11th Grade
11th Grade
Siân Hernit
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9th Grade
Ever since I can remember I’ve dreamed about high school. At age 3 I thought being a high schooler was the epitome of being cool. As I got up into middle school I would watch the high-schoolers “from a far”. Most of them had the confidence, intelligence, and looks that I longed for as an awkward 11 year-old. I feared that, because I didn’t have any of those traits yet, I never would. I was mortified at the thought that I would have a miserable high school career. I worried it would be filled with failing all of my classes, sitting alone at lunch, and it would ultimately ruin the rest of my life. Then as life went on I quickly realize all of the traits the high schoolers had that I lacked were acquired over time. Once I finished 8th grade I realized that it was a matter of months until my first day of high school. I was nervous, excited, and worried for the next 4 years. Before I knew it I was quietly sitting in a rolly chair in the third row of my advisory/ science engineering room. I look back and smile at the thought of that anxious and excited girl sitting in the outfit she so carefully picked out the night before. I think of how far I’ve come this year. My ninth grade year was filled with struggle, growth, and excellence that has made me the student I am today who is ready for the next level in my education.
in Geometry. Because notes are so important in Geometry at the beginning of the year my bad habits caused me to struggle greatly. My notes were unorganized and I had no way to tell what exactly they were. My math notebook was also filled with random things that didn’t pertain to Math. This made finding needed information in my notes. This page has a random problem with no context. I have no idea how to use this because I don’t know what it’s about. These poor notes lead to me struggling with activities like completing my homework. If I forgot how to solve a problem I would need to refer to my notes to figure out how to. Of course I either didn’t write down the solution, because I didn’t think it was important enough, or I did
Although, high school was not the train wreck I thought it would be when I was 12, it was not all easy sailing. The beginning especially was mostly me feeling my way through the whole thing with many successes and failures along the way. One of the new experiences I struggled with in the beginning was note taking. In the past I’ve either been able to remember everything we learned in class or I was given guided notes, and if I did have to take notes they’d be fairly useless and I wouldn’t need them so I just wouldn’t keep track of them. There is no way that you can be academically successful high school student with these habits. I know that fact now but I didn’t in the beginning. While I do take notes in most classes now I found them most important and useful
write it down but everything was so unorganized that I had no idea what my chicken scratch meant. This lead too many frustrated nights. For a while I didn’t know my frustration was due to bad notes. I have always fairly good at math so when I struggled with it I was even more frustrated because I thought it meant that I was just going to be bad at math. Then I realized I had to change something or else I probably wasn’t going to pass the course. One day I tried to what all the kids who were successful in math were doing. I saw that they were all taking notes; so I took notes. When the teacher would day something and I saw they would write it down; I would too. Now my notes are dated and I can easily refer to them. After a bit of practice I realized the best way to organize my notes and what is and isn’t important. This was especially useful when we were learning circle theorems. You can see and read a neat list of all the theorems I need. Now my note book is extremely organized and I rarely am frustrated with Math anymore. Not because it isn’t challenging anymore, but because it I’ve given myself the proper tools to overcome those struggles.
People always say high school is a time to grow and find yourself. I think they are right. As a high-schooler you are given freedom you weren’t before. I’ve found, however, that you grow in many other things as well. One of the coolest things this year was to be able to watch myself grow in Chinese. I’ve always loved Chinese. I stared taking in in 3rd grade and absolutely loved it. It always came really easy to me. Then I was devastated when our funding got cut and we stopped taking Chinese. Once I got to 8th grade I was so excited to take it again. Unfortunately we only took it every other day. This year has been so much fun getting to have Chinese Class every day. At the beginning of the year I couldn’t do much. We took a test called the SLO test. It was an excel spread
sheet where we documented what we could and couldn’t do in Chinese. All I could do was basically count, say basic classroom expressions, and talk about my family. You can see in most categories “not yet” is checked. That “yet” is very important. It is the difference between a fixed and growth mindset. The “yet” let me know that I could grow and that I would soon be able to. Learning Chinese is not easy though. It takes a lot of practice and perseverance. There are many aspects to mastering it. Tones, characters, and pronunciation. We completed five units this year. We learned how to ask someone out on a date, how to ask what people want to eat and drink, and reviewed how to count and learn in a classroom. I also got a pen pal in
Taiwan. In the beginning I couldn’t say much. Now I can communicate to her fairly well and we can have conversations like friends. I can do so much now compared to before. I can even have full conversations in Chinese now. We took the SLO test again recently. All of my boxes were checked yes and we had different ways to prove them. Some of them our teacher had us write the name of the test we passed that was over this topic. She also had us record some things in Chinese as well if we didn’t take a test over that topic. I have even grown so much I became a Chinese Peer tutor in January. I’m also taking a college level class next year so I can grow even more. I’m excited to grow next year and in the year to come in not only Chinese, but as a person in general.
Some things came easy to me. Everything is a learning process, but I picked up some skills pretty quickly and became proficient in them. One of these skills was video game design. In the past I have struggled a ton with “computer” stuff. In 7th grade we did a project where had to 3D model a scene from an educational history video game. I struggled greatly with this project, so when I found out that we were designing a whole entire video game by ourselves I was mortified. If I couldn’t even design one stand still scene how was I supposed to create a whole entire interactive video game. Instead of deciding I would never be good at it I thought I would stay open minded and try first. We used a program called Unreal Engine 4. The first activity we did was watching tutorials.
We would watch a tutorial then actual create something in the program them answer a few questions. You can see in this document all of my responses to all of the questions. It records my growth in this program. My growth mindset let me become proficient at completing the tutorials. Then I was told we were to design an interactive museum on our own. No tutorial to follow. I was mortified again, but I didn’t panic I just let myself grow. This caused me to excel and actually quite enjoy the process. I told myself I would take it step by step and problem solve one problem at a time. Because of this I had a ton of fun with this project because I was always discovering new things. I created an interactive time line
of U.S. women’s history. My video game was actually so good my teacher selected mine as one of the few that he had people watch a run through of at Exhibition night. I wanted to keep excelling so I joined my schools Modeling and Simulation Club. This was kind of scary at first because not only was I one of few freshman, but I was the only freshman girl. I had known that the video game industry was male dominated but I had never experienced it first hand or faced it head on like this. I was somewhat discouraged because none of my friends were in the club because they are mostly freshman girls. I fortunately was friends with some of the sophomore girls in the club. I also felt that I had to pave the way if any of the other freshman girls wanted to join, because I saw no reason that the video game industry should be so heavily male dominated. Especially with my video game being about women’s history I knew that many women don’t pursue STEM fields because they don’t feel they have a place in them. So I decided to be the change I wanted to see and now Modeling and Simulation Club is one of my favorite after school activities. Also after a while not only did more of my male friends join but some female friends joined too and we have a blast every Friday. I’ve received a 100% on every video game design project we have had. This experience taught me that if I trust myself and my teacher that I can exceed what I thought I could do.
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As I am writing this I am just a few weeks away from finishing my freshman year. I look back at the first day of school and smile. I’ve overcome and grown so much these past 9 months. I’ve learned how to take good notes which was something I’ve struggled with forever. This will not only be useful in tenth grade but in my life after my school career. I’ve grown, but not only in Chinese. I’ve taught myself that I can do what I thought was impossible with hard work and determination. I also have learned that if I keep an open mind I can excel and do much better than if I convince myself I can’t. The projects taught me a lot more about myself and the world than I thought it would. They taught me obvious things that we would need to know on the test content wise. But they also taught me persistence and grit is everything. Now I am ready for tenth grade. I still have fears and worries about how next year will be, and I know that there will be struggles. Even though it may be tough I know I will be able to push through it and be a better person when I’m done.