32Q Reflection
Three Things to Celebrate
Throughout this year, I have found that being a student at Animas High School meant more than simply doing my work and getting good grades.
Perspective
This semester I found that being open and having a good attitude was the greatest skill to have as a student at AHS. By being open and having a good attitude I was able to help my peers in their work as well as get their own opinions in turn. I also discovered that by simply helping others with their work, they were more open to helping me in the future. Before this year, I had always been pretty quiet and subtle, just doing my work and moving on, so when I thought about being more outgoing and supportive, the idea scared me. Maybe, my peers would shut down my ideas, maybe they wouldn’t want my help. But in the end they truly did appreciate my opinions, such as with the seminar for Things Fall Apart in Humanities. With the seminar on Things Fall Apart in Humanities for, we were discussing the main character, Okonkwo. I specifically said that I think Okonkwo's strength is also his weakness because he can't hold himself up anymore. After I said this, it sparked a small discussion and I saw that my small comment had sparked a small shockwave of thoughts within my peers. They started to bounce ideas off each other and pose questions that in turn got everyone else thinking. I found that because my peers were so open and supportive, it ended paving the way for me to grow into a better student over the next semester.
Taking a leadership role.
Another skill I found myself celebrating recently was broadening my leadership role both inside and outside of school. By expanding my leadership role, I found that many opportunities opened themselves up to me. Last year, I didn’t want to take on any leadership roles, I just wanted to follow others and work. This year however, I wanted to expand my horizons and jump into something new. I have always been a skier, so when I found out that there was a scholarship fund set up for people who wanted to explore the backcountry, I jumped on it, something I probably wouldn’t have done before. For the scholarship fund, only 6 people would be selected, and you had to write an essay about your experiences and why you deserved the scholarship. Specifically in this essay I said, “This scholarship will give me more opportunities to explore the world of backcountry skiing while still understanding the danger, risks, and rewards of being in an unexplored area of the mountains.” I wrote this because I wanted to take part in a new experience, and by doing this on my own accord and by being my own director, I was able to grow as a person and a leader.
Continuing to work hard.
Freshman year and sophomore year were different because we had different topics, but one thing stayed clear, we needed to work hard.In the beginning felt that sophomore year would be easy, and this led me to slack off a little. After a few weeks, I realized that if I wanted to keep my grades up, I would actually have to work hard. After realizing this, I felt bad because I had control over whether or not I wanted to succeed in today’s society, so I started to work harder, and I feel that this is evident in my Spanish story, which Susy wrote for us to read and memorize. When we were given the story, we were told that we would have a quiz on it, and this really sparked my motivation to work harder. And although the quiz only needed us to answer a couple of questions, I went above reading and decided to re-write the story so that I would retain it, and even though I didn’t get 100% I feel good because I worked hard and challenged myself.
Overall I found this school year to be a celebration in itself, as I was growing as a student, young adult, and above all else growing to be a better person.
Two Areas for Growth
Generating Ideas
While this school year has been great and I learned so many new concepts that I will use everyday, there are also concepts that I need to work on in order to overcome more challenges.
I found that with everything that I excelled at, there were skills that needed refinement, one such skill is understanding myself in order to create more in-depth reflections. In Advanced Algebra, we created a Unit 1 Portfolio, where we reflected on our growth throughout the first quarter. In this portfolio I feel that I answered all of the questions, but very briefly and shallowly. I think that I could have spent more time working on digging deeper into my work and creating a variety of different answers. This is a skill I hope to work on and excel at in the future to create better reflections that represent my growth.
Lack of Perspective
At the beginning of a lot of projects, I typically like to work by myself until absolutely necessary. I found that throughout sophomore year, that having other students perspectives is what can make your projects into beautiful work. I ended up avoiding multiple times when I could have gotten my peers opinion, and because of this, some of my projects suffered. One such example is my Biology infographic, which I am proud of, but ended up not making it into the exhibition because I failed to listen to my peers ideas. I feel that if I simply taken their advice and changed my infographic to have less text so the general public could understand it, then I may have been able to display it at the exhibition.
One Question To Ponder
I have been wondering;
How can I balance my life between being an athlete and keeping up with my school work?
Throughout this year, I have found that being a student at Animas High School meant more than simply doing my work and getting good grades.
Perspective
This semester I found that being open and having a good attitude was the greatest skill to have as a student at AHS. By being open and having a good attitude I was able to help my peers in their work as well as get their own opinions in turn. I also discovered that by simply helping others with their work, they were more open to helping me in the future. Before this year, I had always been pretty quiet and subtle, just doing my work and moving on, so when I thought about being more outgoing and supportive, the idea scared me. Maybe, my peers would shut down my ideas, maybe they wouldn’t want my help. But in the end they truly did appreciate my opinions, such as with the seminar for Things Fall Apart in Humanities. With the seminar on Things Fall Apart in Humanities for, we were discussing the main character, Okonkwo. I specifically said that I think Okonkwo's strength is also his weakness because he can't hold himself up anymore. After I said this, it sparked a small discussion and I saw that my small comment had sparked a small shockwave of thoughts within my peers. They started to bounce ideas off each other and pose questions that in turn got everyone else thinking. I found that because my peers were so open and supportive, it ended paving the way for me to grow into a better student over the next semester.
Taking a leadership role.
Another skill I found myself celebrating recently was broadening my leadership role both inside and outside of school. By expanding my leadership role, I found that many opportunities opened themselves up to me. Last year, I didn’t want to take on any leadership roles, I just wanted to follow others and work. This year however, I wanted to expand my horizons and jump into something new. I have always been a skier, so when I found out that there was a scholarship fund set up for people who wanted to explore the backcountry, I jumped on it, something I probably wouldn’t have done before. For the scholarship fund, only 6 people would be selected, and you had to write an essay about your experiences and why you deserved the scholarship. Specifically in this essay I said, “This scholarship will give me more opportunities to explore the world of backcountry skiing while still understanding the danger, risks, and rewards of being in an unexplored area of the mountains.” I wrote this because I wanted to take part in a new experience, and by doing this on my own accord and by being my own director, I was able to grow as a person and a leader.
Continuing to work hard.
Freshman year and sophomore year were different because we had different topics, but one thing stayed clear, we needed to work hard.In the beginning felt that sophomore year would be easy, and this led me to slack off a little. After a few weeks, I realized that if I wanted to keep my grades up, I would actually have to work hard. After realizing this, I felt bad because I had control over whether or not I wanted to succeed in today’s society, so I started to work harder, and I feel that this is evident in my Spanish story, which Susy wrote for us to read and memorize. When we were given the story, we were told that we would have a quiz on it, and this really sparked my motivation to work harder. And although the quiz only needed us to answer a couple of questions, I went above reading and decided to re-write the story so that I would retain it, and even though I didn’t get 100% I feel good because I worked hard and challenged myself.
Overall I found this school year to be a celebration in itself, as I was growing as a student, young adult, and above all else growing to be a better person.
Two Areas for Growth
Generating Ideas
While this school year has been great and I learned so many new concepts that I will use everyday, there are also concepts that I need to work on in order to overcome more challenges.
I found that with everything that I excelled at, there were skills that needed refinement, one such skill is understanding myself in order to create more in-depth reflections. In Advanced Algebra, we created a Unit 1 Portfolio, where we reflected on our growth throughout the first quarter. In this portfolio I feel that I answered all of the questions, but very briefly and shallowly. I think that I could have spent more time working on digging deeper into my work and creating a variety of different answers. This is a skill I hope to work on and excel at in the future to create better reflections that represent my growth.
Lack of Perspective
At the beginning of a lot of projects, I typically like to work by myself until absolutely necessary. I found that throughout sophomore year, that having other students perspectives is what can make your projects into beautiful work. I ended up avoiding multiple times when I could have gotten my peers opinion, and because of this, some of my projects suffered. One such example is my Biology infographic, which I am proud of, but ended up not making it into the exhibition because I failed to listen to my peers ideas. I feel that if I simply taken their advice and changed my infographic to have less text so the general public could understand it, then I may have been able to display it at the exhibition.
One Question To Ponder
I have been wondering;
How can I balance my life between being an athlete and keeping up with my school work?