Dear Lupe,
Today's “Writing Wednesday” article reminded me of Mindful Monday quote, “Tough times don't last but tough people do”. The quote made me realize that no matter the what life throws my way one way or another I'll get past it. If I ever feel like life’s a pair of walls closing in on me I usually find myself reciting something along the lines of “You've gotten this far you can do it. You're not a quitter and you're not gonna start now”. Along with this, self deprecation is not the answer to coping with mistakes. Although I'm a hypocrite by saying that seen as the moment anything goes wrong I bring myself down or say “I want to die”, but that’s something I need to stop. Focusing on the negative instead of trying to look for the positive side of a situation is a toxic attitude to have towards the world and will not benefit me in anyway. I usually deal with negative thoughts the same way I handle stress or over thinking; I lay on my bed, connect my earphones, close my eyes, and blast music. This writing Wednesday reflection covers the Creativity of C.A.S. The ability to read an article and be able to evaluate one's behaviors, actions, or state of mind and make a conscious decision to change is a creative way to analyze and give further real world depth to the article read. The Learning Outcomes for this experience are: 1.Identify own strengths and develop areas of growth 2.Demonstrate that challenges have been taken developing new skills in the process 7. Recognize and Consider the ethics of choices and actions My area of growth would be the way I deal with negative outcomes internally, because instead of getting mad over little insignificant details I need to focus on what comes next not dwelling on failures. The challenge of this experience was trying to establish that you personally have an issue in an unbiased light. Finally by reflecting and the ability to apply the article into your real world scenario you considered and reflect on the choices and actions you make for yourself.
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This weeks class CAS experience was learning to knit or crochet. I was actually really excited for this one, my god mother taught me how to crochet when I was younger and although I forgot completely how to do anything with yarn I couldn't wait to knit myself an ugly scarf.
In order to do it as a class, Monday we were supposed to bring needles and yarn. From there Mrs.Thomas gathered us around her and step by step guided us through the beginner's process. In order to start you have to make a small slipknot with the yarn, small enough to snugly fit on the knitting needle. Then it was an easy “In the window and around the house” stitch. After struggling and having to restart my stitches three different times I kind of got the hang of it, although it was only a slight gain in skill. It was a little weird, throughout the day I kept pulling out my needles because it was oddly relaxing. So much so during my tennis game my friend asked me to teach her how to knit, and I did with my limited knowledge but she seemed happy with her work so she didn't complain. In regards to CAS the learning outcomes: 1.Identify own strengths and develop areas for growth 2.Demonstrate that challenges have been undertaken, developing new skills in the process 4. Show commitment to and perseverance in CAS Experiences. In identifying and developing areas for growth, that would be the continuation of my scarf. The first layer of knots if the easiest, you're just wrapping the yarn around the needle but when you have to switch needle and actually knit I struggle with tightening my grip and pulling on the yarn, not tightening enough and having loose loops, or simply leaving everything in the edge of the needle and having all my knots fall at once. The challenge was the precise movement needed, I'm not the best with hand eye coordination and it was definitely a struggle in the beginning. I don't plan on stopping, it's a nice stress reliever and I also want to see how many scarves I can make before my friends get enough. I don’t like spending time on time management,well no I don’t like having to implement new ways of time management when I already have a failing system to my madness. At first using the agenda worked but I'm not as consistent as I'd like or need to be in IB and soon there were more blank spots then there were filled. I started asking and relying on people for assurance on whether there was or wasn't homework for a specific class which is definitely not ideal.
As the second class CAS experience we tried new weekly charts in order plan out the week at once, and while it sounded great in theory it was not successful in my situation. I realized I don't always have all my activities or plans set up by Monday and this version of a time chart only stressed me out more. Every time I had to change or add more to the original schedule I felt like my week was more and more packet with little room to breath. I guess personally I just like having everything in complete order from the beginning of the week or the ability to fill in per day and this class chart was the middle ground of both but it left me feeling worried I had missed something or like no matter how many times I double checked I was forgetting to do some homework it was a little unnerving. This is seen as a Creativity and Activity as a part of CAS Experience. The creativity aspecting being the new “creative” way or form or structuring my time and testing out a new system. While the Activity is the physically work put into making, updating and staying on time with the new chart, and although it's not the most physically demanding there is a small amount of needed to be put into this version of time management. The Learning Outcome from this experience are as followed; 1.Identify own strengths and develop areas of growth 2. Demonstrate that challenges have been undertaken, developing new skills in the process A big weakness in this experience is my inability to do things right away and on time. If I hadn't procrastinated so much and mentally dug my heals into the floor I may have had a successful experience but I didn't I stubbornly held onto my own belief that I didn't need this but the truth is now I need to figure out some kind of system to keep me in order and soon. Since then I've been slightly more consistent with my agenda but it's still a little unreliable sometimes and I find myself leaning on my peers for help. As the first CAS experience the class decided to try everyone's hand at cooking. Individually choosing our own recipes, and cooking our creations the class’s culinary skills were put to the test. I decided to do Chicken Alfredo as my dish, finding a recipe on the internet that was not too complicated and set out to do it. It was my first time cooking this and I hope it gets better the more I practice, but as a first it wasn’t too bad. In order to start I had to get my ingredients in order and make sure I had everything I would need, when I looked the only thing I needed was pasta and tomatoes. The recipe recommended I dissed the tomatoes and spinach into fine pieces, but I decided to get started on the chicken, since it would take the longest to cook. Okay let me just add, preparing chicken or any meat for that matter is disgusting, separating the fat felt like cutting into jello, that itself made me seriously consider taking up a vegetarian lifestyle. I then put the pasta to cook, at this point the fact that I would need to stir in the tomatoes and spinach in less than 5 minutes had slipped my mind and moved forward. Because of this when my timer went off I started running around the kitchen like a mad woman; picking up the cutting board only to put it down so I could stir the pasta or flip the chicken, all while holding a bundle of spinach in the other hand. Safe to say I learned it’s better to just follow the recipe they give you since the creator probably knows what they’re doing. I did change one other little aspect of the original recipes, it called for 1-2 medium sized tomatoes but I'm not the biggest fan of their texture so I only added half of one. In the end the Alfredo wasn't half bad, my mom actually really liked it, although I thought the pasta dried up a little while I was dissing the tomatoes and spinach it was a really fun experience and I can't wait to make it again. With hopefully a better outcome the second time around. This experience can be classified under two of CAS’s acronyms, Creativity and Activity. The Creative aspecting being the selection of dish, the opportunity to change/experiment, or personalize the recipe which I did very slightly, and the Activity persion being the physically work put into making the food. Im my case it being; the cutting and prepping of the chicken, the dissing of tomatoes and spinach, the mild sprints from one station the other, and the cooking of the pasta. The Learning Outcomes, developed or touched under this CAS experience are;
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AuthorHello, my name is Guadalupe Bermudez, I am a junior at Azusa High School. Archives
October 2017
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