Yep. You read the title right. The end is near. And by that, I mean school’s almost out. Not the apocalypse.

With that mystical insight out of the way, I’m Jason, and this is my tPOL post. No dilly-dallying today. Straight into it.

I’m kicking things off differently this time around. I generally start with my subjects, but today, I’m starting by recapping my goals from last year.

Last Year’s Goals

Last year, my main goal was to integrate what I’ve learned through PGP into my extracurriculars, and I’m proud to announce that I’ve made good on this promise. I’ve been (or am trying to be) keeping up with things. I’ve plotted out all of my extracurricular activities, from music to academics, and it’s been pretty helpful. It reminds me of what I have to do, and it’s been really overall helpful for staying on task.

My goal for humanities was to use existing feedback and apply it to future situations. With the arrival of many new video projects, the feedback from my older videos proved to be a valuable asset. For example, one of the most common inconsistencies with my videos was the shaky audio. I’m glad to say that that foe has been vanquished…. for now. I looked back at all of my old videos, and took into account all of the repeat mistakes I had made, and for the time being, I have been pretty good at keeping my mistakes fresh and new. I still make mistakes. Only now, I’m making different mistakes.

For Maker, my goal was persistance. I felt I was too “soft” per se, and I gave up a little too easily sometimes. With the twin powerhouses of BlueSky and DI, I’m glad to say that this promise was kept. Even throughout all of the struggles, from wood measurements gone wrong to not having a functioning backdrop on the day of provincials, I kept my head up, thought happy thoughts (which was one of the biggest struggles), and I got through it. I guess things worked out in the end. We made the best out of our wood surplus, and our plan for a pit-crew style de-assemble and re-assemble worked like a charm….ish. And hey, we ended up with a sweet second place trophy. With BlueSky just around the corner, I’m sure with my new mindset, I should be able to get through whatever the exhibition will throw at me.

In science, my biggest goal was to keep an open mindset. I felt my attitude needed a slight adjustment, and in the second half of the year, I stepped it up. Instead of only using 70-80% of my brainpower in class, which was what I was kind of doing before, I kicked it up to 110%, and repurposed what other % of my power to other aspects, such as project design and thinking outside of the box. For example, our latest math project, which was about linear equations, involved calculating costs and looking at equations. Old me would have made a simple equation, not take anything into account, and make a pretty good video. However, new me took everything into account. Pencil cost, advertising time, and even the time it took me to walk to the library. I made a great video, and it paid off, as I got great marks.

Now that that’s out of the way, time for subject reflections.

PGP

Ohhh boy. The big fish. PGP was quite the rocky road. At the start of PGP, I, just like everyone else, was skeptical about it. It took me quite a while to catch on to what the course was about and what it offered, and by term 2, it wasn’t very high on my priorities. However, upon closer inspection, I realized that PGP actually offered a lot, from the 7 Habits to Things to Productivity to Goal Setting. After my newfound respect for the course, the Time Machine project provided me with a great opportunity to show off my growth in that course.

According to my teachers, it worked. My Time Machine product was pretty great in quality, and I think I was one of the only people who actually took the words “Time Machine” literally with my 90’s themed self help video.

Looking back, PGP was like a slope, with the line representing my interest and development in PGP.  I started at the bottom, suspicious and kind of lazy, and I slowly clawed my way up to the tippy top of the slope. Pretty good, if I do say so myself.

Humanities

At the mid-term point last year, Humanities was going pretty well. I was a fan of the video projects, and I was consistent with the quality of my videos. I’m pleased to say that (in my opinion) I’ve kept that up. The quality has stayed the same, if not better, and I think my video skills have skyrocketed, from music production to special effects to being a theme master (remember my era-appropriate 90’s themed Time Machine?).

A definite high point for me in humanities was the Wild West, AKA Victoria. The reason I’m saying Victoria is because for one of the first times this year (other than the animation), I was all alone, other than my filming partner, Niklas. The reason I liked this so much was because of the unique challenges it brought to the table. For one, it was an incredibly limited filming timespan, as we only really had 40 minutes in Chinatown. Another thing was the pace. I’m generally a pretty slow actor. I take a while to get ready, and with the fast paced walking tour, I didn’t really have any opportunities to film along the way. However, I think I overcame these obstacles pretty well, with pretty good footage and new solutions (the use of old photos for contrast to show history).

Oh, right. It also taught me filming skills. ESPECIALLY rule of thirds. After some sub-par filming on my behalf for my filming partner Nik (sorry pal), I learned the importance of the rule of thirds and lighting quality.

Maker

Maker was a wild ride. I think I did pretty well this year in terms of leadership, communication, and focus. However, it also brought me back down to Earth, reviving my old foe, Time Management.

DI was so big I’m using it for my positives and negatives. The mid-term was just when DI was starting to heat up, and my god, what a blast of heat it gave me. DI really strengthened my leadership skills and my communication skills. I think I did a pretty good job of helping to keep the group on task, and after regionals, our group chat usage went from 2 texts a week to 20 texts a day.

However, negatives are needed to balance out the goody gumdrops. It gives me great displeasure to say this, but DI made me forget all about my old foe, Time Management. That’s right, the saga between me and Time Management lives on. All the fun of designing costumes and writing outrageous scripts made me forget all about the timeline, and before we knew it, we had 1 week before regionals, and a 60% completed solution. Thankfully, my group and I stepped it up, and we got things done, but a brush with an old enemy reminded me that bad Time Management is a slippery slope.

Scimathics

Not gonna lie, I like Scimathics. The projects and assignments are straightforward. The teacher is straightforward. I’m a pretty straightforward guy. Also, I pretty much think in numbers, so I didn’t have many struggles in this class. However, there were still highs and lows.

High point: Matter Cycles. This is the project where I really learned to think outside the box to create our methane monstrosity. I think this was the project that challenged me the most, or should I say, I challenged myself the most. I was constantly pushing myself to be better, and always looking for areas to improve. This resulted in maximum class time usage, optimal time management, and best of all, lots and lots of calculations.

In the end, I was able to create a superb presentation, filled to the brim with environmental concern, statistics, and unnecessary but still helpful calculations.

Low point: Polynomials

Nothing against polynomials. Nothing against the project. However, this project doesn’t look great compared to my Matter Cycles. I stuck to the basic, keynote template, bottom-feeding, bread and butter, simple project outlines. No self-challenging, just laziness. Not great. Sure, I had things going on, like RCM and DI, but still. However, towards the end of our (Kyle and I’s) project, I kicked it up a notch, and made some much-needed improvements, turning our project from “meh” to “wow!”.

Final Reflection

1 and a half hours and 1500 words later, here I am. Tired, hungry, and ready to reflect on my year.

Grade 9 was great. The projects were usually fun, and the video focus really drew my attention. I made a new friend by the name of PGP, gained some confidence, and made good on my goals. What more could I ask for.

Humanities: Interesting. Maker: Useful. Scimathics: Fun. PGP: Growth.

Those 8 words could sum up my year in terms of PLP, but I also had my extracurriculars. My academics are booming, due to the help of things, and music couldn’t be going any better. Surprising to see that I came so far from a socially awkward Grade 8, to fan favourite, decently confident, time-blocking, things-using, musically accomplished, Grade 9 social butterfly Jason Guan.

Ok. I’m gonna stop writing before I tear up-wait! My goal! I forgot all about that!

My goal/question for the next stretch of months is:

“How can I keep learning even when school’s over?”

As you all know, the pursuit of knowledge never ends, especially with me. Unfortunately, I will be attending summer school this year to boost myself ahead in Math, but even without that or my extracurricular academics, I will keep trying to learn new things, through reading books, passion projects, and who knows, maybe even video games can teach me something. (Mortal Kombat 11’s anatomy is spot-on).

This is a surprisingly emotional Jason, signing off.

Hello loyal readers, I’m Jason Guan and this is my official PGP post. Before I start, this may be my biggest post ever, so prepare for some reading.

So PGP (personal growth plan) is something new that the PLP team introduced this year. It’s an X-Block class that involves all of the goal-setting things from regular class and compresses them all into one, once-a-month class.

In this post, I’ll be showing off my “Time Machine” project (blast from the past), and also walking through everything we’re learned this year in PGP.

But first, backstory. In the beginning, I was a small child who didn’t know any better. I had the occasional late assignment in showbie, and got flooded with work. However, from the beginning of Grade 9 until now, I have learned so much information I wish I could have told my past self. That’s what Time Machine is for.

My Time Machine Project

The first section of this post will also be the best. Time Machine. For time machine, I chose to create a good ol’ self help video. You know what I’m talking about. These videos are notorious for being mystical and using fancy words like “revitalize” and “heal”. I found this to be the best way to show off this information, as many aspects of self help videos and PGP line up together.

I chose to focus on my three favourite habits, AKA the topics I wish past Jason had known. Putting first things first, Think Win-Win, and putting first things first. These all associate to some part of my life, whether it be education, music, or health. Here’s the final product.

Here’s the second part of my post, the explanation of everything we learned. This is the long, reading part that I warned you about. So buckle up, grab a drink, and prepare for a mild ride through the streets of productivity.

Goal Setting

I’m sure you all know what goal-setting is, and we thought we did too, until we read the book “What Do You Really Want?”. This book was focused on goal-setting and how to set effective goals.

One of my biggest take-aways from this was SMART goals. Smart is an acronym to consider when setting goals. It stands for:

Savvy

Measurable

Active

Reasonable

Timed

If you remember this acronym, then your goals will be bound for success. One of our main assignments for this unit was the use of forms. Forms (Think it and Ink it) were great ways to get thinking about our goals, and we wrote them down in a journal.

Productivity

Our Productivity (Time Management) unit was mainly centred around two main aspects. Time management tools and time blocking. Time management tools are like evolved to-do lists. The one we used was called “Things” and allowed us to set deadlines, set repeating to-do’s, and even organize them by area and project. It was incredibly useful for managing your time well, which was one of my goals from last year.

Time blocking was another focus of this unit. Time blocking is the use of a calendar app (we just used the Apple calendar) to plot out every 1-2 hour block of your life. This can be incredibly useful for people who play sports and practice often, or for people like me, who are terrible at sports but take a ton of extracurriculars.

The 7 Habits

Oh boy. This is the big fish. This is one of our biggest units this year. The 7 Habits. The 7 Habits are a set of… well…. 7 habits designed to help you achieve your goals and many other things. The 7 Habits (in order) were:

Be Proactive

Begin With The End In Mind

Put First Things First

Think Win-Win

Seek First To Understand, then to Be Understood

Synergize

Sharpen The Saw

I could sit here and type out a long, detailed explanation of the 7 Habits, but I highly doubt you want to read that, so I’m going to make good use of this unit’s main project, the 4 creative reflections. For each section of the book, we were asked to fill in a workbook to show our learning, as well as make a creative reflection for each section. I think you’ll enjoy looking at my doodles/sketch notes a lot more than reading big, fat blocks of text.

Reflection

Wow. That was actually a lot less than I expected. But, I still have a Reflection to write.

PGP was a big help for all of my classes. The time blocking and use of things was incredibly useful for planning out my valuable time and helping my stay on track and helping my assignments stay on time. The 7 Habits were an even bigger help. They stayed in the back of my mind, and helped me in every situation where they could be used. I think I’ve used every single habit at least once after I learned about them, and I feel I utilized them well.

The first ever unit, goal setting, was just as big of a help as anything. The forms allowed me to concentrate on all of my goals, and the SMART acronym is something that I don’t think I’ll ever forget, whether that be good or bad. The Time Machine was a great manifestation of everything we learned in PGP, and was a great refresher on everything I might have forgotten.

Overall, PGP may have been frustrating at times with the workload, but in the end, I think it paid off.

This is a very tired Jason, signing off.