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If you click this link, you can see the first post I wrote in grade 10. It‘s rather short; there are a couple of paragraphs, and a video in it’s centre with me on the title card. This “flattering” image of myself looks strikingly similar to my current exterior. Same clothes, same hair (probably a little taller), but you get the idea. If you were to just look at this image, then look at me, you might gawk if I were to tell you I’ve changed at all.

I have however; I’ve changed within. That girl in the video does not have the skillset I do now. She does not know the power of synergy, the value in simplicity. She has not created some of her greatest school based products to date. That girl does not realize that she is about to enter a year of remarkable progress.

Of course, grade 8 and 9 for me were all about growth and learning, but the achievements I obtained there sometimes felt like a symptom of my work style rather than a direct result. I did not give myself direction, and due to this pushed my effort into everything blindly. Yes, this brought achievement, but not in the places I wanted it.

Grade 10 however, has been different. I don’t just sit there idly anymore as obstacles throw me into inescapable depths; I take my problems by the reins and work to truly conquer them. Instead of merely dreaming of a better me, set goals which allow these dreams to become a reality. It’s staggering really, to take a moment to reflect back on the self made progress I’ve accomplished this year. I truly feel that I am a new person, that I am ready to take on Grade 11; something I never could have dreamed of being ready for in September.

So what exactly happened in those 10 crazy months? How did a girl who was afraid to take charge of making even the smallest changes rise to be able to conquer incredible goals? In this post, I will be outlining my entire grade 10 journey, and give a deeper insight into just why and how I feel that I am ready to move forwards into my grade 11 year.

The first term of the year started in a rather discreet manner. There wasn’t a flashy field school to kick it off, so the incline of work felt more gradual. None the less, this term (which I am considering to be September to December) was full of unique and challenging assignments which brought me right back into growth, learning, and achievement. Here are the ones which particularly affected my learning journey:

*Click the pictures to visit the posts mentioned*

Not only do I remember this project as the first humanities project of the year, but as one of the first opportunities to put my skills from previous years to the test. The premise of this project was to put together a trailer of an assigned, previously read book. It sounds pretty simple, but due to the required constant stream of powerful shots needed to make a trailer, the filming work quickly became some of the hardest we had to complete yet.

Luckily, with the editing skills I acquired from last year, I was able to filter the mound of footage and ideas my team and I had collected into a finished product, one which I am quite proud of. This is because not only did the trailer turn out technically excellent from the mix of shots, good acting, and editing, but also because it was achieved through teamwork. I feel that this was one of the first examples of me taking control during this year, as compromising with my group took conscious effort relating to my previously set goals. However, the editing job took me a lot longer to complete than expected, causing our group to almost miss due date. I should have heeded this as a warning for the future, but I unfortunately dismissed it.

Amongst the crazy time of the year that was the shift from the peaceful fall months into the hectic winter ones, PLP students were introduced to a new course. This was PGP, or personal growth planning. It was introduced in light of students like me working themselves into oblivion without the tools to properly manage their time and goals.

Unlike the majority of classmates however, I was actually on board with this course from the get go. I had started the year off by exploring some of the tools which we were preemptively provided, such as the app Things, and thus felt the course would be a comfortable way to improve upon myself. However, this willingness to participate came at a price in my mind, which was that I would have to do things my way. When our first PGP meeting rolled around, the teachers introduced us to all sorts of tools such as time blocking and goal setting, and due to my mindset I was quick to dismiss the teachers suggested methods of using these tools. This would become a particular issue with something known as Time Blocking, which is basically creating a to do list which includes specific times when you will complete tasks. For this tool, our teachers suggested using the app Things to record your to do’s and the app Calendar for our actual time blocks. Despite how they sold the power of this combo, I decided that I only wanted to use Things.

At the time this seemed like doing this wouldn’t be a problem, as I was still using the tools, but just like if you tried to fix a car with the right tools but with no knowledge on how to fix a car, this would lead to an inevitable breakdown…

Luckily, I did a pretty good job with customizing my PGP Tools, so that breakdown was delayed for a bit. What wasn’t delayed however, was our winter exhibition project. Despite only returning from our Seattle trip a mere two, three days before this time, we were flung right back into the chaos of planning and preparing for the biggest night of our year. Now being in grade 10, I had done this a couple of times and surprisingly felt prepared fpr was coming. I think the teachers could sense this however, because they decided it would be the perfect time to pull the rug from under our feet…

Instead of making a traditional display, our class was tasked with putting on TED Talk like presentations known in the Pecha Kucha format. What this meant was that we only got 20 seconds per each slide we wanted to show, and could not control when they switched. This wasn’t the rug pulling though. What made this project challenging was that around a week before we were to present, we were told we couldn’t have notes. Not que cards. Not presenter notes. Nothing. Upon hearing this, my mindset immediately shifted into revolt. I decided that this sudden change was unfair, and that it didn’t matter if I cared about the project anymore, because this new development was not my responsibility. However, after some further thought, I decided to switch my mindset into “this is the situation, and it is my responsibility to make this work to the best of my abilities”. In doing this, I was able to create one of my greatest projects in my entire time in PLP, and got my first glimpse into the value of taking in external feedback, along with the value in taking responsibility for my learning.

Once I was back into the swing of things, it was time to take on some of the biggest projects of the year with term two. Luckily, most of these hit me like and aftershock instead of an earthquake, as they were repeats from previous years. However, despite knowing what to expect on a surface level, the snowballing affect of overdue work from the previous term and the increasing instability of my PGP Time Blocking use was causing some major unexpected obstacles to pop up…

A big part of PLP has always been reflection, and this comes to the surface largely in two places. One of these is our learning portfolios, and the other are our presentations of learning or POL’s. In January, we are assigned with developing one known as our Midterm POL’s, or MPOL’s. This would be where we would reflect on everything which we had done up to this point and how our achievements, growth, and areas to improve will affect the res of the year. Once again, this assignment didn’t quite sneak up on me as I had two years of experience with it, but like I mentioned earlier, there were prominent obstacles. The largest ones included my current predicament with my unbalanced method of time blocking, which due to my lack of using calendars and my tendency to make anything that I do too great, and the fact that I was having trouble making decisions.

For my MPOL, I was stuck between writing a full blown script and memorizing, or just writing que cards. For days, I jumped back and forth between both options without making much progress in either. Yes, this helped me develop my points in great detail, but I really didn’t have the need to do this. Another I didn’t have was the time. Due to my lack of efficient time block prioritizing, I only made the decision to write a script and transfer it into notes around three days before the presentation, and mixing this with my unwillingness to cut down anything, I found myself the night before feeling quite unprepared. Luckily, I forced myself to cut down and push through, finally actually looking at the time I had, but that horrible feeling of not being prepared was something that I absolutely hated. Keeping this in mind, many of the goals which I set for my mPols were about time management, and reflected my greater interest in taking responsibility for my work. You can view my goals in the MPOLS post linked above.

After MPols came everyone’s “favourite” time of year; Destination Imagination. For my entire time in PLP, Destination Imagination has been a time of exceptional growth and learning (click the link to learn more).

Whether it’s teamwork, time management, or some other skill related, I always find myself coming out the other side a better learner, and a better person. However, this time I was determined to go in a better person as well. Like I mentioned earlier, team work has been something I have been working to improve upon since Grade 8, and I made sure to take action on that here. I compromised on the team challenge choice and story line, and gave up rewriting our script draft due to the fact it was another teammate’s job. At first, I did this in favour of helping those around me, but after getting into the swing of synergy, I realized it is something that actually creates benefit both ways. I quickly found myself with less work, more support, and a stronger overall product. It was here that I realized that synergy isn’t just breaking a part a task that one person can do into two people, it is raising this task to a whole new level by creating something better than both people.

However, D.I. always comes with it’s trials. For me, this took the shape of our Symptomatic. For part of our Destination Imagination performance, I was tasked with creating a mock medical machine known as the Symptomatic, but the catch was that the mechanisms within it had to actually work. I knew that this was going to be my main job for the performance since the beginning of the unit, but unwisely, I did not make it my immediate focus. Despite both my team members’ and teachers’ warnings, I was more focused on our story and logistics than actually building the machine, and just like with mPols, misgauged my time greatly. This caused me to not have enough time to properly test the machine as I spent way too long making elaborate parts, and this lead to malfunctions during our first performance. Through this, I was given insight into just how important not just time managing, but prioritizing can be.

Luckily, we would get a second chance during the D.I. Provincials performance. At first, I wanted to create something much better than what we had originally planned in order to make up for our regional flaws. However, I then thought back to how damaging a lack of cutting down was for MPOLS. Once again, I was faced with a decision which would be hard for me to make, but remembering MPOLS once again I decided that the best course of action would to just fix the mechanism and spend more time with prepping and testing. This turned out to be a great decision for both our time and what our performance needed, and showed me again what the value of taking this sort of responsibility can be.

It wasn’t all cheers however. Behind the scenes, my Time Blocking was spiraling out of control. If you imagine a normal to do list to have maybe 6 – 10 items on it, well, let’s just say you would need a few minutes to scroll to the bottom of mine. I pressed on however, like I always did; I just wasn’t ready yet to take the responsibility to make the needed change to fix my time blocks. I planned however, that maybe I would be in…

Although the official start of this term was around March, the real start of term three for me was after spring break. This time, I has caught up with a good amount of my work, and felt refreshed for the first few weeks. However, this was not to last as the weeks pressed on onto the final stretch of assignments for the year…

One of the first projects we were introduced to was our final PGP Assignment (apart from TPOLS) which would be our Time Machine Project. Focusing around the concept of creating something which if sent back in time to our past selves would convince them the value of something important we learned in PGP this year, this task would be an all encompassing test of our growth and skills.

For this project, I wanted to create a wood burned carving depicting my journey with the app Things and time blocking (which despite causing some crazy chaos was still benefiting me a lot more than if I had no method of organization). Remembering how the lack of prioritizing in D.I. hurt me, I made the creation of this project a priority on my life and got a strong start on it. However, due to other assignments an our Circle B.C. Field School, this progress quickly fell to the wayside. Once again, I was faced with an approaching deadline and an idea which would most likely push me into crunch time. This then left me with the choice to put myself in that situation once again, or to cut down. I thought back to my MPOLS, to D.I., to really everything I had learned about time management so far, and decided it really would be smart to cut down. I decided to just draw the mural creation in pencil instead of wood burn it, and it still turned out as one of the work achievements of the year which I am most proud of. This was when I finally realized that it really is okay to cut down.

Although this project officially started with some smaller units dating back to as early as January, the Waterwheel Project was one of the biggest Scimathics units to date. This was because it fused a mixture of scientific knowledge of the water cycle, energy transfer, ecological conservation and graphing, and also required us to build physical and digital products. If you want to know more about the specifics, you can click here:

Before we started this project or any related projects, I made sure to act upon my MPOLS goal of taking notes in class when I could. At first, I needed to remind myself to do this, but it quickly became a work habit and I found it easy. This made me realize that turning things into habits can make any goal incredibly achievable. Once it was time to start working on the actual project, I was put in a group with Jamie. Thinking back to everything I had learned about synergy up to this point, I decided to split the building work 50/50, and also made sure that I was getting his input and the input of our teacher. This definitely made the work easier, and everything we created better quality.

Unfortunately, the first draft of our water wheel did not work. Due to this being a huge part of the project, there was no other option to go off of from here except to rebuild. Now at this point, I feel like I was in the shallow end of synergy, with myself still being at the helm of the ship and taking minor suggestions from others. With this new development though, I was given the chance to plunge straight into deeper waters. Our teacher offered us a new, proven design which would be easy to build and would most likely work quite well. This seemed like an obvious thing to take, but I was hesitant, as doing so would mean giving up my control over the design. However, I decided to trust in the value of synergy, and realizing the time constraints wanted to make a responsible choice instead of taking the potential risk of creating a new design. This ended off paying off tremendously, with me even being able to include some of my own design in the waterwheel. This not only reinforced the value which I now put on synergy, but also showed me that sometimes it is okay to play it safe and get help from others.

Now this next section is not going to focus on any project in particular, but rather will outline what exactly happened and is happening in my life outside of school specific work. Thinking back to the time around the end of the Watrwheel project, we can return to the car analogy by saying a break down finally came with my Time Blocking. Every day, I had to sort through hundreds of To-Do’s, many of which were things that I didn’t have the time to check off or were not even relevant. It was newly impossible to find what I actually had to do amongst all the clutter, and had to abandon Things for the final portion of the year. It was here I feel that I hit rock bottom, as I struggled continuously with my time throughout the exhibition project.

But when you hit rock bottom, the only place to go is up…

I thought back to the Pecha Kuchas, I thought back to D.I., to MPols, to the entire year, and realized that instead of abandoning my system for good, it was time for reform. It was time to take true responsibility for my life. I wasn’t just going to stand there and let all my time be taken away by this chaos; I was going to actually do something about it. However, life is not a fairy tail, and this decision didn’t just lead to everything magically becoming better. Even today, I am still working to reform my life and time management systems. I am now considering much more external help, realizing that some of the fault came from not listening to the teachers. I also am starting to cut down things before I find myself stuck too deep. I am doing countless little things like these to improve my life, but they will take time to master.

However, this is why I feel that I am ready for grade 11. Reading through this post, you might have been thinking “huh, she made a lot of mistakes, and is still working to improve? How does that make her ready?”. Well, I want to refer back to the car metaphor I made earlier in the post. During the time of the year which I related it to, I mentioned that I had the tools to fix the car, but I didn’t have the knowledge. Now, through my experience this year, and my new found value in opening up to help from those around me, I am gaining that knowledge. However, this isn’t the main reason that I feel I am ready. Relating once again to the car, even if you have the tools and knowledge on how to fix the car, it doesn’t matter if you don’t fix it. If I were going into grade 11 with just the tools and knowledge on how to improve, it wouldn’t be enough. I have something else though…

And that’s responsibility

Throughout this post, I have been connecting almost everything I talked about to one, summative thread; me learning to take responsibility for my learning. Whether this shows in my willingness to take control of a situation such as with the Pecha Kuchas, or in the application of synergy in places such as in D.I., I am truly making progress I never could have dreamed of before hand. I am now able to make a plan, gather the tools and knowledge, and execute it in a responsible and reasonable way. I can avoid chaotic situations, conquer obstacles holding me back, and reach whatever my goals may be. This is why I am ready for grade 11, because no matter what challenges arrive, I now know that I am responsible enough to face them.

If you remember, during my mPols I set nine goals for the upcoming year. Some of which have been SMART and well thought out, allowing me to take immediate action with them. Others I feel where developed in the heat of the moment, and don’t accurately reflect the areas in which I need work. However, some I have been able to take responsibility for and truly make remarkable progress with:

Each of the documents above is one which I have taken notes in. Whether I am on a field studying, conducting and interview, or in class, I am now always taking notes. I have made it a habit to take notes on important information, which is part of the reason this goal has become easy for me to achieve.

On a frequent basis after MPOLS, I made sure to write down my daily priorities in the top of my Things “today” Section. The image above shows some examples of what can become a priority in my life (it’s not just for school!)

In my Things, I have created a folder where I have listed the future busy times for the next year. Keeping these in mind is a crucial step in making long term decisions and better managing my time.

In my Things, I have turned many of the goals which previously stayed in my head as wishes into achievable plans. I also have a system to continue to do this whenever I get a new goal, so they can stay continuously active. This process starts off with me writing down the wish in a “Pre SMART Goals section”. Every night, I turn one of these wishes into a basic SMART goal, and add steps to it as I find more. I then can work these steps into my daily life and can make progress on these goals without having to think about them.