Hello! It’s Dana. I see you’ve made it this far into my blog, so here’s a some background on me before you read this page. During the summer of 2020, I moved from Los Angeles, California to Vancouver, Canada. In Sept 2020, I joined the PLP program at Seycove Secondary. My awesome younger sister, Monica, is now also in PLP. I have a dog named Biscuit. I’m 5 foot 11 and on good days I like to think I’m 6 feet tall. It varies. I’m super sarcastic and I love listening to music.
My top 3 biggest learning moments in PLP
Out of Ideas – To sum up this project, we wrote a poetry book without really any creative restraints. It really forced me to think outside of the box and go above and beyond. At this point in my schooling, I wasn’t super confident in my work and felt like I needed to be hand held through each step of projects. So, while this project was nerve racking in the beginning, it taught me a lot. One valuable lesson I learned is that "less is more." Despite spending a lot of time arranging everything perfectly in the final draft of this project, I realized it had become overwhelming with way too many things. So, I started from scratch and removed unnecessary pictures/writing and it turned out so much better than before. This experience taught me two important things: first, quality doesn't always depend on quantity, and secondly, revising is crucial for improvement. These lessons I still think about today and will stay with me forever. Below, you can check out my book
Glass Half Full or Half Empty? – I loved this project so much and I love the blog post the I wrote for it. This project focused on the book Atomic Habits by James Clear, which has changed my perspective on life. The book is a self-help book on pretty much becoming the best version of yourself that you can be. I have never been a self-help book lover. Ever. BUT! This book introduced me to the concept of systems, which after I implemented, helped me stay organized, productive, and balanced in all parts of my life. It changed my mindset and had a huge impact on me. This project proved to me that just by changing the smallest thing, a whole ripple effect can happen. You can check out the book Atomic Habits below 👇
Revolutions on Trial – This was such a fun project. Basically, we put the French Revolution through a mock trial to decide if it was effective or not. I loved this so much because we got to work in teams to develop opening statements, cross examining witnesses, write affidavits, put together rebuttals, and everything in between. One of the main reasons why I chose this as my third favourite project is because of it, I now want to be a lawyer. I found it so interesting how the whole process works. From finding evidence and doing research, to convincing an entire panel of people (parents in the audience) of why your case is right. Something big that I took away from this project is that there is a right way to argue. Learning how to put together logical arguments, supported by evidence, can benefit me in countless situations, whether it’s in professional settings, debates, or even personal discussions. I like to argue and I like to speak up when I disagree with something. The skills that I learned in this project helped me and will help me in the future. You can check out the video from the mock trial here.
About my life
1. My favourite book series is called The Rule of Three. Below, you can listen to me read the description of the book. This audio clip shows the work that I’ve been doing with my podcasts and understanding how to produce and use audio. You can listen to the recording below 👇
2. I play a lot of volleyball. My club team is BCO and right now it’s beach volleyball season. On both my school and my club team I play the position ‘middle’. I made a short video to showcase my editing skills as well as my volleyball skills. You can check out me playing below 👇
3. I love music. I listen to it 24/7. Last year on my Spotify Wrapped, I was in the top 1% of Spotify users. Since I like music so much, I thought that I would let you in on what I listen to. Below, I made a playlist with my favourite songs on it 👇
4. Something that I do a lot in my free time is baking. There’s something so satisfying about putting a bunch of raw ingredients together to make something that is delicious. I’ve actually made my own chocolate chip recipe. A while back, I found that whenever I would make a batch of cookies, it would never turn out exactly how I wanted it to. Either it was too crunchy, too soft, or just not good. So, I decided to make my own. This shows my ability to critique and take in information to make the best version of something, in this case, cookies. You can check out my recipe here.
5. I used to Irish dance. While I don’t do it currently, I still consider it a big part of who I am. I learned so much from it and it was really fun. I learned how to work in big groups of people and how to communicate effectively. I use these skills everyday and especially in PLP when we do group projects. Something else that’s pretty cool is during the COVID-19 era, I wrote a poem about dancing and submitted it to a magazine. And it got an article published about it! You can check out that article here. You can also check out a collage of my dancing that I made below 👇
