “relationship bank account”. The creative reflections allowed me to think about what I had learned and put it out in a way that wasn’t just a summarizing paragraph. I really liked them, and I plan on using them more in the future to let me thing in a multitude of ways about my learning.

Back on the humanities train, we get to where we are now. The Vietnam War. Well, we aren’t in the Vietnam war, we’re studying it. But this is a unit I feel confident about. Because, for once, I didn’t know much about it going into it. I didn’t have that confidence high that I had earlier in the year, and we got options on what we studied. Personally, I’m not a fan of learning about who killed who and what battle tactic each side used. So I didn’t have to focus on that much, I got to focus on the fact that the government lies and people are gullible.

The conceptual art is a really great way to get us to think deeper about the war, because it lets us get behind the ethics and we’re always thinking “what does this mean?” Overall, this is my favourite project that we’ve done this year, and I am confident, but not too confident, about the end of year projects

So what happens next year? It’s my final year at seycove, and I know what I need to focus on. I need to prepare myself for life outside of high school, and start applying to universities and scholarships. I plan on focussing on that, as well as really pushing myself to make my final year great.

I also want to focus on community next year. I want to reach out more, and be involved with the Seycove and north shore community. I plan on finding someone to TA with next year, because that’s really helped me this year, as well as finding volunteer opportunities and chances to get involved with the people around me. I’ll be taking a gap year between grade 12 and university, so I’m hoping to seize that for all it’s worth and making sure I have good connections and prepare myself for real life.

Read You later,

Sincerely, Parker