pol 32q
Squishy the Bean represents my school year so far, he is my personal symbol of exploring the unexplored. I feel that this is something that I’ve done much of this semester and something that I’ve been inspired to do and that I’ve learned how to do more of.
Our Journalism Project in Humanities was very open-ended when it came to the final product. Previously, I’ve kept my personal life and academic life completely separate. However, I felt that I had the creative freedom in this project and in this class to write about something that I was deeply interested in. I allowed myself the opportunity to share my enthusiasm of writing about Broadway Musicals and was granted permission to do so. I listened to the soundtracks, researched the stories, watched footage of the productions, and learned the basics. Upon discovering a quote by Lin Manuel-Miranda, which to me seemed to capture the essence of Hamilton, I had the inspiration to do the same for the other shows and finding such a core statement took hours upon hours to find. I wanted to tell people about the shows and try to grab their interest without spoiling, so I narrowed down my summaries of the shows from over a page to just a few paragraphs containing the essentials. I was so invested in these shows, not only because I already had high interest in musical theatre, but because I took that interest and allowed it to grow as I was constantly learning something new. The whole reason that I had been avoiding writing about something that I actually liked, was dramatically proven to be incorrect. I grew so much academically, I mean I was able to practice making my writing more concise, I had the motivation to spend hours of my free-time outside of school on writing this article, and I’ve continued my research after the completion of this project. This project taught me how much more meaningful I can make my school-work if I bring my personal interests to it. Rather than creating the kind of work that I think my teacher wants to see, I can own my work and make it something that I can be proud of.
Being aware of my history of failed group-projects - and by failed I mean they weren’t hardly even group projects at all because I took over and did the project all myself - I came into the Ecology project knowing that I didn’t want to fail another group-project. From the beginning of the project, I knew I could just make all of the decisions and carry all of them out, but that’s not what I wanted to get out of this project. In fact, I wasn’t quite sure how to complete a group project without taking control of the project and my fellow group members, so I sought out guidance quite a bit. I was willing to sacrifice the quality of this project in order to work on collaboration. I allowed my group to come to a consensus, only offering suggestions without enforcing them. I made sure that I only did part of the work and not all of it. When tasks of another group member had not gotten done, I resisted completing the task myself. I kept from making the project everything that I wanted it to be and it allowed me to get through a group project without turning it into my project. I used this project as an opportunity to strip away my controlling nature and the next step is to learn how to, rather, lead a group-project.
My original interpretation of the final paper for World Religions was that the paper was meant to be a reflection upon the content that we had covered over the course of the semester, containing information about Hinduism, Buddhism, Taoism, Confucianism, Islam, Judaism, and Christianity. Then, I thought, “What if it weren’t a reflection on the religions that we had covered, but rather a reflection on the idea of ‘what’s important to know about a religion’?” Coming to this thought, I knew then what I wanted to write about for my final paper, I wanted to write about some religions that we hadn’t covered, but use my knowledge of what sorts of things we learned about each religion to guide my research and the paper itself. This gave me the opportunity to dig into my curiosity for what else is out there. One religion that I had set in mind from the start is Mormonism because being so close to Utah, where there is quite a large population of Mormons, it’s a religion that I’ve learned about a lot. I then recalled a religion that I had heard about when watching a film when I was looking into Islam, and that would be Sikhism. After already having started, I was in search for a third and final religion to research, and Paganism kept coming up. Then I spotted a religion that I knew existed, but I had totally disregarded, Wicca. In the creation of this paper, I got to dive into topics that we hadn’t covered and added three new religions to my knowledge. This project showed me what it really means to look outside of the box and explore ideas that hadn’t been offered, ideas that I didn’t think I could have.
First off, I’d like to say that I studied for my first unit circle quiz and was fairly confident in my studying when I came into the quiz. However, the quiz occurred during the time period in which I was really sick and missed quite a few days of school. When I came in to take my quiz, there were blanks, blanks that I didn’t know how to fill, that I didn’t know I should have known how to fill. Every blank I could answer, I filled in and did so correctly, but I only got 16 out of 50. After the quiz, I figured out that the other blanks were for the degrees and radians. So, for my second attempt at the unit circle quiz, I was able to fill in the degrees as well as the coordinate points and answered them all correctly, but I still didn’t know what radians were. I felt that I had missed my opportunity to advocate and searched the internet and asked my peers about radians. I was able to complete another attempt at the unit circle quiz and get 100%, but it wasn’t until weeks later that I learned what the radians actually were. I learned that in the future, I should advocate when I’m lost, even when I feel that I can’t, and that I should especially advocate earlier rather than just allow myself to struggle.
During our week of applying logic in Math 2, we were allowed the opportunity to pick which level of sudoku puzzle that we wanted to work on. Just because of its title, I picked the Wicked sudoku puzzle. That night I went home and all that I wanted to do was work on it, I discovered tactics and skills that allowed me to assess which numbers went where that I had no idea existed until I executed them. At the point in which I had filled every square, I couldn’t believe that I had actually done it. I checked the boxes, the columns, and rows, and I had completed the Wicked logic puzzle. I asked for another Wicked sudoku puzzle and received another one as well as the next level up, Fiendish. I used similar skills to the ones I had discovered in my first sudoku puzzle as well as ones that I had newly discovered along the way. The class then migrated into logic puzzles and feeling proud of my success in the Wicked and Fiendish sudoku puzzles, I accepted the challenge of completing the hardest logic puzzle available, Einstein’s Fish. Throughout completing the logic puzzle, I recalled my experiences with the sudoku puzzles and they gave me insight in how to go about thinking in the process of completing this puzzle. Thanks to completing the sudoku puzzle, I was able to get through the logic puzzle. This project taught me the importance of practice; it’s one thing to be able to do something, it’s another to know how to do it so well that you can apply it to different circumstances.
What is the next big skill that I should focus on? For the past several years when asked to consider what about my academic self could use improvement, it’s always been collaboration. Before Animas, improving my academic self seemed pointless and so that’s always been what I’ve used for that situation, but it hadn’t been a real goal of mine that I actually wanted to achieve. Last year, I saw the importance of group work as I was asked to take part in it a lot. I also gravely experienced the consequences of not being able to work with others. So this year, I actually decided to work on it. I’ve already made strides in collaboration through my Ecology Project, getting myself to a point were I can start from scratch and change from being someone who dominates projects to becoming someone who leads them. I feel now, that I’m on a path to success in the means of collaboration, that I should send my focus to a new goal. Collaboration has been a major weakness of mine for such a long time. What other major weaknesses do I have? What can I and should I do about them?
Our Journalism Project in Humanities was very open-ended when it came to the final product. Previously, I’ve kept my personal life and academic life completely separate. However, I felt that I had the creative freedom in this project and in this class to write about something that I was deeply interested in. I allowed myself the opportunity to share my enthusiasm of writing about Broadway Musicals and was granted permission to do so. I listened to the soundtracks, researched the stories, watched footage of the productions, and learned the basics. Upon discovering a quote by Lin Manuel-Miranda, which to me seemed to capture the essence of Hamilton, I had the inspiration to do the same for the other shows and finding such a core statement took hours upon hours to find. I wanted to tell people about the shows and try to grab their interest without spoiling, so I narrowed down my summaries of the shows from over a page to just a few paragraphs containing the essentials. I was so invested in these shows, not only because I already had high interest in musical theatre, but because I took that interest and allowed it to grow as I was constantly learning something new. The whole reason that I had been avoiding writing about something that I actually liked, was dramatically proven to be incorrect. I grew so much academically, I mean I was able to practice making my writing more concise, I had the motivation to spend hours of my free-time outside of school on writing this article, and I’ve continued my research after the completion of this project. This project taught me how much more meaningful I can make my school-work if I bring my personal interests to it. Rather than creating the kind of work that I think my teacher wants to see, I can own my work and make it something that I can be proud of.
Being aware of my history of failed group-projects - and by failed I mean they weren’t hardly even group projects at all because I took over and did the project all myself - I came into the Ecology project knowing that I didn’t want to fail another group-project. From the beginning of the project, I knew I could just make all of the decisions and carry all of them out, but that’s not what I wanted to get out of this project. In fact, I wasn’t quite sure how to complete a group project without taking control of the project and my fellow group members, so I sought out guidance quite a bit. I was willing to sacrifice the quality of this project in order to work on collaboration. I allowed my group to come to a consensus, only offering suggestions without enforcing them. I made sure that I only did part of the work and not all of it. When tasks of another group member had not gotten done, I resisted completing the task myself. I kept from making the project everything that I wanted it to be and it allowed me to get through a group project without turning it into my project. I used this project as an opportunity to strip away my controlling nature and the next step is to learn how to, rather, lead a group-project.
My original interpretation of the final paper for World Religions was that the paper was meant to be a reflection upon the content that we had covered over the course of the semester, containing information about Hinduism, Buddhism, Taoism, Confucianism, Islam, Judaism, and Christianity. Then, I thought, “What if it weren’t a reflection on the religions that we had covered, but rather a reflection on the idea of ‘what’s important to know about a religion’?” Coming to this thought, I knew then what I wanted to write about for my final paper, I wanted to write about some religions that we hadn’t covered, but use my knowledge of what sorts of things we learned about each religion to guide my research and the paper itself. This gave me the opportunity to dig into my curiosity for what else is out there. One religion that I had set in mind from the start is Mormonism because being so close to Utah, where there is quite a large population of Mormons, it’s a religion that I’ve learned about a lot. I then recalled a religion that I had heard about when watching a film when I was looking into Islam, and that would be Sikhism. After already having started, I was in search for a third and final religion to research, and Paganism kept coming up. Then I spotted a religion that I knew existed, but I had totally disregarded, Wicca. In the creation of this paper, I got to dive into topics that we hadn’t covered and added three new religions to my knowledge. This project showed me what it really means to look outside of the box and explore ideas that hadn’t been offered, ideas that I didn’t think I could have.
First off, I’d like to say that I studied for my first unit circle quiz and was fairly confident in my studying when I came into the quiz. However, the quiz occurred during the time period in which I was really sick and missed quite a few days of school. When I came in to take my quiz, there were blanks, blanks that I didn’t know how to fill, that I didn’t know I should have known how to fill. Every blank I could answer, I filled in and did so correctly, but I only got 16 out of 50. After the quiz, I figured out that the other blanks were for the degrees and radians. So, for my second attempt at the unit circle quiz, I was able to fill in the degrees as well as the coordinate points and answered them all correctly, but I still didn’t know what radians were. I felt that I had missed my opportunity to advocate and searched the internet and asked my peers about radians. I was able to complete another attempt at the unit circle quiz and get 100%, but it wasn’t until weeks later that I learned what the radians actually were. I learned that in the future, I should advocate when I’m lost, even when I feel that I can’t, and that I should especially advocate earlier rather than just allow myself to struggle.
During our week of applying logic in Math 2, we were allowed the opportunity to pick which level of sudoku puzzle that we wanted to work on. Just because of its title, I picked the Wicked sudoku puzzle. That night I went home and all that I wanted to do was work on it, I discovered tactics and skills that allowed me to assess which numbers went where that I had no idea existed until I executed them. At the point in which I had filled every square, I couldn’t believe that I had actually done it. I checked the boxes, the columns, and rows, and I had completed the Wicked logic puzzle. I asked for another Wicked sudoku puzzle and received another one as well as the next level up, Fiendish. I used similar skills to the ones I had discovered in my first sudoku puzzle as well as ones that I had newly discovered along the way. The class then migrated into logic puzzles and feeling proud of my success in the Wicked and Fiendish sudoku puzzles, I accepted the challenge of completing the hardest logic puzzle available, Einstein’s Fish. Throughout completing the logic puzzle, I recalled my experiences with the sudoku puzzles and they gave me insight in how to go about thinking in the process of completing this puzzle. Thanks to completing the sudoku puzzle, I was able to get through the logic puzzle. This project taught me the importance of practice; it’s one thing to be able to do something, it’s another to know how to do it so well that you can apply it to different circumstances.
What is the next big skill that I should focus on? For the past several years when asked to consider what about my academic self could use improvement, it’s always been collaboration. Before Animas, improving my academic self seemed pointless and so that’s always been what I’ve used for that situation, but it hadn’t been a real goal of mine that I actually wanted to achieve. Last year, I saw the importance of group work as I was asked to take part in it a lot. I also gravely experienced the consequences of not being able to work with others. So this year, I actually decided to work on it. I’ve already made strides in collaboration through my Ecology Project, getting myself to a point were I can start from scratch and change from being someone who dominates projects to becoming someone who leads them. I feel now, that I’m on a path to success in the means of collaboration, that I should send my focus to a new goal. Collaboration has been a major weakness of mine for such a long time. What other major weaknesses do I have? What can I and should I do about them?