I’m going into my 2nd month of grade 12 which is absolutely crazy to me, time has felt like it has gone by so fast. According to one of my teachers every 4 weeks is equal to 10% of the course meaning I’ve already completed over 10% of grade 12. I still remember my first day of grade 8, the start of high school, so clearly. I met up with a couple friends, we all got ready together and then we walked to school, eager to start a new chapter in our lives. Now, in almost exactly a year from now, I’ll be heading off to a new beginning, University!! As time is flying by so fast I definitely want to make every little bit count! To do so I thought before my hectic schedule starts I would apply some skills we learned in PGP this past year, AKA time blocking!!!
Looking back on grade 11, I could have applied the skills I learned from PGP much better into my day to day life, especially with an insanely busy schedule and a full course load. Instead of procrastinating like this previous year, I have decided to kick myself into gear! To do so, the first thing I did was look back on my tPOL from the end of grade 11. One of the major aspects I focused on was developing my learning over the summer. This meant reading a couple of books and writing at least two summer blog posts. Both of which will help to improve my writing skills and aid in preparing me for PLP 12.
For my summer blog posts, I decided to write about my amazingly busy July basketball experience and my summer holiday at my family’s cottage in Manitoba.
Regarding the books I’ve read this summer, as we had an assignment over the summer to read one book from a list of books given by our teacher. These books included:
I decided to read two of the books to meet the ready goal I set forth for myself and also gain a deeper appreciation for literature. The firsts book I read was The Wars, this book was about the life of a soldier named Robert Ross through the First World War. This story was told from a very interesting perspective as it showed a different part of his life before war as well as some of the emotional effects that the horrific acts of war have on soldiers. The second book I decided to read was the English Patient, this one interested me as I had heard highly of it from other people. Last year we read a short story written by the same author as The English Patient, Michael Ondaatje and I was very interested to read more in his style of writing. I really enjoyed reading this book and became entranced in the story!!
Reading these books is going to definitely motivate me to continue to read during the school year. The new goal I’ve set for myself is to read every night before bed, even if it’s just for 5 minutes, anything is better than nothing. This will benefit me by helping expand both my vocabulary and writing skills, hopefully making writing, which is something I find quite challenging, a little bit easier. Also, this is an achievable goal that I can continue with throughout my life.
The last thing I did to prepare myself for my senior year of high school was start to time block my September calendar. Although I don’t know my complete schedule yet I found it very helpful to lay out my workout and basketball schedule for the month.
Throughout the rest of the year, I will continue to add events, homework, practices etc to the calendar to continually help me to organize my life. I will also be time blocking specific times to do my homework as this year’s main focus academically is to boost my grade average and gain a deeper understanding for the subjects I’m learning. To do so I will really need to be mentally focused and prevent myself from procrastinating. A huge part that I will need to include in order to truly implement my time blocking routine is to have a weekly review period to look at all the different areas and see what might need more time, less time or can stay the same. As I really want to strive for my highest potential and truly succeed academically in all my courses I will need to use the skills I’ve learned from the previous school years to improve my management skills, set achievable goals for myself and show both academic excellence and personalization in ALL MY WORK.