This year I made the choice to join the track team. Through my experiences so far, I have learned the importance of exercising. In the past, training for and playing soccer was enough of a workout so that I was moderately fit. However, as I stopped training I was majorly out of shape. Therefore, I found myself eating more and more unhealthy foods and becoming less active. I even started feeling the affect it had on my body. Having less energy and motivation to accomplish tasks, I would slack off on tasks that would normally have been easy. Also, my knees as well as my legs started to feel weak. In all honesty, I became worried about my health and so the pressure from my friends as well as this worry is what pushed me into joining track. Now, during practice I can feel myself becoming stronger. Training to become a successful sprinter, I work hard to achieve my goals and be the best that I can be. Through my new experiences, I have realized the importance of staying fit and keeping a healthy lifestyle. Building healthy habits through joining track, I am confident that I can use what I have learned to stay healthy even when I am out of high school. With the ACT coming up, I have focused for the last couple of weeks on what type of learner I am so that I can study efficiently. I already have an idea that I am more of a visual learner but I wanted to find out more. A few of the tests I took online were Discover Your Learning Style and What’s your Learning Style? 20 Questions. There are many more but these tests I found to be the most helpful.
In the first test, I found that I am 45% a visual learner, 33% an auditory learner and 22% a kinaesthetic learner (a learning type where doing physical activities are the best way for that person to learn). I am mostly a visual learner as I suspected. In the second test, the results were pretty much the same. I am 55% a visual learner, 30% an auditory learner and 15% a tactile (aka kinaesthetic) learner. This test however, showed me the best way to study and organize my life. It listed what I can do to improve my learning. Here are a few of the ideas:
I recommend that you take these quizzes as well as others that you can find online just by typing in What type of learner am I?. After taking these quizzes, answer me this: What type of learner are you and did you find any other quizzes that were helpful? Recently, I have been interested in the different techniques of learning and how we can improve the school system. The school system uses techniques that make a student better at academics but do these really help us in the real world? I do not think so. I believe that the school system needs to focus on helping students prepare for the real world instead of teaching the student to figure out the twenty math problems that was assigned for homework.
Do not get me wrong, education is an extremely important part of our lives today; however, the way subjects are taught and the subjects themselves sometimes seem to be unnecessary. I always wonder how the things that I learn are going to help me raise a family, get a good job and pay my taxes. Sometimes I see how it might help but I never understand it enough to do any good. The website at the bottom of the page talks about the idea of the school system not doing enough for the students and how we can improve it. I agree with a lot of what is mentioned in this article and I believe that you should read it to have a better understanding of my post. Also, I can not help but think about the movie "Dead Poets Society" as I read the article and typed my post. My Lit class watched it and I was enthralled with the movie. It is such a great movie because it includes so many controversial subjects that are important today. Students can relate to the movie because many feel the pressures that are set on the students within the movie. This movie also includes the issue that I talked about in the above paragraphs. Do you think that the school system needs to be improved upon? If so, do you have any ideas? And also, have you seen the "Dead Poets Society"? If you did, what did you think about it? Here's the website: http://blogs.kqed.org/mindshift/2013/11/why-academic-teaching-doesnt-help-kids-excel-in-life/ One day in class, my band director showed us a video about the benefit of playing a musical instrument. Playing a musical instrument is said to improve academic skills such as reading, math as well as language skills and creativity. Before researching more on the subject, I thought that playing an instrument made the musician focus and this is why academic skills are improved through music. As a musician plays, he/she has to listen to the other players sound as well as their own sound to balance the music produced. Music is all about balance and listening.
I found an article about this very subject and within that article, they use the acronym O-P-E-R-A to explain what skills are enhanced when playing an instrument. The 'O' stands for overlap meaning that different parts of a musician's brain are used to play and produce music. The 'P' stands for precision which is used when a musician tunes his/her instrument as well as while listening to other musicians. 'E', 'R' and 'A' stand for emotion, repetition and attention. All of these skills are shown to be stronger in musicians compared to those who do not play an instrument. Although sometimes I feel like putting my clarinet down and never playing it again, it is reassuring to know that there are benefits from playing an instrument that I use in other areas of my life. Do you play an instrument? Why do I want to learn a language?: When I traveled with my dad, sister, and nephew to France to visit my brother, the only language that I knew was English. My brother knew French and as you can imagine, it was a huge help to have someone who could interpret the foreign language around. I was fascinated. On the same trip, we visited Spain. Fortunately my nephew was learning some Spanish in school just as I am currently. He could translate some of the signs on the roads as well as the different places along the road. Ever since my trip to France, I have wanted to learn and possess the ability to understand foreign languages. Spanish so far has been both enjoyable as well as challenging. Trying to understand the meaning of each word that I am taught takes a lot of practice and studying. The pronunciation of each word is also important. I spend a lot of the time trying to become comfortable with way the words are pronounced. Why learn a language without being able to sound somewhat like a native speaker? With any language, there are many different rules and (sometimes it seems) just as many exceptions to those rules. Some verbs, when conjugated, do not follow the normal rules of other verbs. As exceptions to the rules, these verbs take extra practice in order to remember the different forms. As a whole, Spanish as well as other foreign languages take a lot of work to learn. Do you take a foreign language? If not, why and would you want to? Have you ever wondered why accents exist? Accents are one of the things in life that I find fascinating. When meeting someone from a different region, their accent is one of the first things that I notice. At these moments, I start to question why accents even exist. What are the purposes of accents? Do I have an accent? These questions are what I think about every time I come across the thought of accents.
So I started my quest of learning about accents by looking it up on my home computer. So many websites showed up. Apparently I am not the only person who finds accents interesting. I clicked on Why do we have accents? and found an extremely informative video. The man in the video says that the purpose of accents, in earlier times, was to tell whether or not a stranger was from your area of not and if the person was a threat. Not only was this used to distinguish an enemy from a friend way back then but today, we use the accents of those we meet to at least have some idea of where they are from. In the video, I also found out that even within a city, the accents can vary. For example, the different accents that are present in New York are related to a certain region of that city. Accents vary between person to person as well. Everyone’s mouth, teeth and throat are shaped differently and even though some children sound like their parents, as I do (especially on the phone), each person has their own unique way of speaking/ accent. Many other questions are answered in the video and I encouraged you to watch it :). Now that I have brought up the subject of accents, I must ask; What is your favorite type of accent? The one skill that I am proud of to learn is that of becoming a leader. Over this Thanksgiving Break, three families asked me to take care of their dogs while they were gone. I took on the responsibility of all three families and was excited to be able to take care of their dogs. However, I realized that I would need some help. That is where my siblings came in. Assigning each of my three younger siblings to a house, I was able to successfully accomplish the jobs at hand. By being able to organize my scheduling with the dog sitting, I learned how to be organized and motivated to complete tasks. A leader needs to think through a situation as well as strive to finish an assignment. Dog sitting for the families allowed me to learn more about managing a group and thus becoming a leader. Another example of where I was able to learn leadership skills was when I became a section leader in the band. I was the youngest of the four clarinet section leaders. This was the first time that I had done anything like this and I was nervous. With the marching band season ending, I understand now that I was nervous because I cared about being a strong leader for the incoming freshmen. I learned that caring for the outcome of a situation is key. I aimed to be a successful leader for the freshmen and the rest of the band because I learned that I would be used as an example on how to perform and act. I have learned to become a leader through my life experiences. The ability to become a leader is an important skill to have. Opportunities will be presented to you that will call for leadership skills. Forming these skills is hard and takes a lot of practice and situations that force you to develop them. This brings a question to mind. Do you think that leaders are born or created? I used to hate reading. In elementary school, I refused to read because I was not confident with my skills. My parents were worried with me because I was behind in pretty much everything in school because my distaste for reading was getting in the way. That is when my parents made me take extra reading practice with a teacher. You have to know one more thing about me to understand why I reacted the way I did. I was very shy as a child. Sometimes the teachers would forget that I was there because I did not talk or speak up. I would hide behind my parents when someone talked to me because meeting new people was one of the things that I found extremely uncomfortable. "Getting out of my comfort zone", as my dad says, was hard for me and I would try to avoid it at all costs. That is why, when my parents made me take reading lessons, I was mad. I acted out and hated the thought that I had something wrong with me. When I started the lessons at first, I did not want to listen because I was in denial about my poor reading abilities. It took me a while to feel comfortable enough to talk and when I did I realized that I was being silly. I started listening to my instructor, learning how to read with ease. Now, literature is a major part of my life. Reading is my way of relaxing and freeing myself from stressful situations that sometimes occur in my life. The best way to learn for me in this situation was to be put on the spot and forced out of my comfort zone. By being forced out of my comfort zone, I remembered what I needed to learn to be a successful reader. In order to read successfully and remember most of what you have read, you need to find the best way for you to focus. For me, I go to a quiet place where I know I will not be bothered. Reading is also an extremely important skill to have. Either reading in a quiet room or by the fire place, reading is an important way to strengthen your skills of a language. Each time that you read, new words are presented to you and they become a part of your "vocabulary". I learn new words constantly each time I read. Reading is a major part of becoming successful in today's society and without the ability, a lot of opportunities that could have been are lost. |