32Q essay:
Jem van Tyn
32Q doc
12/18/2017
This past semester, I have been good at advocating for myself. I have no reservations about talking to just about everyone, and this makes it so when I am looking for help or asking how to take my research further, I have no problem going to talk with my teachers. A recent time I have done this is with my grades in Biology. I was working on a project based around the human eye and color vision and wanted to take it in a completely new direction, so I decided to make an infographic about how visual light fits into the electromagnetic spectrum. When it came time to turn in our “first drafts”, I had everything in a program on my computer, and nothing physical to hand in. I talked to Summer, and she looked at it and said that now that she had seen it, she could give me a grade for the assignment without a physical copy. A little while later, I noticed that I was given an “incomplete” for that assignment. I then advocated for myself to Summer, asking that she would please enter my grade for that assignment and reminding her about our in class discussion. My ability to use advocacy to allow room to grow in a different direction in a project shows that speech and respectful discussion is a great way for me to get my needs met, and thus let your projects go just the way you want them.
Something that I have really gotten better at this semester is perseverance. At the end of summer vacation, I had an accident in California and ended up with the meniscus in my knee coming unattached from the bone. This left me limping around the school for the first few days of school, trying to keep up as my knee screamed at me. I eventually went to the doctor and got an MRI, which said that I had a clean severance of my meniscal tissue from the bone. After that, I had a couple of weeks of crutching around before the surgery. The pain in my leg was really distracting and often occupied my mind during class. After the surgery, I missed seven days of school due to the pain of the surgery, and this put me behind my class. Then I had to be on crutches for another six weeks. During this time the tenth-grade camping trip happened. I decided to go and try to keep up. This was the most serious test of my perseverance yet as I had to navigate rough ground and hills and at the same time try to engage in these activities. My ability to persevere has been tested by my experience with knee surgery both with the physical aspects of the camping trip and the academic aspect of school, and my need to catch up to the class. I now know what it truly means to persevere in school, and am better off for it.
I have always had a tendency to procrastinate and this semester is no different. Whether it is a school assignment or a transcription in music or a construction project for my dad, I always think that I can find time to do it later. This is a bad habit because it often leads to me not doing work until the last possible moment and leads to me not getting enough sleep because I end up having to do all of my homework late at night. This happened to me with the solar car club. I have been in the club since last year and I told all the people in the club at the beginning of the year that I would work on the fundraising for the project. I have been procrastinating that for months now, and only recently have made any positive movement in this regard. My procrastination has held me back from several opportunities out of school, such as the car design challenge. It also means that my personal projects at home rarely get finished and often are left for months at a time. I would like to change this habit, as it is holding me back, and have started to do so lately. I have begun starting and completing projects outside of school when I first start them, and not leaving them for the last moment. I plan to move this new outlook on my school life as well.
I love to learn and am constantly seeking out new knowledge. I hate knowing that I don’t know something. In calculus when we were learning how to take derivatives, for example, I noticed that we had not covered how to take the derivative of an ‘AX’ function. I saw that there was a gap in my knowledge, however small. This annoyed me, and I set out to calculate for myself what that derivative was and also knowing why. Another example of my natural curiosity and love for learning is in my out-of-school life. When most people would read a fantasy fiction book, I decided to read a collection of revolutionary physics lectures. When I go home, I am constantly analyzing everything around me, from the thermostat, and its -40 degrees limit, to the chemistry behind a working thermoelectric generator. I often use the knowledge that I gain from my own personal pursuits in school discussions, as well in building machines and chemical reactions that can try to replicate what we see, or in designing the most efficient possible solar generation system. I believe that this love of knowledge and want to understand everything is a good thing, as it makes it so I almost always go into any discussion with at least a functioning knowledge of the science behind the debate. This can serve me well in the future I believe because it also shows that I am willing and ready to understand and use advanced scientific processes and apply these things in new ways.
I need to work on my tendency to get annoyed with the speed of humanities class and interrupt. Because of my curiosity and love of learning, I a lot of times will go into a school discussion with some, if not a lot, of background knowledge. Because of this, I am always willing to put up my hand and move the discussion along. In humanities, I do this so often that the teacher seems to purposefully avoid calling on me. When the discussions don’t move quickly, I become disengaged and bored. When I am bored, I have a tendency to distract the class. I need to work on my patience with my classes, and not let myself distract the class simply because I think it is going too slowly. I plan to work on this by looking for deeper places to take my research and looking for harder subtopics. If I find myself getting exasperated, I will remind myself that not everyone understands the topic as much as I do, and try to sympathize.
QUESTION:
How can I apply the science I learn outside of school to the projects inside of school?
32Q doc
12/18/2017
This past semester, I have been good at advocating for myself. I have no reservations about talking to just about everyone, and this makes it so when I am looking for help or asking how to take my research further, I have no problem going to talk with my teachers. A recent time I have done this is with my grades in Biology. I was working on a project based around the human eye and color vision and wanted to take it in a completely new direction, so I decided to make an infographic about how visual light fits into the electromagnetic spectrum. When it came time to turn in our “first drafts”, I had everything in a program on my computer, and nothing physical to hand in. I talked to Summer, and she looked at it and said that now that she had seen it, she could give me a grade for the assignment without a physical copy. A little while later, I noticed that I was given an “incomplete” for that assignment. I then advocated for myself to Summer, asking that she would please enter my grade for that assignment and reminding her about our in class discussion. My ability to use advocacy to allow room to grow in a different direction in a project shows that speech and respectful discussion is a great way for me to get my needs met, and thus let your projects go just the way you want them.
Something that I have really gotten better at this semester is perseverance. At the end of summer vacation, I had an accident in California and ended up with the meniscus in my knee coming unattached from the bone. This left me limping around the school for the first few days of school, trying to keep up as my knee screamed at me. I eventually went to the doctor and got an MRI, which said that I had a clean severance of my meniscal tissue from the bone. After that, I had a couple of weeks of crutching around before the surgery. The pain in my leg was really distracting and often occupied my mind during class. After the surgery, I missed seven days of school due to the pain of the surgery, and this put me behind my class. Then I had to be on crutches for another six weeks. During this time the tenth-grade camping trip happened. I decided to go and try to keep up. This was the most serious test of my perseverance yet as I had to navigate rough ground and hills and at the same time try to engage in these activities. My ability to persevere has been tested by my experience with knee surgery both with the physical aspects of the camping trip and the academic aspect of school, and my need to catch up to the class. I now know what it truly means to persevere in school, and am better off for it.
I have always had a tendency to procrastinate and this semester is no different. Whether it is a school assignment or a transcription in music or a construction project for my dad, I always think that I can find time to do it later. This is a bad habit because it often leads to me not doing work until the last possible moment and leads to me not getting enough sleep because I end up having to do all of my homework late at night. This happened to me with the solar car club. I have been in the club since last year and I told all the people in the club at the beginning of the year that I would work on the fundraising for the project. I have been procrastinating that for months now, and only recently have made any positive movement in this regard. My procrastination has held me back from several opportunities out of school, such as the car design challenge. It also means that my personal projects at home rarely get finished and often are left for months at a time. I would like to change this habit, as it is holding me back, and have started to do so lately. I have begun starting and completing projects outside of school when I first start them, and not leaving them for the last moment. I plan to move this new outlook on my school life as well.
I love to learn and am constantly seeking out new knowledge. I hate knowing that I don’t know something. In calculus when we were learning how to take derivatives, for example, I noticed that we had not covered how to take the derivative of an ‘AX’ function. I saw that there was a gap in my knowledge, however small. This annoyed me, and I set out to calculate for myself what that derivative was and also knowing why. Another example of my natural curiosity and love for learning is in my out-of-school life. When most people would read a fantasy fiction book, I decided to read a collection of revolutionary physics lectures. When I go home, I am constantly analyzing everything around me, from the thermostat, and its -40 degrees limit, to the chemistry behind a working thermoelectric generator. I often use the knowledge that I gain from my own personal pursuits in school discussions, as well in building machines and chemical reactions that can try to replicate what we see, or in designing the most efficient possible solar generation system. I believe that this love of knowledge and want to understand everything is a good thing, as it makes it so I almost always go into any discussion with at least a functioning knowledge of the science behind the debate. This can serve me well in the future I believe because it also shows that I am willing and ready to understand and use advanced scientific processes and apply these things in new ways.
I need to work on my tendency to get annoyed with the speed of humanities class and interrupt. Because of my curiosity and love of learning, I a lot of times will go into a school discussion with some, if not a lot, of background knowledge. Because of this, I am always willing to put up my hand and move the discussion along. In humanities, I do this so often that the teacher seems to purposefully avoid calling on me. When the discussions don’t move quickly, I become disengaged and bored. When I am bored, I have a tendency to distract the class. I need to work on my patience with my classes, and not let myself distract the class simply because I think it is going too slowly. I plan to work on this by looking for deeper places to take my research and looking for harder subtopics. If I find myself getting exasperated, I will remind myself that not everyone understands the topic as much as I do, and try to sympathize.
QUESTION:
How can I apply the science I learn outside of school to the projects inside of school?