Well, it’s that time of the year again. We’ve almost completed another school year, with only one more to go. I’m really excited for the summer, but I’m also really excited to start grade 12 in PLP. I want to push myself next year, now that I have found my talents and my niche in our PLP cohort. So, let me tell you why I think I’m a perfect candidate for PLP 12.
Leadership
First off, I am a leader. As you may or may not know, I’m a fairly quiet person, but I tend to lead by example and inspire other classmates. I have been doing this for a while, but more recently have come to realize it. Examples of this include my Hanford video from earlier this fall, in which our whole class was tasked with making a video of our trip. I found that our video blew all the other ones out of the water. In that project, I was director, editor and main actor. The video was seen by the whole class and I remember seeing improvement in classmates videos for the second drafts.
Another more recent example is my Time Machine Project. This was another video but it was individual. I had my idea for this project right away, and yet it was quite ironic that I made a video about productivity and time blocking, but I started making the video 4 days before the due date. After creating the video, I was really happy with it. I knew it was good, and it was exactly what I was envisioning beforehand. I was really proud of my video, and I finished my blog post early. Then, in our PGP meeting, there was a chance to show our work with the class, and I knew in the back of my mind I should. But it was actually Simon, who had watched my video earlier, that convinced Ms. Maxwell to watch my video in front of 40 people. And now that I’m looking back at it, I’m glad we did. I remember after the PGP meeting, I got multiple compliments on my video from different PLP students from a few grade levels. My leadership has now extended past just my grade, and ever so slightly reaching the younger grades of PLP.
This is what I’ve grown the most in, as I said in my MPol from January. I want to continue to grow as a leader, and accepting me into PLP next year will be the best decision you’ll ever make. My leadership qualities will only get better and I’m excited to put them into action next year with our full-class horror movie.
Failure Recognition
Another reason why I’m a perfect candidate, I can recognize my weaknesses and failures. This year has been a struggle for me, adapting to Pre-calc and Physics has been a tough time. I suddenly had lots of trouble doing math, to the point where I had to study a lot for tests for the first time ever, and get a math tutor. I recognize that I’ve had a mediocre year in terms of work quality. There’s nothing I can point to and say that it’s incredible, or new or super-extremely creative. I feel that I didn’t push myself at all. All my work was just the minimum requirements of each assignment. This is something I don’t like at all, as I take pride in doing well. I have had to put a lot of time into math and physics, as I said earlier, and I also have been working part time. Overall I feel that having a skill of recognizing when you make a mistake or failure is just as important as doing something right. If I can realize my mistakes, I can fix them. As with anyone, I can learn from my mistakes and improve as a learner.
For example, my We Shall Overcome video. For this video I was partnered with Robbie Wharton. We had a good idea for our video but it relied heavily on research that we didn’t have yet. Then, when we got approved we started our research. And…. we couldn’t find anything. We looked and looked and looked. But we never found enough to make a great video. And then we just made a video anyways. And it was terrible.
What I’ve learned from this video is what we could’ve done to fix it. For one, we could have revised and completely restarted. But right after this video I got really sick, and I didn’t want to put all the next draft on Robbie. What we should’ve done is realized we have weak research, and made up for it with a creative video. But we have bad research and a boring video with Robbie sitting in a chair talking to the camera. But the important part is that I learned a lot from my mistakes. I knew my video was not great, and recognized it. I made the mental note to improve next time, and the next video I made was my Time Machine video, which I thought was great.
Conclusion
To sum up this Tpol, I will be a great candidate and student in nexts years PLP 12 cohort. That is because of my leadership qualities that are on a constant uphill slope. As I get to know my classmates more, my respect for them grows, and I can be better leader. I know how to make great work, and inspire others. I don’t mind stepping out of my comfort zone and making something creative. I can both recognize and grow from my mistakes and failures, something that’s just as important as being creative.