It is that time of year once again. When school is almost over and all subjects have projects due the same week just to stress you out. Be expecting just a few blog posts in the next week. Anyways it is the time of year where we have to reflect on all the learning we’ve done throughout the year. Lets get into it!

Improvements:

Reading:

This year I have been a lot better at reading books we have been given in school. In previous years I had either not really read the book or forgotten what I was reading only a few pages later. This led to struggles in novel studies or literature discussions. This year has been a huge improvement to this as I’ve had a good year in reading. Even some of the books that I disliked a lot (Nickel and Dimed). I also enjoyed a lot of the other books way more than I had any other year. I especially enjoyed Lord of the Flies. An example of my improvement in reading is how I got an exceeding expectations on a book review early in term 3. The book review was on the book Code Name Verity, we read this as part of our WWII unit. You can read my book review here.

Voice Acting:

Another big improvement I have made throughout the year is my voice acting in videos and podcasts. Up until about the middle of this year my voice in videos and podcasts was very monotone and bored. This is something I started working on right around the time we left for California. I have definitely seen massive results since then and am very proud of where I’ve gotten to. This can be seen in many of my more recent videos and podcasts, some examples would include my Who Am I video, my Dart Algebra Video, and in Adam and I’s USS Midway Podcast.

Main Skills:

Editing:

In PLP there are definitely roles that people start fitting into as time goes on. Whether its being a leader, a video editor, a script writer, or a researcher, all of these roles matter. In my case I have definitely become one of the editors in our cohort. In almost every group I’m put into I end up editing and putting together the video or podcast that we are creating. This could be in science class where I am the main character and head editor of our generator video or going back to the Midway podcast, where I edited. It’s really quite hard for me to think of a project we’ve done this year that’s required editing of any kind, that I haven’t done. For videos I’ve definitely been helped out with getting Adobe Premiere Pro as this made editing easier for me and just way more enjoyable. Some top examples of my editing skills have come in my Who Am I video, Electro Boy video in science, and in the Phone Call Scene for our DI Challenge.

Challenges:

Hard Year:

This has been a very emotionally challenging year for both me and the rest of my family. We are now approaching 1 year from when my grandpa had emergency surgery for his cancer. Ever since that surgery there has been many ups and downs for my family. After only a few weeks after he had surgery he seemed to be doing really well again, but once the school year started it was a quick decline downhill for him. He was hospitalized multiple times in the first term of the school year and passed away on the 27th of December 2017. However it wasn’t really over after he had passed. Only weeks after it happened my grandma got diagnosed with C Diff (Clostridium difficile). She was in and out of the hospital about every other weekend. It just seemed to go on and on, until she was finally sent to a specialist. Luckily though the specialist decided that she had had C Diff the first time, but every other them she had gone to the hospital was just really bad constipation. This would seem like the end to my story but it isn’t. Only a few weeks ago my sister was sent to the hospital after possibly having a seizure in the middle of science class. Luckily again this turned out not to have been a seizure and just a bad faint, but with the way my family’s luck had been going I definitely wasn’t expecting the best outcome.

Going back to my grandpa who passed away at Christmas time, during the build up to the winter exhibition we had to interview a family member about something we don’t talk that much about, so I interviewed my mom about the beginnings of when my grandpa got diagnosed with cancer.

Motivation:

This year has definitely been the worst of my 3 years in high school. There’s absolutely no way you could say I’ve met the high expectations that people including myself have of me. In grade 8 and 9 I was a very hard worker and was passionate about my school work. This year has not been like that. I can come up with all the excuses in the world (for example, that it was a hard year) but I can’t deny that I haven’t put top effort into my work this year. Too much of my work this year has been average. Really thats not who I am in school. The first 2 years of PLP I was one of the top students. This grade 10 year has been a bit like a Wednesday in a week. The middle year that I just haven’t seemed to care that much about. Next year will really have to be a rejuvenation of my old work ethic and attitude. Another possible reason for this lack of motivation is the theme of the year. Personally I’m really not a big fan of creating podcasts. For similar reasons that voice overs are my least favourite part of videos. I don’t like recording my voice for a video or podcast. However I do believe working with podcasts has helped me with my voice in recordings significantly.

Best Work:

Blue Sky:

Even though we haven’t gotten to the exhibition yet I am quite proud of my blue sky for this year. I have been running a test to see if playing certain games in virtual reality will improve your real reality reaction time, using reaction time as a comparison to g (general intelligence). Throughout this project I have learned but more figured out why reaction time and g are related. This is because your reaction time is more the time you can see something and do “without even thinking about it”. So really it’s increasing the speed at which your brain can work without you really noticing it working. This is also very apparent in the game I used for blue sky. I feel that in the game I get more of the easy things wrong then the hard things, because I’m “not really thinking”.

(Blog Post Coming Soon)

Dart Algebra:

This example could’ve been almost any of my science and math projects since Christmas as I do feel I’ve made some really good projects in those subjects since then. I decided to go with the Dart algebra project, because I feel it really showed mine and Ethan’s creativity. The task in this project was to create some kind of game involving algebra tiles. Both Ethan and I liked playing darts, so we went from there. We ended up covering over all the numbers on the dart board with numbers 1-3. You would have to throw a dart at the board and remember what your score was. You would then draw a card with an algebra question that you would have to solve with algebra tiles. The equation could be factoring or expanding, if you got the answer right you would then move up the amount of spaces you hit on the dart board, if you go the answer wrong you would have to go back the amount of spaces you hit. Here is our video explaining how to play:

Goals for Next Year:

STOP PROCRASTINATING:

Next year I completely have to rethink my strategy to time management. This is because right now my strategy is to do everything last minute, which isn’t heathy. I have to come up with a new way to get stuff done, whether it be do everything right when its assigned or putting up a calendar in my room with due dates, my activities, and when I should and can do my homework.

Bring Back My Motivation:

As you know by now my motivation this year has not been very good. This will have to change for next year because grade 11 is a very important year, and well I don’t want to just cruise through high school I do want to achieve great things, so that I can follow my plan for post-grad.

Improve Majority of Work:

My final goal for the year is to improve the level of the ,majority of my work. This means having my not as good pieces be average, and my top work actually be top work. This again is important to me to get myself to my post-grad goals, and to get myself to a point where I’m back to being a leader in the class.