  Salutations people, as my grade 8 year comes to a rapid close, days feel longer and I plead for summer break to come faster. This summer is going to be amazing and its like my patience has been thrown into a a blazing pit of fire, in other words they are no more. But since school goes on for three more days I have had a jam packed schedule. As you may know from some of my recent posts and the few more to come we have had so much to do lately from humanities, maker, and PGP, to scimatics and all of my other non-PLP classes. If youâve been here before, especially around the end of January you may know about the infamous mPOLâs. Guess what, we have a year end version of that presentation, tPOLâs! (The exclamation point mightâve been a tad sarcastic.) So basically, tPOLâs are the acronym for âtransitional presentation of learning.â It is simply a student lead conference in which I review and reflect on the past year in any way I (and my teachers) feel necessary. Letâs get started!
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  When I started writing this I went off track for roughly 45 minutes just thinking about how I was going to actually put this into words. I had a hard time because after my mPOL, Ms. Willemse challenged me to challenge myself. Instead of formatting my tPOL the same as my mPOL, which was subject specific, I should just talk about my accomplishments, my improvement, my goals, and my failures. You see I failed when I started writing this. Why? I am only human, and I work really hard to be the best that I can. Sometimes I get lazy, my parents would probably say that Iâm always lazy, but the only opinion that matters is mine. Am I meeting my self set standards, am I achieving everything that I can? If I can confidently say yes, then I know that I can go higher and accomplish more. As I already said, when I started writing this, I failed. I have some bad habits and I have learned to set goals to fix them. One of those habits includes overthinking to the point of procrastination. I tend to think about one thing and somehow spend and hour thinking about the infinite possibilities of how I could do it. That specifically can take a huge toll on my progress and work ethic because when you spend so much time overthinking something, it eventually turns into procrastination. My first and most important goal for next year, is to find ways to help myself stop with this simple bad habit. Iâve said so many variations of that sentence this year and I am still getting there. But like most things in life, change takes time.
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  Once I got back on track I took a look at some of the thought or sentence starters given in the shared document. The first starter asks, what I am least proud of this year. To be completely honestly, every single project that we have done this year has been something that I am proud of in more than one way. Every time I failed at something, I learned a valuable lesson. One project that I mentioned in my mPOL was the beginning of our winter exhibition project. This specific unit involved us creating an explain everything video explaining a portion of our worldview that changed recently. Mind your this project took place in late October through early December so it isnât that recent anymore. During this project I became, almost lethargic. I didnât want to put in the effort and I had no desire to even start the explain everything. I ended up learning an extremely relevant lesson that Iâm very grateful for. After I started to flat out procrastinate, I just let the work pile up. It soon became a huge snowball tumbling down on me, leaving me stressed, tired, anxious, and frustrated in myself. This is really the only thing this year that has made me feel pure frustration. Whenever I get the feeling, âI donât want to waste my weekend doing homework,â or, âwhy would I do my part instead of watching Netflix,â I remind myself of that feeling of overall disappointment in myself. I remind myself of the goals I set and the reasons I set them. This is one of the ways I have significantly improved as a student and person. I like to think of my PGP unit about setting goals when I need a bit of motivation. I find that if I find something that I want in my future, long term or short, it makes me feel like I have more power. More power to accomplish and achieve, to reach all of the goals that I set, big or small.
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  When I talk about work ethic, like most people youâd expect me to say that I have great habits. I know for a fact that some of my habits in and out of school are good for me and the people around me. On the other hand, I have some pretty self destructive habits that I have either overcome or have set goal to do so. Some of the best examples of my work ethic and habits, both the good and the bad come from my scimatics class. Math is a subject that is literally just repetition of steps and formulas with increasing difficulty and variables. I am not a mathematician but not horrible at math. I simply find that with some forms of math I have zero desire to even try. I absolutely hate geometry. I canât stand integers and fractions drive me insane. I do however find algebra particularly interesting. I would love to improve my ability to listen to everything in classes like math and science even if Iâm really not that interested in the topic at first.Â
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  So far Iâve mentioned scimatics, PGP, and (my favourite class,) humanities. Next is the big one. If youâve been here before anytime from January to April, you are familiar with DI. Destination imagination was the biggest thing I think Iâve ever contributed to. I was so overwhelmed with the simple idea or DI when I first heard about it this year. To think that I would create something so magnificent that it coupled go to a global tournament was flat out insanity. Thatâs the thing, I spent so much time thinking about the idea itself that I didnât take a good first look at it. Itâs almost like I put on the wrong pair of glasses. I wasnât reading it right. I constantly thought of it asan impossible thing that I myself, even with a team could not accomplish. And yet, well you can check it out here! When I stepped up to the project we just completed in humanities I thought of it as something unique that I could do. I could do. I could do. When I was introduced to DI I thought, how could I possibly do this, how? That was a bad mindset, one that was difficult too work with for myself, and I imagine my peers. After the initial launch of our ideas my mind began to set back into place. I opened up to endless possibilities that I wouldâve shrugged at mere weeks before. Something that I cannot wait for next year is my second attempt at DI. Not only is the project fun and valuable to our way of learning, but I learned to look at things with a completely opened mind before even starting. With our latest and last maker project of the year I did that exactly. Blue sky has allowed me to make something that I care about with endless possibilities. To quote Ms. Willemse, âYou could literally work on your blue sky project forever and still would fix everything you werenât happy with. Most authors donât read their own books after theyâve been published for that exact reason.â My teacher said that in class yesterday and I found it super relatable. If I couldâve worked on any project forever I would not stop until it was perfect, which it would never be. A huge goal for next year, in and out of school is having an opened mindset.Â
  Combine each of the things that Iâve mentioned in this post and there you have a full lifetimeâs worth of work and improvement. For me, I will use that lifetime to always improve. Accept criticism, challenge myself, take risks, and learn how to learn so that I can teach.
                                                – Ciara âïž
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