tPOL 2023
Welcome to my 2023 transitional presentation of learning. In this blog post, I will be discussing why I am capable, responsible, and determined enough to move onto PLP 11. I will discuss my strengths, weaknesses, highlights, FAILs, and more.
The first reason is that I can show my openness to learning, new experiences, and difficult challenges is the time we spent doing the high ropes course at Loon Lake. On our first night at Loon Lake, the Pinnacle Pursuits leader Jono took us to the high ropes course. Since it was dark, cold, and we had no experience, he took us to the low ropes course, it was just one large rope, about 2 or 3 feet off the ground, with a hanging rope above for us to hold on to. We took turns walking across the rope, but before we went across, we all made a realistic goal, and a crazy goal. My realistic goal was to go halfway, and my crazy goal was to go all the way. When I went across, I went about 80% of the way, so I was pretty confident in my ability. On the third day, we went back to the high ropes course in the morning, since it was bright, I could clearly see the full scale of the course. I saw huge wooden poles which looked 100 feet tall, spanning a huge area, and I felt intimidated.
They told us we would wear harnesses as we went across. It helped me feel a little bit better, but didn’t change much. Then, Jono told us to make a goal for the day, and we would all take turns saying ours out loud. I said my goal was to try any new activities today, even if it was scary, and many people shared similar goals. We spent the first part of the day doing other similar activities to build up our confidence, like rock climbing and trust falls. Later that day, we came back to the course to do the activity. The first thing that helped me was learning that we were only doing 1 section of the course, which seemed much more within my abilities. The second thing that helped me was doing another “hanging from a harness” activity. After doing the other activity, I got much more confident in my ability and was excited to do the actual course. When my turn came, I climbed up the ladder and began to walk across. I noticed it was a lot easier than i thought so I went faster and faster, by about halfway through, I was basically running. I finished the course in probably less than a minute. I think this story shows how I grew as a learner and a person in a short amount of time, and how I can be pushed out of my comfort zone.
An example of me taking responsibility and showing leadership skills was my work on our Power of Imagination project. Our objective for the project was to create a documentary at Disneyworld about how the park leaves an impact on the visitors. Before we went to Florida, we had to do some pre-production tasks, and I ended up doing almost all of it. Originally, we divided the workload up so we had 2 people working on each of the 3 assignments. I was assigned to drafting our filming schedule. We were planning to film on 6 days, and I ended up writing 5 of the schedules. It wasn’t too bad though because it didn’t take too long and I did it in class. Next, we needed to write a screenplay, which me and Declan wrote, but I still ended up writing probably 90% of it. Then there was some good news, and bad news. The good news was some of my other group members did our storyboard. The bad news was that Ms Willemse hated it. I hadn’t seen it, so I wasn’t sure why, but when I did, I knew why. It was basically a collection of scribbles with vague writing. This was also the last class we had to work on it, so I spent the rest of class revising it. It was a very stressful and frustrating process throughout the whole thing, and my end product wasn’t perfect, but it was a vast improvement. I powered through and managed to carry my group. It turns out our flight was cancelled, so we had an extra 3 days to work on it. Overall though, I felt a mix of relief, and disappointment, that I had done all this work just for our flight to be cancelled.
When we went to Florida to film our documentaries, I made a grave error that will probably follow me for the rest of my time at Seycove. We were originally planning on filming a scene of me talking to the camera at EPCOT, but I realized that we had forgotten to post our script in basecamp, so there was no way to get my script because I didn’t have my iPad. I also couldn’t film it the next day because we were going to the water park and I couldn’t really film there, so I had to settle for the next best thing. I went into the bathroom of our hotel room and filmed my scene in there. I had to do it that night because it was my last night in Florida, and I needed to get it done. At first, I didn’t think it was that bad, I thought it added a bit of a independent-film-maker vibe, but Ms Willemse did not like it at all. To this day, she still refers to me as “toilet boy.” In retrospect, I thought that the script was already in basecamp, but I could have double checked before we left.
One of the projects I enjoyed the most is the Save Juno Beach project. For this project, we learned about World War II, and how it affects Canada and the world. We also learned that there was a plan to build a condo development next to the Juno Beach Centre in France. This inspired my final product, which was a multi-paragraph composition, going into detail about the context, the history, the condo plan, and what it means. What I liked so much about this final product is that it came from what I thought and what I was feeling, not just what I was taught. I love to analyze things, so that is something I would definitely like to keep doing in the future.
Probably my favourite thing I made this year was my original podcast series, So Fresh, So Clean. When I first started making my podcast, I struggled with what I wanted it to be about, but then I remembered the documentary project from last year, which I also really liked. In that project, I also struggled with coming up with a topic. One that I thought of doing for that was exploring the connection between hip-hop music and fashion, but I thought there wouldn’t be a lot of things I could film. Now that I was just talking and not filming, I could do whatever I wanted. Once I came up with my idea and name, I was so excited to start, I went ahead of schedule and began working on podcast art, episode ideas, and a rollout. I started an instagram account to build up hype, and also experiment with the idea of running a brand.
I used my graphic design skills to create a series of images I could use to further explore my interest. I really went above and beyond on this project, I even made a video to go along with my trailer. I started planning interviews with my friends before they even planned their own episodes. This project really showed my creative side, and I took advantage of the creative freedom and made something that really reflects me.
Overall, I am very happy with the work I have done this year. Several of my projects show extending quality work, and even my worst ones don’t have much to complain about. At my mPol halfway through the year, I said that my goal for the year was to keep going on the track I was on, and keep putting out consistent work, but Ms Maxwell told me something that I really remember. She told me that she and the other teachers really see potential in my and I can make that come through in my work. So for next year, my goal is to go above and beyond, to create exemplary work that shows a sophisticated understanding of my learning. I truly believe, for the reasons demonstrated in this blog post that I am ready for PLP 11.
