Hello, Internet.

So, September is here, and school has started back up once again. One of the assignments we’re doing to kick off the year is each setting a few S.M.A.R.T. Goals in different areas of our lives.

The acronym S.M.A.R.T. stands for Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant (also Rigorous, Realstic and Results-focused), and Timely (or Trackable). It’s used to help people set and achieve goals.

We each had to set three goals: one about school learning, one about out-of-school learning, and one about character growth. We also had to record these goals, and create a visual to go with each of them.

My first goal was to do with my in-school learning. This year, I would like to learn to utilize Explain Everything by researching how to use it, and using my own time to look at and learn to use the different features.

So, does that goal follow the acronym? I’d say yes.

Well, to start out, I’d say it’s pretty specific; saying I’d like to “learn to utilize Explain Everything” is kind of vague, but I followed it up with a specific explanation of how I’d like to achieve my goal.

I think it is measurable. We weren’t given a certain amount of time to aim to complete our goals in, but I’d like to improve my Explain Everything skills within the next two weeks. I’d like to research what can be done with Explain Everything, because I’m not totally sure, designate four specific things that I want to learn how to do, and go through and learn each of them.

The goal is attainable. I already have Explain Everything downloaded and know a little bit about how to use it, I just want to learn more, so it’s doable, and two weeks should be enough time. However, it’s not so much time that I would quickly lose focus from my goal.

The goal is relevant because Explain Everything is a tool that I use for school, but it’s also something I occasionally find frustrating or confusing, so it would be helpful to me to learn more about it.

Finally, the goal is timely. As I mentioned, two weeks is enough time to get it done, but not so much time that I’ll never get started, or that I’ll lose focus.

This was my visual for this goal:

My second goal was about out-of-school learning. I would like to learn how to dress, speak, and act more professionally.

I think this goal is pretty specific, but to make it a bit more so: I would like to break some habits I have such as overusing the word “like” where it isn’t needed, trailing off sentences, or sitting on tables, which I might not want to do in a professional setting, as well as learning to dress more professionally if needed.

This goal is measurable; there are specific habits I want to break and things I want to achieve, so although I might not be able to go, “I sat on one less table today than yesterday”, I know what I want to accomplish, and can take steps to accomplish those things.

I think this goal is attainable. Similarly to with my goal about Explain Everything, I’m not starting from scratch, but instead building off of prior knowledge and experience; I know how to act and dress somewhat professionally, I just have some things I want to do to improve so I can be more professional when needed.

There are many areas in my life where it’s helpful to me to be able to act professional every once in a while, but this goal is particularly relevant at the moment because I’m about to start my first job, so having a professional demeanour and style will be important.

While developing the ability to act professional when needed is something I’d like to work on as an ongoing thing, I’d like to
achieve this goal in the next fifteen days, or about half a month.

This was my visual for this goal:

My final goal, related to my own personal character growth, is that I would like to procrastinate less, and to help myself start to do this, the next four things I recognize myself procrastinating on, I’d like to make an effort sit down and get done.

This goal is specific; I want to identifty four things, from any area of my life, and accomplish them in a timely manner.

This goal is measurable. I have an amount of things I want to do, and I’ll have a clear idea whether or not I do them.

This goal is attainable; four things isn’t many, so as long as I know I have a goal, and I can recognize when I’m procrastinating, attaining this goal should be realistic.

This goal is pretty relevant, considering how often I procrastinate.

I didn’t allot myself a certain amount of time to accomplish this goal, because I don’t think it makes sense to put a time limit on “the next four times I notice I’m procrastinating”, but it is trackable.

This was my visual for this goal:

Here’s the recording, as well as the visuals, for all my goals (I apologize if I sound a bit nasal. I’ve been kind of sick.):

Toodles!

So, as I’ve mentioned, we’re currently doing a unit in Health and Career. One of our assignments for this, my favourite so far, involved creating a keynote presentation entitled “The Things I Carry”.

The idea of this presentation is that each person comes up with ten physical or mental things that they carry with them that affect their daily life or who they are.

My ten things were as follows:

1. Headphones
2. Phone
3. Creativity
4. Privilege/opportunity
5. Fan culture/pop culture
6. Anxieties/insecurities
7. Introversion
8. Work ethic
9. Words/language
10. Sense of humour

I don’t really have a lot of physical things that I carry with me at all times, so I focussed more on the mental side of things.

Here’s my keynote:

I started off with talking about the physical things I carry with me, beginning with my headphones.

I go through a lot of headphones, mostly because I lose or break them from using them all the time. While I had considered just putting music down as one of the things I carry, music is only a part of what my headphones represent. I carry headphones with me a lot of the time because they act as a source of privacy even when I’m out in public. As someone who finds it draining to spend too much time around a lot of people, having a small source of privacy makes me feel a lot better when I get stressed or tired out.

What I use my headphones for subdivides into the categories of music and videos. While I can often be found listening to my favourite song, whatever’s stuck in my head at the moment, or a song I’ve recently started listening to, I also spend a lot of time watching YouTube, and doing so has provided me with a lot of useless information, entertainment, and even a few role models.

The other physical thing I carry with me is my phone. I don’t spend a lot of time on my phone, at least in comparison to the stereotypical teenager, largely due to the fact that I use my iPad for a lot of things. However, I usually bring my phone with me if I’m going somewhere, because I need the ability to communicate with my parents or friends, and because it’s useful as a camera and as a way to get or store information.

One of the mental things I carry with me is my creativity, which manifests itself in a variety of ways: playing piano, drawing, singing, writing, and making the occasional hat, candle or doll dress. Being creative has always been a big part of who I am, and I enjoy being able to look back on the things that I have created over the years.

The next thing that I carry with me is one that I had trouble putting a word to, but I eventually decided on “privilege”. A lot of the things in my life, such as where I live, the opportunity to go to school, my family, my community, or the amount of travelling I’ve been able to do, are things I didn’t choose or earn in any way, but which have ended up being big, usually postitive, influences on my life.

One of the things I carry with me is fan culture, or pop culture, and this is something that ties in to a lot of the other things I carry with me. There are a lot of areas of pop culture that appeal to and influence me, the prevalent ones being YouTube, music, books, movies and TV. The things that I’m a fan of are often an inspiration for my creative outlets; for instance, this drawing that I did.

Something that I carry with me that isn’t quite so positive is my anxieties and fears. These are mostly basic things: Am I doing well at school? Do I look okay? Am I saying something offensive without realizing it? Am I making good choices? Even the most basic of fears, however, can still be a big part of one’s life, and these daily fears and anxieties are definitely a big part of mine. However, like everyone else, I do my best to accept or overcome them.

The next thing I carry with my is my introversion, which I’ve seen viewed as a negative thing before, but I personally think can be positive, and has had a lot of positive effects on my life. I like to spend time alone, which gives me a chance to do the things that I enjoy, such as writing, or focus on the things I need to do, such as doing homework. Being introverted has also made me independent, which can often be useful or important.

My work ethic is something that I’ve carried with me for as long as I can remember. I feel a strong need to do well at everything I do, or at least to do the best I can, and if I don’t put my best effort in, I don’t feel satisified with the end result. This is something that helps me attain goals, as well as learn new skills or learn about new topics.

One thing that I carry with me is my love of words and language. I enjoy learning about the structure or etymology of words, as well as wordplay and puns. I also like reading and writing a lot, and I find it easier to express myself through the written word than I do just through speaking.

The last thing I carry with me is my sense of humour, which is composed mostly of puns, pop cultural references, sarcasm, self-deprecation, irony and memes. My sense of humour is something that seems to annoy or confuse a lot of people, but it’s something that helps me communicate or connect with the people around me.

The things that I carry with me might change over the years, and they have changed throughout my life, but they will always be a part of who I am.

Toodles!

So, recently we each had to do an assignment where we wrote about five people who we looked up to as role models– the five people we would want at the table at a business meeting, so to speak.

This assignment also included making a creative visual including everyone at your table, as well as yourself. I chose to have an art gallery wall with pictures of everyone at my table (and, of course, me.)

This was what I wrote about the people I chose:

One fictional role model that I don’t think about as much anymore but still consider just as great a character is Jo March from Little Women. At the time that I first read Little Women, writing was one of my favourite things to do. Jo writing stories, and later on getting them published, and getting recognition for them, always made me want to go work on a story more, and it was nice to connect to the character through that. Jo is also a very independent character, although she is shown to care a lot about her family and friends. She is always depicted as doing whatever she wants, and usually not needing much help. However, she is a very helpful character, doing whatever she can to help her family, and doing chores and work without complaining. In the part of the book where Beth is sick, Jo spends most of her time taking care of her and trying to make her happy and comfortable. The coexistence of Jo’s independent and rebellious nature and her helpfulness and kindness towards others are what makes her a good character, and a good role model.

While I have a lot of people that I look up to for traits they exhibit, there are some people that I look up to more for the things they have created and the style, creativity or dedication that clearly went into those things. One such person is Tim Burton. While I don’t know much about Tim Burton as a person, I have admired the movies that he has produced and directed for years. While there are a lot of factors that go into making a movie, and many, many people involved in making one, Tim Burton’s influence on any movie he had a hand in is clear. The unique characteristic that Burton brings to his movies has come to be known as “being Burtonesque”. Something Burtonesque is usually imbued with an interesting mix of childishness and macabre, a balance that Burton seems to have perfected over the years. While any given Tim Burton movie is likely to have dark elements, a lot of them are children’s movies, and they make sense as children’s movies; they aren’t scary or disturbing, but they take things that should be scary and disturbing and add humour. Tim Burton has also created some of the original characters or ideas in his movies, both of which take a lot of creativity to create.

One of my favourite series is Harry Potter, and one of my favourite characters from said series is Hermione Granger. Throughout all the books, her values remained basically the same: family. Friends. Equality. Intelligence. All admirable things to care about, and things that she stood up for many, many times throughout the series, no matter how many people tried to shut her down. Hermione has influenced and inspired a lot of people, and for good reason; she’s an awesome character and an excellent role model. As is normal for a teenager, or any given person, Hermione dealt with some insecurity in the books. However, she always stood up for herself and what she believed, and she was always eager to learn new things in and about the world around her. Hermione also proves to be very observant throughout the books. She tends to be the character most attuned to others’ emotions and plans, and to small details that ended up helping in various situations. An example of this is in the first book, when Hermione remembers who Nicholas Flamel is due to his name having been mentioned in a book she’s reading at the time.

I spend a lot of time watching YouTube, and although I like watching various channels, my favourite YouTuber is a vlogger called Shannon Taylor (HeyThereImShannon). Her videos showcase a sense of self-confidence that I wish I could have myself, and always encourage people to be and do whatever they want. At the time that I began watching her channel, it seemed to be (apart from the short vlog-style videos that she still does now) mostly hair tutorials; perhaps a strange choice of focus for a YouTuber with alopecia, something she has always been open about, but has accepted and worked through enough that her hair has now become something she is known for. Although the content on her channel has recently focussed more on vlogging, and on the music she’s released, the message has remained: be yourself.

I’ve had various role models throughout my life, but the person I’ve always considered my biggest role model is my sister Charlotte. In probably every aspect of my life, from school to fashion to kindness and just being a good person, I look up to Charlotte as the standard that I want to meet. Seeing my sister exhibit traits like leadership, kindness and a sense of humour has made me want to do the same. Seeing her work hard on schoolwork— and watching her bring home good grades because of it —is one of the reasons that I’ve always wanted to show the same dedication and intelligence. Even in small things, like her makeup and fashion sense, Charlotte is the person I aspire to be more like. However, the thing I admire most about my sister is her creativity, and the creative talents that she’s developed because of it. Charlotte is an excellent writer, artist, singer and pianist– all things that I know very well don’t come without work and resilience. As a kid, I remember looking at Charlotte’s accomplishments and thinking they seemed unreachable, or impossibly good, but as the years went on, they inspired me to reach my own accomplishments, and develop my own interests in a lot of the same things as my sister. She isn’t perfect, but Charlotte has always and will always inspire me in many areas of my life, and I will always look up to her as my role model.

While I do look up to all the people I chose as role models to varying degrees, I found while I was choosing people that I was often inspired less by people themselves and more by things that they had created; songs, art, stories, videos. I didn’t want my entire list to be filled with people who I only looked up to for their work, but I wanted to represent this idea that I often looked to things people had created as inspiration, and this is the main reason I included Tim Burton; I don’t know much about Tim Burton as a person, but I am a big fan of his work, and the same is true of a lot of different people who are considered to be role models. There’s a difference between being inspired by or respecting something and being inspired by or respecting someone, so in the case of Tim Burton, and a number of people I did not add to the list, I look up not to them but to the worlds that they have created.

Toodles.