Hello Everybody and welcome to my reflection of the school year thus far. This time though, it may be slightly different from other years as I’m using this more to use this as a self reflection rather than showing which work I think is the best. This is because being a grade 11 we only have three PLP classes with two of them being humanities. Anyways let’s get right into it.

Attitude

After having a form of off year last year, I really wanted to get my drive and habits back to have a successful school year. So far this year I definetily think I have done that very well. I have my drive back to want to do great work and I feel like I have done some great work this year. Examples of this come in both projects we have done so far being the Manhattan Project Project, and our Exhibition. In both cases I feel I have worked very hard, and was able to produce a very high standard of work.

Skills

Over the past few years of being in PLP many of my skills have grown. Most noticeably would have to be video editing, as I am a common editor in any group project. However a very underrated skill of mine now has to be my writing. Coming into high school I was not a very good writer at all. I had some problems with grammar and didn’t have a very good vocabulary. Over my time in PLP we have done many writing assignments and I’ve gotten much better. For our exhibition, I was elected onto the script writing team, which is never something I would’ve thought possible back in grade 8. I also feel very comfortable writing essays or any form of paragraph. My only issue with both of those is getting started, but once I’m going I can write for a long time. With my video editing, I have moved all editing to Adobe Premiere Pro and I’m very happy with that move. It has helped me grow as an editor becuase it gives me more tools and shows me an easier way to do challenging things that are still possible in iMovie, but are hard to get too.

Mindset

Throughout the year thus far I have noticed something different in my mindset from the past. This is the feeling that nothing I ever do is perfect and can always be improved. I definetily feel like this has been trained into me through PLP, however I feel like I’ve taken it farther than I was originally intended to. There have been multiple examples this year in PLP and in other classes where I have been praised for doing a tremendous job on a project or assignment, where I find myself feeling that I could’ve done it better. My best example of this comes in yearbook, where I was tasked to make the cover because people know of my skill set in Adobe Photoshop and Adobe Illustrator. The cover looks great and everyone that has seen it has praised me a lot, however even after submitting it to Jostens (the yearbook manufacturer) I still wasn’t 100% happy with it. The annoying thing about this mindset is the fact that usually I don’t actually know what the problem I want to fix with it is. Back to my yearbook example, I don’t know how I could improve it, but I feel like I should be able to improve it. This mindset is a good and a bad thing. It’s good in the fact that I’m constantly looking to make my work better and strive for a higher grade, but it also means that I spend unnecessary time trying to improve work that I can’t really improve any longer.

Acting

Over the last two years I feel I have made major steps in improving my acting skills. Whether it be voice acting for a voice over in a video or acting in an exhibition. Although I’m still definetily not perfect, I have improved significantly. Just a few years ago there was absolutely no chance I would’ve been capable in acting in the exhibition we just pulled off about a month ago. I thought I did very well to keep myself calm and speak at a decent pace. I was also very confident with my lines. However after watching the footage of the exhibition I was immediately able to pick out things I didn’t like about the way I performed. I could not stop fidgeting with my hands, and I found I was a bit too quiet.

In conclusion I feel I have had a very good start to the year and I hope to continue moving this forward. I made major steps to gain back my work ethic and regain my wish to succeed. I have plans on where I would like to take my education after high school and I need to work hard to get there. If I keep it up the way I have this year I should be fine, but I can’t let it slip again.