Humanities
My favorite part of humanities is how awesome my teacher is. I don't consider Humanities to be my best subject but Coach Clark always makes things fun, interesting and challenging, very challenging. I also really like writing, both creative and argumentative essayss
My strongest strength in Humanities is writing. I consistently manage to spew out ideas onto my notebook and while they may not be Ulysses I do get a lot of ideas down in just 6 minuets, and I feel like if I was given twice the time I would be able to write twice as much. I am particularly fond of what I have written in regards to politics.
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My knowledge of geography definitely needs improvement. In the first quest we took in class, the one to asses our background knowledge of the world, I forgot the name of the atlantic ocean. While I know the names of a lot of countries, I don't know where they are located, especially ones in the middle east. Despite the internet and planes, where a country is located still has a huge impact on it's economics and politics, so I need to make an effort of knowing more geography.
I want to watch more of the news as it often highlights the importance of were a country located. The current middle eastern conflict is something that greatly interests me, and I can learn a lot about the politics by doing a little bit of research. I will also do research on where countries of interest are located and how their location affects their economy and politics. This is all stuff that is readily available from the internet, so with a little effort I am sure I channeler a lot.
Math
My favorite part about math class is learning new techniques to manipulate and solve more complex equations. Dr. Cate always finds a way to allow us to dig deeper into a problem and learn more about why it works the way it works. For instance, while I knew for a while that velocity times time equalled displacement, I didn't realize that it did that because by multiplying distance over time by time you get rid of the term time, leaving you with just distance. I didn't realize that until Dr. Cate showed me and I think it is really cool.
My greatest strength in Math is how interested and excited I am about math. I love to explore deep concepts and new learn ones and I am never scared of sharing my thoughts and questions with the class no matter how silly they may be. An example of this is when Alden and I were exploring the relationship of distance, speed and execration, (which is as much a math issue as a physics one) and decided to share our findings with the class in the best example of why everyone is very lucky that we have qualified teachers teaching math and not 9th graders. We didn't explain things very well but in the process of sharing our Ideas with the class we managed to refine them and really understand how things worked.
My greatest struggle in Math is explaining concepts to other people. Everyone has different background knowledge than everyone else, so I find it very hard to just walk people through what I did to understand something and have them understand it, because not everyone learns the same. For instance, in the energy in motion project, for the final presentation, I don't think that I presented the concepts I had learned as well as I could of.
https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1sVHhlLOmU3qqKn-NQaWgJKUvA86iPOgpxGefD_vtX-U/edit#slide=id.p
https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1sVHhlLOmU3qqKn-NQaWgJKUvA86iPOgpxGefD_vtX-U/edit#slide=id.p
I can improve on this struggle by paying attention to how Dr. Cate explains concepts in class. Not only will I learn how to explain things to my piers, learning how to explain a subject will also help me better understand the subject.
Physics
My favorite part about physics is building things. I love to engineer machines to test physics concepts and utilize them. Only in physics can you build a machine with the simple purpose of moving and still be given time to finish it. Just making machines makes me happy, especially when they actually work, and that is what we do in physics class.
My greatest strength is that I always go above and beyond when making my products. Even when complexity and ambition isn't required, I do so anyway. An example of this is the physics of me project. We were supposed to make posters talking about a physics concept that affected us is our lives, I made a machine that showed how a hard drive worked. I worked at a tight deadline and burned off the tips of my fingers all to create a machine that wouldn't add to my grade at all, but I did so anyway because I wanted to do something impressive. Unfortunately, the machine is now is a state of disrepair after it fell off the wall because blue tape isn't designed to hold up 2 pounds of cardboard and screws, but I am glad that I built it.
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Something I can work on in Physics is pacing myself. I often times make my desired product much larger than it needs to be, and even though I don't procrastinate in this class because I find it so fun, I still cut things pretty tight. For instance, in the project shown above I didn't finish my first draft 'till the night before. Luckily it worked but
Spanish
My favorite part about Spanish class is knowing that I am making my granddad happy. He has always wanted me to learn to speak Spanish, and while I have tried before I never got very far. However, with Spanish class I can see that I am progressing and I hope to be able to hold a conversation with my Granddad in Spanish by the end of the year.
My greatest strength in Spanish class is that I am always willing to learn new words and grammar even if I know that I am going to get it incredibly wrong the first few times. I know that the more I participate in class, the more I learn, so I try to participate as much as possible. An example of this was when I wanted to learn the syntax for how to say years, so I made a point of including 1984 in all my warmups knowing that I would get it wrong and learn.
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An issue in Spanish class that I have is that I forget vocabulary that we have already practiced a bunch. I usually try to memorize words the same way as I memorize my lines in drama, but because I don't think in Spanish, it is hard for me. For example, last week when we were practicing I forgot the verb tengo, which would be ok because it is irregular, but I didn't even know the root even though the verb tener was all we studied for a whole week!
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I can work on this issue by practicing with my granddad. He was a Spanish teacher before he retired, so he would be a great resource to further my learning in all aspects of Spanish as well as my issue.
Study Habits
Overall I think I have pretty decent study habits, although there are some which I could work on. I get all of my work done on time, excepting a single assignment which I did not know was assigned because I was sick. I don't study a ton, but I do put in a good 2-3 hours before every test, although I much prefer learning the points on a test in class which can be done by paying attention. I struggle in a few areas. I procrastinate a ton, which so far hasn't affected my grade as I always get work turned in on time, but I know that It will one day hurt my grade in the future.