Am I financially literate? Are you? Well this project was all about finance.
Finance
We did this activity about budgeting and how budgets cam be helpful. Our objective was to develop a monthly budget, differentiating between fixed and variable expenses. This exercise proved to be an effective method for acquiring budgeting and money management skills.
Moving on, we embarked on the activity centred around planning for our future careers. We engaged in thorough research on summer jobs (if we were interested in getting them) and set goals for the amount of money we wanted to save by the end of summer. Additionally, we explored the average costs associated with attending university and living costs. This experience provided us with a good understanding of our financial prospects for the upcoming future.
Stock Market Simulation
The highlight of this project was definitely the “Stock Market Challenge.” It was a competition within our class to see who could make the most money in a simulated stock market. We had two options: go for big, well earning stocks or focus on ethical investments. I decided to go ethical and really look into each of the companies I invested in. I am proud of my choices because I know that these companies have an overall positive impact on the world. You can see my reflections for all 5 weeks of this challenge here
This is what my stocks looked like at the end of the challenge ⬇️
Conclusion
So overall after this project I feel better equipped to handle my finances in the future. I am more confident that I will be knowledgeable in how to manage my money and not go broke.
Helloooo world of blog. I haven’t really done any blog posts yet this year specifically about my careers class so guess what we are talking about today? Yep my Personal Growth planning aka PGP aka Careers class and what we’ve been working on.
So how does one market themselves? In this case, I am talking about marketing yourself in terms of job opportunities through things like resumes and business cards. The choices that you make when choosing how to present yourself to potential employers can greatly influence your chances of getting that job. So this section of our PGP class set out to prepare us for the job hunting and professional self-presentation of our futures.
Driving Question;
How do I make career life choices?
Answer – planning. Let me explain;
We started by looking at our dream careers and our realistic careers, what those jobs would initial and what the prerequisites were. And then finding the prerequisites for those prerequisites and so on. What schools do you want to go to? How far from home are you willing to travel for university/college? What degree do you need? Where do you want to end up living? What’s your financial situation going to look like? Etc. Answering all these questions is essential to planning out any career life choice you make. Tracing out where you want to go and how to get there is how you make career life choices, or at least how you make good career life choices.
And to help us start making these career life choices, we started answering the question “How can I effectively market myself to employers?” To convey our answers to this question, we each made new resumes, business cards, and a cover letter draft that we could send out to potential employers.
The Resumes
Above you will see my updated resumes that I made during this course. I really like the one that has my picture on it because it separates my qualities/soft skills from my skills. An employer can make their decision just by a quick glance over a resume so it is important that they are neat and organized in layout. I think I did a wonderful job creating an appealing resume that accurately reflects me marketing myself.
The Business Cards
As you can see above, I have 2 different business cards. One I chose to do a simple black and white with minimal information and personality, the other is coloured and has some line graphics on it. I like the beige aesthetic one because it feels more personal and includes my title as student/sales associate.
The Mock Interview
Finally, we did mock job interviews. My partner Dana and I spent a lot of time carefully picking out interview questions that we thought displayed a good mix of our skills and personality, being sincere with our answers as well. We came into school dressed professionally and ready to shoot. We then dressed up and filmed the interview with both people answering and asking the questions. Practicing like it was a real interview helped me feel better prepared for any interviews I will have to do in the future because I already know what questions may be thrown at me and how I should respond to show off my best self. I think this interview shows off my skills in communication and my passion for my interests, but I’ll let you judge for yourself. Here is the video Dana and I made (I’m the brunette);
Conclusion
Overall this section of PGP has made me feel more confident in my abilities to get another job in the future when I leave the one I am currently at. I am excited to use my new resumes and maybe even hand out a business card or two. It was sometimes difficult to find colours or fonts that matched my personality, and trust me you can spend a very long time flipping through fonts that just dont feel quite right. But being able to critically think about one’s future is a skill I have always loved to use and exercising that in this project was very helpful for me. Thanks for reading!
So flashback to last year in grade 9 when we did the project on the 7 habits ofhighly effective people, this project was basically adding on to what we learned then with some positive brain training and a study of the book Atomic Habits by James Clear.
This project was based around the question; How does balance within my life create opportunities?
Atomic Habits
So as I previously mentioned, throughout the course of this project we would be reading and analyzing a book called Atomic Habits by James Clear. I personally did not find this book very interesting and I think there was a little too many anecdotes and much too much repetition of topics. So to help me get through this book, I made a collection of all of the chapter summaries so I could more clearly see the big ideas.
You can find all of those chapter summaries on a Craft document here
Positive Brain Training
So as you can see from the image above, our positive brain training was something that we did everyday as a class. These activities were supposed to re-wire our brains to be more optimistic and function better. Now I don’t know if I see a big improvement or anything but we also fell out of consistency after a few weeks so that may have affected the efficacy. Every time we did do the activities though, we recorded them in a Craft daily note, and I would like to share my favourite one with you.
This is my journaling response to the prompt “Imagine your perfect day and write about what it would look like.” It’s a little too long to copy on to this page so I will give you the link to my daily note of that day here.
Conclusion
Overall answering the driving question, balance in my life creates opportunities by helping me feel more organized and calm. I think I learned a little bit about how I respond to what I feel is an oversimplification of toxic positivity through the duration of this project. I think I preformed well and came out the other side a more organized and self-aware person. 😁
*Brrrrrrrr* g-greetings frrom m-my -11º C lloooon lak-k-ke memoriesss
Three layers of pants, two layers of wool socks, two shirts, a sweater, jacket, winter boots, a touque, gloves, and a scarf, welcome to the outfit of the day; Loon Lake edition. I guess my ultimate conclusion from this 5 day field study was that I am not built to survive moderately cold weather.
Challenging Myself
The three days we had with Pinnacle Pursuits were an amazing opportunity to get to step outside of my comfort zone in ways I usually wouldn’t have access to. One of the things that I think effected me greatly was my experience on the climbing wall. I was stuck at a point on the wall that I could just not get over. My fingers were frozen, my winter boots were slipping, palms sweaty, physical strength was completely zapped, and mentally I was so done and longing to get off the wall. But the amazing guy at the end of the rope would not let me go down. I spent around 15 minutes stuck at that one point on the wall and I felt so bad about holding up the line of people waiting to try the side I was on (again so sorry guys I wanted to come down he would NOT let me). I think after about the 5 minute mark there was no hope left in me that I would ever make it further up the wall, but every time I wanted to quit the guy told me to just focus on the wall and nothing else. He told me that he knew I could do it and that I knew what I needed to do I just had to put my mind to it. I tried SO HARD to climb up and use all my mental strength to conquer the wall, but I failed. We ran out of time and I was at last allowed to return to solid ground (thank god). And all of the sudden the tears that I had been holding in on the wall started to run down my cheeks. I was exhausted both physically and mentally. When trying to figure out why I was crying, I realized quickly that these were not “sad tears”. I think the main reason was because of the exhaustion and physical pain that I was experiencing post-hanging on a wall for 15 minutes. But I also think I was overwhelmed because of the amount of support I was receiving from my peers. And how a man who I had only known for less than an hour had so much faith in me. So special thank you to Brandon because this wouldn’t have happened without him.
My Learnings
As this was a Leadership-themed retreat, we did a lot of talk about leadership and how we could be the best versions of ourselves. One of my favourite activities that we did was creating a personal credo, which I think is more easily described as personal affirmations. I found it hard to get past the barrier of self-doubt when trying to list my strengths or talents. Sometimes it feels wrong to toot one’s own horn per say but in this case that’s exactly what we were trying to do. I found that reflecting on my personal values helped me see what I was actually good at and what my ideal qualities were. We need up making or credos into wallpapers for our devices and I decided to do one for my iPad and one for my phone.
I chose the photos with a certain aesthetic because I actually wanted to enjoy having them be on my screen every time I open my device. Having those affirmations will help me to become the person I want to be and even though the credo may change every now and again, it will help me keep close to my goals.
Conclusion
So in conclusion, I was able to do a lot of learning and self-reflection during my time at Loon Lake. I hope to carry this experience with me throughout the rest of my life and take full advantage of the opportunities that this trip has opened for me. It was a fun trip and I can’t wait to see how it compares to the PLP 10 DISNEYWORLD TRIP!!!!
