Things I can celebrate:
1.)
It has been great having friends that are in the same classes as me. When I was working on the Ecosystem project in Biology I got to work with Lance. Lance and I normally sit next to each other in Humanities but before the project we didn’t talk much, we mostly sat in silence. When we started on the ecology project we both kept each other on task and attempted to do the same with our other group members. Because of this we created an excellent. Another perk to having friends in the same class as you is you can ask them questions about what's happening in class. Last year I had about five friends and most of the time I was in a different class than them. Most of the people at Ashburton College weren't terribly friendly to people outside their friend group. Usually they either wouldn’t bother helping me or would send me in the wrong direction making it difficult to have things explained. Here at Animas, on the first day everyone was welcoming. No one at Animas felt that they were above me and everyone was kind to me.
When I get to a new school the first thing I want to know is how the teachers at the school behave. The reason I care about my teachers is they are the main point in my schooling. I spend about an hour a day with each of my teachers and I if I don’t like a student, I can avoid them, but if I don’t like a teacher i’m stuck with them. It made me happy that the teachers here at AHS are kind and approachable. Here at Animas when I have a question I am not ignored by teachers and they don’t just skim over their explanations; they stay with me until they know that I understand what they were explaining. Last year I had some pretty bad teachers; in particular my graphics teacher. If anyone asked for help with one of their blueprints he would go off on the kid for having tiny mistakes, like having a bit of a wobbly line in their name or drawing their arrows a millimeter to wide. When teachers try to hold their freshmen to the same standards as their seniors it’s difficult to succeed in what’s expected of you. Here, I can ask for assistance and I will actually get what I need; not a five minute long rant about how my arrows are a millimeter too wide. An instance of this was in math I wasn’t sure if I was solving a trigonometry problem correctly so I asked Aliza if what I was doing was correct; It’s hard to remember but as I recall I was solving for a missing angle using CAH. She told me the answer I had gotten was wrong and reminded me to write out the algebra to stay on the correct path. I’m not sure if I got the problem right, but I really appreciate that she tried to help me. I’m fine with a couple bad kids in a class, but if I don’t get along with one of my teachers I have difficulties learning. If I don't like them I can still ask questions but if they don’t like me I can’t. If my relationship with a teacher isn’t very good my grade is definitely lower in that class; I struggle learning from teachers I don’t like and I can’t motivate myself to improve my work in their class because in most cases it won’t help my relations.
2.)
Academic progress:
Before the start of this year I didn’t know what a semicolon was used for; now I use it in pretty much all of my writing. I also now know why all triangles us the same formula.
3.)
My experience at Animas has been wonderful which is great for my self esteem. I have been comparing this year to last year and last year was not good a good year for me. It took me four months to accumulate a friend group in New Zealand. Here at Animas I found multiple potential friend groups on the first day; now I have a large circle of people I can call friends which makes me happy because I don’t have to go elsewhere to find support. It’s wonderful to be able to list your friends off and run out of fingers; Cody, Gage, Gabe, Emery, Marilyn, Lance, Cole, Saige, Ryan, Baylee and Luke. Last year I had more people who wanted to humiliate me or hurt me then I did people who wanted to help me. Every day I rode the bus to school and had to deal with the fact that about five of the people near me felt that I was inferior to them because I was an American. What I found funny is that some of the people I hang out with thought I was from New Zealand. It deserves a celebration to say that I can go to school and not worry about the next imp to crawl out of the fire, looking to destroy my life.
Things I can improve on:
1.)
A thing I could improve on is socializing better with the majority of people. Being a more vigorous gamer than most leaves me with a pretty small group of people with similar interests. In addition to not sharing that many hobbies with people I feel weird making eye contact with people; in New Zealand I started making eye contact to keep people from messing with me. I know that eye contact is supposed to be respectful but I always feel a bit intimidating when I make eye contact; all I want is to be a peer to others, I don’t want to be intimidating.
-Feedback: Why do you want to grow in this area?
2.)
Most of the difficulties from this year were me forgetting about events or not allocating time for them. This made the occasional floods of homework a bit challenging and other parts of the year rockier than they could have been; an example of this is the portfolio in humanities, because I forgot to turn it in it was late and because of that I have been at an 80% in Humanities since. My current plan is to set up reminders on my phone so I don’t forget when I need to study for a test, or forget when a big assignment is due. I think a schedule would be helpful for next year and the rest of my life.
Question to ponder: How can I socialize better
Things to Celebrate Improved.