Freshmen Year Reflection

A collection of my thoughts on my freshman year of high school as well as some notable projects.

Freshmen Year Reflection

This year (2020-2021) I was a fully remote student (except for a handful of days I went to school). The world was in a drastically different state this year. However, I planned to make use of my opportunities to get through the pandemic. I learned a lot about the world and about the many topics we learn in school this year. I attempted to try and make the best of it. I did personal projects and kept up with my school work in an effort to learn more and advance myself. I learned many things throughout my journey this year but I will always remember the importance of being open to other perspectives, the importance of understanding the world around us, and the power of having an open mind in a situation. This year I enjoyed and learned from all of my classes, which is a gift that I am grateful to have in these horrible circumstances. The year as a whole was decent with some good and some bad events. So let me take you through a journey of my freshman year.

The year started in September. We were told that we would be fully remote for the first few weeks of school until around November. At first, I didn’t really understand my new school so I began by looking into the many clubs they have at UCVTS. I went to the information sessions for many different clubs however I decided to stick to a few including Robotics Club, The Wharton Investment Competition (Club?), Math League, and Coding Club. As the days went on, I had become accustomed to a certain timetable: wake up at 9:20 (ten minutes before class started), get myself ready for classes, boot up the computer and get on Zoom, do the work for my classes, hop on the next Zoom, do more work, take an hour long break, then repeat Zoom and classwork for two more classes, then get off and enjoy the rest of my day. Most of the academic year was pretty easy and the teachers didn’t expect us to get much done. This will probably be the easiest Academic year of my life. I kept my grades high and participated in the aforementioned clubs.

Classes

• Spanish II
• World Literature
• AP Calculus AB
• Gym/Health
• Scientific Inquiry and Analysis
• World History
• Biology
• Computer Applications in Business

Spanish II

Reflection

Due to remote learning, I found it challenging to learn Spanish. However, it wasn’t as difficult for me as it was for other people this year. My wonderful 8th grade Spanish teacher taught us a lot about the grammar in Spanish II. This information proved to be valuable through the first couple of marking periods of Spanish II. I wasn’t focused on learning Spanish but it was still an interesting language to learn. Not having the learning environment in which the room, the people, and the class is in Spanish was one of the main factors that caused my disinterest in the language. I did fine in class and maintained a high grade the whole school year. However, the class wasn’t as fun as it normally is for me.

This class was rewarding in the sense that it provided me with more experience with the Spanish language.

World Literature

Reflection

Although this was a tough year of school, our teacher, Ms. Agriesti, made it easier. English this year was one of my favorite classes because of its engaging nature. We read Haroun and the Sea of Stories, Beowulf, and Things Fall Apart in her class. We also explored the concept of storytelling throughout the year by reading things from multiple different authors and regions. I particularly liked World Literature because of the many different types of works we explored. Before this class, I had never read a book by an African author before and I never heard of British colocalization from their perspective. I will always remember the importance of storytelling and remaining open to other perspectives. I loved my English class this year.

Projects

This assignment was one of the most thoughtful in all of my classes in 9th grade. It took countless ideas and thoughts about the nature of evil to generate ideas to write about in this piece. To create this work I first had to plan the essay by creating a bullet-pointed diagram talking about what I would write about in my essay. However, in order to create this plan, I would first need to decide on an argument and create reasons to support it. This proved to be difficult for me because I had never actually thought about evil in depth. This is one of the reasons I picked this assignment. Bad events happen all the time, like a robbery or tax fraud, however evil events, which are by definition profoundly immoral and wicked, happen much less. In creating this essay I explored the definition of evil and morality. After coming up with an elementary definition of evil in my mind, I began to try and reason why Grendel was evil. For me this was the easiest part, I just used the events described in the book and connected them to my reasoning. In the end, I believe I did a good job on this assignment.

This work forced me to explore an important concept that I otherwise would not have learned about. My goal for this piece of work was to explore Evil and to explore Grendel through an essay. This essay met my standards for an essay and exceeded my goals of exploring evil. Compared to my other work this year, this was the most difficult one for me to handle. I believe that this work shows that I am not afraid of tackling large and difficult topics.

For this assignment, we could choose between 8 different tasks including creating a travel brochure, creating a game, writing a compare and contrast essay exploring Beowulf and another hero, an epic hero how-to guide, creating an Instagram account for Beowulf, creating trading cards, creating a children’s story, and writing an essay exploring whether Grendel was truly evil. Most other people chose to stay away from the essays (essays take a lot of work) and do tasks like creating trading cards or a children’s story. When other people read my work I want them to see how our definitions of evil may vary from person to person. In the essay, one of the reasons I had was that Grendel had a dark personality. However, having a dark personality doesn’t mean you’re evil necessarily, it is a combination of actions and morals that determine if somebody is evil. It was just my opinion that Grendel was evil in the poem. I wanted to show how the definition of evil can vary depending on our morals. Since this assignment was about proving whether Grendel was evil, I didn’t really go into detail about this, however, I hope that my essay inspires some more people to think about what evil is and what their values and morals are.

One thing I would like to improve upon (with this or other work) is my writing. If I had to do this piece again I would probably change my hook. I was honestly unsure about how to hook people into reading such a dark essay. Other than that, I also wish I talked more about the thinking I did while exploring evil and how evil exists in our lives. Next time, I am going to make sure that the format of my essay makes sense and is correct and also add more information about the definition of evil I had.

AP Calculus AB

Reflection

Taking such a high math course in my freshman year of high school was a great opportunity for me. Math was always an intriguing subject to me not just its depth but also its scalability to so many different applications. Calculus is a subject that has many applications so is very useful. I was not at all intimidated by the thought of being in a class with people that were older than me because I had already gotten used to that feeling in middle school (also it’s much easier not to be noticed in remote meetings). Overall, I got great grades and I learned a lot about math and Calculus in this class. One of the most important and challenging experiences during the year was preparing for the AP exam. I had never taken an AP exam before so I didn’t know what to expect. A couple of weeks before the exam I began extensively reviewing my notes, free response questions, and some multiple-choice questions. (At the time of writing) After taking the test, I think I did a pretty good job on it. The AP exam was not as difficult as I thought it would be. For the rest of the year, we learned some more about Calculus. Edit: I got a 5

Gym/Health

Reflection

Well, we didn’t really do anything in Gym this year. I did exercise at home for the entire year. Health was an extremely awkward class but we all got through it. Thanks for reading!

Scientific Inquiry and Analysis

Reflection

This was one of my favorite classes towards the end of the school year. At first, we learned about the scientific method, some basic statistics, and about units of measure, however as we kept going we began using more scientific reasoning and math which is my strength. We learned about some basic physics concepts and equations. We also learned about some basic chemistry towards the end of the school year. This class has been like a foundation on which we will build our knowledge of science. This class has taught me how to analysis scientific works and how to create my own. This class is essential to my high school science journey and I am glad I took it.

Projects

For this assignment, we had to create an experiment using a parachute to learn about air resistance. Since I was remote, I had to do this experiment by myself. I chose this assignment to display because I believe that it is a great example of how I problem-solve. You can read the document to learn more about the experiment, but in summary, I decided to run an experiment to see if the parachute area impacted the amount of time it took the person to fall. I ran into a couple of problems at first, but I was able to figure out a way to continue. I also liked how this assignment tied together my science, math, and technology knowledge into one cohesive work. I think this is one of the best labs I have ever done and I hope that all of my labs will turn out like this.

World History

Reflection

This was a fun class during which we traveled the world through our textbook, learning about the histories of different regions. For every chapter, we always had a project that would test a wide variety of our schools. Not only did we learn about history through these projects, but also the various people, perspectives, and personalities of the people who had a large role in writing it. History class this year was an interesting and informative class.

Projects

I think I included a lot of information in this project. It took a long time just to do the research for my project. I think including the most relevant information was a challenge for me because there was just so much information I could talk about with Guyana. I tried to zero in on some specific oil-related problems that they had (because oil was causing many problems in Guyana). I don’t know if I was successful in that but the project gave me a much deeper understanding of how countries recovered after gaining independence. It was an incredibly difficult time for Guyana after independence due to political and economic instability. Britain influenced indirectly influenced the government, economy, and social structure they have today. They weren’t the same nation after they gained independence that they were before colonization (this is a repeating theme for nations post-independence). Imperialism was a drastic change for nations around the world who had their economies destroyed while they were a part of the machine of imperialism. Before the oil craze, Guyana basically had the same economy they had when Britain was their monarch. It seems that reforms only started happening after the Guyanese government forcefully captured land in Guyana. The British still influenced them even after independence and meddled in their affairs as well. Today, the country seems disconnected from them and focused on its own future diversification and wealth.

Biology

Reflection

This year Biology was our science class. Before the start of this class, I disliked biology because it seemed to have nothing to do with the area I was interested in at the time. However, with the progression of this course, I realized that there is much more to Biology than I originally thought. I became intrigued with how cellular processes work and I realized that these functions are similar to each other. This class really sparked my interest in Biology and was a valuable science class. I learned many new things about Biology and health in this course.

Projects

This work was a group project about Mitochondria. Before researching and making this slideshow about Mitochondria, none of us actually knew how exactly it worked. During the making of this presentation, we created a research document to document everything we learned about Mitochondria. Since this was a group project we divided up what we were going to research and present. My task was to research and present about “Life without Mitochondria” and Muscular Dystrophy. I decided to include this project because I learned a lot about mitochondria and its uses, and it is an example of my group work. Although I only had two slides (6 content slides was the limit), it is an example of how I work together in a group of people. We all equally split the work amongst each other and did everything equally. Although it looks like we did not write much on our slides we elaborated on what was written on our slides. This work helped me learn more about mitochondria and genetic diseases. After this project, our class learned about genetics and genetic diseases. This project was really helpful to me for learning more about how genetics connects to cell organelles like mitochondria.

Computer Applications in Business

Reflection

This class was mostly spent preparing for and taking certification exams. During this class, I earned 7 certifications, which will hopefully prove my digital skills to other people.

Certifications

• Microsoft Office Specialist: PowerPoint
• Microsoft Office Specialist: Word
• Microsoft Office Specialist: Excel
• Microsoft Office Specialist: Excel Expert
• Microsoft Office Specialist: Access
• IC3 Level 1
• IC3 Level 2
• IC3 Level 3

Now I’m a Microsoft Office Specialist Expert and IC3 Digital Literacy Master.