[Thank you for attending my Midterm presentation of Learning. As you can guess, I am the expert on my own learning. I am responsible and accountable for my learning. You can expect me to give an honest evaluation of my progress. I will speak the truth, and only the truth. We will discuss my strengths and opportunities for growth. Thank you in advance for listening and offering feedback in which I can use to improve as a learner.]

Welcome to my first Mid-term presentation of learning (mPOL). I will be reflection on my first 4.5 months in the PLP program. Let’s begin, shall we?

My goal so far this year has not been to get good grades. Woah woah woah, calm down. Getting good grades was my 2nd priority. My first was just to get a hold of this program. Figure out the expectations, the norms, and get a feel for the program, which I think has been the right decision. Alright, now that that’s out of the way, what kind of learner am I? 

I am not an above-and-beyond student. Usually, I do what I’m supposed to do, and that’s it. I very rarely try and go above-and-beyond, unless I’m very confident in the skills involved in the project, which I’ll get into later. But by far my biggest setback has been rushing. I’ve had this problem for a long, long time, but, its starting to get better- slowly. I would just try and finish my work as fast as possible, in the hopes of not getting homework. Although I was putting out work fast, I wasn’t putting out my best possible work. I sort of believed in quantity over quality. To try and tackle this problem, I’ve just been telling myself that, ‘homework is fine. I can make time for homework’. I know try to find a balance between work done quickly, but also done well. An example of this is my role #1 in the Outsiders project. As you can guess, I rushed it, and barely met the criteria. Thankfully, Mr. Harris let me know how I could improve it, and it got better.

I’m not a perfectionist, but I’m also not a “good enough” student. I always want to make sure I’m proud of my work.  

If I’m not, I will try everything and anything to make sure I am. I had this dilemma during the winter exhibition. At first, I was confident in the pre-build sketch of my “pandoras box”. I really thought this was gonna be the project where I finally can say “You know, what? I had the best project”. 

Then about halfway through building, I went around and looked at everyone else’s boxes. I realized, not only was my box not one of the best, it was probably one of the worst. Everyone else had so many materials and colours, while my box was as bland as a british meal. However, I think this put a chip on my shoulder. I went ham and cheese on this box, after working on it so hard, my box became was pretty good, and unique, and I got lots of kind words from the patrons at the exhibition.

But, I FAILed this project.

In PLP, “Fail” stands for First Attempt In Learning, which I experienced during the project I mentioned before. For some reason, I imagined my box- back when it was bad- as my final. I should’ve seen it as a draft, my first attempt of learning. I almost thought, “gosh! My first attempt sucks, which means I will fail this project!!” Your first attempt of learning isn’t supposed to be good. It’s nice if its good, but, it’s totally fine if your first attempt isn’t perfect. I also experienced this at the beginning of the year.

At the beginning of the year, I remember feeling a bit discouraged. It seemed like everything I touched turned into “revision”.  I just kept seeing that nasty emoji, and every time I saw it, my self-esteem would just deteriorate slowly. At the time, I didn’t realize that getting all of these revisions was a good thing. All of the revisions I was getting- while slowly chipping away at my self esteem- was also slowly making me a better learner. I was discovering the standards and expectations in the PLP program. Slowly, I got less and less revisions. 

One of the reasons I decided to join the PLP program was because I think I have an appropriate skill set. I am very confident in graphic design, art, and video editing, which are pretty prominent in the program. I find myself spending much more time on projects that involve these skills, though, because I almost feel as though I have to prove myself, and show-off all of the things I can do. On the other hand, I really have to work on, organization. There have been multiple times this year in which I just forget to upload something, even though its finished. I end up with late assignments, which could’ve been very easily avoided had I stayed organized, and planned things. An example of some art/graphic design I’ve made this year below.

I’d like to think that I implement lots or personality into my work. I try to add a fair share of attempted humour into my work, and I try and make my work conversational. I like to make my work feel ‘human’. I don’t want people to think my work was written by a robot, that’s boring. And if I’m being honest, people probably don’t care about your work, so you’ve got to keep them interested. An example of this is my collage. I added some humour, with the expression I’m making in that photo, and all of the photos I added had something to do with my personality- or at least, most of them.

Thank you for reading/listening my mPOL. I believe I have given an honest reflection on my learning. For the rest of my time in PLP, I want to insure I produce quality work while improving my organization. I’m wildly excited for future PLP projects, and I’m optimistic for the future.