Blog 9

Keeping myself motivated this close to the end of high school is very hard. In my other classes what keeps me motivated is the fact that if I have above a B+ average I don't need to take that certain classes final. In this case it is different, but what motivates me is that I really want to do good in this class and that it's almost over! I am a little bit behind, but not too bad. Just been a crazy two weeks. I plan to finish the semester on top of things. I can do better, I just have to motivate myself more. I honk working with the community is awesome, it's a great way to involved and help different organizations and people. I think you asking us to make connections can help make things easier. The act of reflecting promotes learning because in order to have success everyone needs to fail at least once and when one fails, you reflect on what happened and you learned from it in order to succeed the next time. Basically you are learning from your mistakes. I've done this many many times.

The Bumpy Road to Success

1) A failure or a setback I have had so far is not submitting my work on time. This has been a crazy few months of senior year, most of the time I am on top of things that are due, but time management is a big problem that I have to fix before I get to college. It's not a matter of not wanting to do the work, I just put other things before school sometimes and that should not be the case. My goal for the rest of the school year is to submit my work on time.

2) I don't think anything has been rewarding so far, given that I haven't heard back from any of the internships I sent letters or emails too. Once I hear back and I know where I am going for my shadowing, a huge rock will be lifted off my chest and I will feel a sense of reward.

3)  The stresses I have had are the work in the google classroom and waiting to hear back from people I have reached out too. I have been reading my book which is a very good book so I am not stressed about that, just the fact that I want to do good in this class stresses me out.

Leadership

Who is the leader you most admire?

The leader I most admire is my brother.


How has this person demonstrated that she or he is an effective leader? 

In September my brother became Chief in the US Navy. He has been apart of the Navy for 10+ years and is very dedicated. Ever since I was a little kid, I always looked up to my brother. In high school, he was an honors student and was in the top 5% of his class. He went to college for Criminal Justice and four years ago he became a cop in Virginia Beach. He showed great leadership while being a cop, but recently he left his cop job to join his dream job of being in the FBI. Even in just everyday life he demonstrates leadership because he is always leading me and my sister to the best. Everyone he works with thinks of him as a leader as well.

What qualities does he or she have that you think contribute to his or her being an effective leader? 

Determination
Dedication
Never giving up
Intelligence
Taking risks/challenges
Kindness

My brother, Blake is on the right.

Getting Back into the swing of things

1) Examine how you approach searching for a topic.   
How I approached searching for a topic is going onto the prsd website and searching for my topic in the databases. I searched Child Life Services and a lot of articles came up that were very interesting.

2) Provide at least TWO tips for others searching for articles.
Search around for different articles and skim through them before picking them because you may come across better articles.

Use different websites or databases, don't just get articles from the same place. You want information from different places that you could eventually compare or contrast.

3) Be honest, what do you think of annotated bibliographies?  
I don't think anything bad of them personally, I think they help get an idea of what the article is about.   It can get annoying eventually if there are a lot of articles one is citing.

4) What was the most productive day this week, and why?
The most productive day this week was gathering my articles and writing my annotated bibliography. I feel like I worked the most those two days, and was very focused.

5) What was the least productive day this week, and why? 
There was one day where I was not productive when I should have been. I believe it was Tuesday and then Wednesday and Thursday I got myself together and became productive. 

The Juggling Act

I am doing great with reading my nonfiction book and I am going to be reading a lot this weekend! I have also collected a few articles that go great with my topic. Recently, I have also sent out a few letters to different hospitals with Child Life Services departments (mostly Boston) in hope that they will answer soon. Below are pictures of what my letter looked like.

Something I need to get better at are my time management skills. Given I was very sick during school vacation I need to make sure to stay on top of things. I also need to figure out what I for sure want to do for  my project.