REFLECTIVE ESSAY

 

 

This school has taught me more and been better than any other school I have ever been at, and I greatly enjoy being at ACLC. During my time here I have grown further and faster than I would have thought possible and I am happy about that. This essay is about what I have learned that helped me achieve my goals in my time here, I have heard that it is only supposed to be about what we have learned at school, but one of the purposes of school is to teach you how to learn from your experiences outside of school and it seems to me a little counter intuitive to only talk about what the school taught you and not about what we learned in our personal life. Having said that here is what I have learned in my time here.

 

• Personal Qualities, Work habits and Attitudes

 

I believe that I am responsible for myself and others because whenever I say I will do something I make sure that it happens; This makes me trustworthy and dependable. I am shy by nature, so what I do to be sociable is always respond to anything anyone says to me. This shows confidence and makes people happy because it’s really annoying when you’re trying to talk to someone and for whatever reason they don’t respond. It's not a perfect fix but it does help significantly.

 

• New Basics

 

The fact that I am writing this proves that I can read and write and I like to think that I read and write well. I don’t really have a problem reading Shakespeare. When I was younger I would read anything I could get my hands on and at one time I had read over 60% of the science-fiction at the Alameda library. In the region of mathematics I have passed all my math classes and am currently in Pre-Calculus, I don’t really find it easy, but I can do it. Lastly I love music, I was in Electronic Music for 3 years and I can play the guitar and the violin, the violin since 4th grade. I am always looking for new ways to learn, and although I do best with science and technology and I tend to learn almost anything very quickly.

 

• Thinking and Reasoning Skills

 

I’ve always thought that I was really good at making decisions. what I used to do was weigh the pros and cons and then make the decision based on what makes most sense, and that is a very logical way to do it. However to do that you have to assign values to each pro and each con because they are almost never equal, so what I do now is weigh the pros and cons and then flip a coin and before the coin lands I will know what I want to do because I will hope for a specific outcome. I consider myself to be very good at reasoning, more specifically discovering underlying rules and principles. The reason for this is that I observe everything about a given subject and then find the only possible explanation that covers everything. This is why I am so good at physics and engineering.

 

• Interpersonal Abilities

 

I am very good at working with people. Once I know a little bit about the person in question, for instance, their background, where they live, and their views on various subjects, I can intuitively predict how they will react to most given subjects and it makes me a really good mediator. I can always convey my ideas and make sure people understand them, this is really helpful for diffusing an argument; the trick is that you have to make the arguing parties step back and think about it rationally which is surprisingly easy to do if there aren't a huge number of people in either group. Lastly, the ability to think like a neutral party is really good for garnering respect. It means that I work well with others and I treat everyone in a completely equal way unless they need or ask to be treated differently. When I was a counselor at Hanna Camp I treated every single 6 and 7th grader as though they were in my class.

 

• Technology

 

I grew up in a house with an electrical and network engineer as a father. Because of this I have a very comprehensive knowledge of what computers and technology can and should be used for. Technology is a very vague term because it simply means a device that was created to help people do things, so really what technology is is everything man made, but for this essay I think that it would be more appropriate to use the common definition of technology meaning mostly computers and other things that use electricity. I am aware of what common technology can do and I use it for those things, I even repurpose other things to do what I want, like turning an electric pencil sharpener into a spooler for rope, paper or wire. Of all the things I put on this essay I am best at knowing what technology can do and using it for not only the things that it was meant to do but the things it can do as well. A good example of basic competence with computers is that I have been on Tech Team for as long as I have been at this school, before we got locked out of the system I personally repaired a dozen computers physically and about 17 with software and firmware. Lynn would also like me to add that I learned how to use Powerpoint and Prezi for presentation purposes, I also know how to use MS Excel and know how to search the internet for things, and actually find what I’m looking for.I would finally like to add that Lynn asked me to say how I learned all of these things at school but it says nowhere that I have to have learned them here. While I have learned some life lessons at, and because of ACLC but I have learned far more from my own personal life. I would hope that one important goal of school is to teach people the ability to recognize cause and effect and to learn from everything they do not just what people can tell you in a classroom.