So it is that time of year agin. The time to reflect on our learning from the past year. Except now it’s been renamed once again. SLC’s to TPol’s to the new and improved MPol. Although this presentation is a bit different then the last 4. Instead of just reflecting on what has gone well or shown growth, we are now going to reflect on both the good and bad, as well as stating some flaws to how we have worked so far this year.

Best Work

So let’s start off with the good stuff. I definetly feel like some of my best work comes from the work I want to do. This was apparent in my Golden Ratio Math Project. In this project we had to come up with some form of art that heavily included the golden ratio or the fibbonaci spiral. I chose to create a basketball jersey in one of my favourite video games NBA 2K. This meant that I really wanted to make a good project out of it because it would be something I might do for fun anyways. So what I did was take Seycove’s colours and create a basketball jersey with a checkerboard pattern. Each rectangle in the checkerboard was a perfect rectangle meaning the dimensions were 1-1.618.

S.M.A.R.T Goals

Back in September we were told to make 3 Smart goals, Smart being an acronym for Specic, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, and Timely. The first goal was a goal to do with a class. So my goal was to always be on time for hockey academy. I have done this very well as I am never late out onto the ice. I also feel that this gave me a drive in academy to really work hard and improve my skills, which has payed off big time this year. The next goal was about personality inside the class, my goal was to become louder and present myself more. Meaning answer more questions in a group discussion etc. With this goal I feel I’ve improved a bit, but not as much as I could’ve. With something like this it is hard to changent your personality to be louder, however outside of school I am a pretty talkative person that can seem quite outgoing. So I feel it’s just a matter of time until I’m really a outgoing person inside of class. The last goal we had to make for this assignment was a goal to do with stuff we do outside of school. For me this one wasn’t to hard to come up with. My goal was to be able to consistently throw a knuckleball for a strike so that I could add it to my repertoire for next season. This is still probably going to take some work as learning a new pitch is very difficult however I have made very good progress on it. One of my knuckleballs was featured in my Who I Am video for our California trip.

Improvements

To start out the year my work was definitely not at my normal standard. Almost every assignment I handed in I would feel so so about it. I kind of knew that it wasn’t great but never really felt a big drive to make it better. My work was anywhere from average to the bottom of the class, which is not normally the case for me. I am normally one of the top students in PLP. A couple months into the year I had a meeting with my parents and the teachers to discuss this. Already at that meeting I was able to identify what the issue at hand was which made fixing it a bit easier. Since that meeting I personally feel like my work standard has risen back up to nearly the point it should be at. Although I still don’t think its quite at the top level it could be at. There is still the occasional assignment I hand in that I’m not super proud of. However receiving a mark in Showbie is a lot less scarier then it was earlier in the year.

One of the other improvements I’ve made is in podcast editing. Even though I had listened to podcasts for a very long time, there were a couple things I really wasn’t sure about. The first thing was that the only podcasts I had listened to were Tim and Sid which was a multi-host sports podcast, and MLB Statcast which also happened to be a multi-host sports podcast. The other thing was even though I had listened to them for quite some time, I had absolutely no idea how to make them or what really made a good podcast. Throughout the year though I have learned more and more about podcasts and I really feel my creation of them is much better than when we started out.

Things Needing Improvement

Definitely the first thing on this list is voice acting. This goes along with the next thing on this list but for now I’ll just focus on my voice. For me voice acting is very difficult, it’s something I very much struggle with as for some reason whenever theres a camera recording me or I’m making a podcast I go very monotone and sound bored. This is completely something that is unintentional and is very annoying for me. I always have to over exaggerate my joy or any other emotion I need to be portraying and I feel almost awkward doing that and feel like I’m doing to much of it and that it will sound fake. This isn’t just on podcasts however. You see this in almost every video I’ve made both last year and this year. In my Adobe video and my early drafts of my who am I video I was very monotone and when you could see me I didn’t really look like I wanted to be there.

Into the next big improvement I need to make is looking excited or enthusiastic about the topic. As I just mentioned this is very apparent in my introductory video about myself in the early drafts. Right now its just one of those things that just happens. Even though it’s not a serious tone, my face and expression seem very serious or not into it. A possible explanation for it could be the whole rather be behind the camera then in front of it. But that kind of introvert ness shouldn’t really effect my tone.

Question

Now in this new MPol thing the students all had to come up with a question about their learning. It had to be something personal so that you really couldn’t have the same question as someone else. Anyways my question is:

Since the meeting, how much do you feel my drive and effort I have put into my work has improved or even gotten worse?