1. Self Reflection– What were some of the most interesting discoveries you made about yourself through the myers briggs and holland code tests? How has your planning for the future changed or stayed the same during this unit? (100 words).

One thing that I learned through the Myers briggs test was that my passion, which lies within the arts (specifically visual) is that with my personality score (INFP-T) The best career choices for it lays within the arts and communication with individuals about the arts. Such as, Art therapist, artist, etc. My original plan for the future was to become a tattoo artist, and that has not changed. It really only has heightened my wanting to become one and gave me the push of confidence I needed to continue dreaming about it. The only thing that has really changed my perspective on the future is how many other career choices I can chase, which now my backup plan is to become an art therapist.

2. Self Advocacy– Professional relationships. Name two or three important skills you learned about maintaining positive professional relationships and how will you use them in the future (50 words).

One thing I really needed to know for professionalism is to talk formally, regardless of who it is or the relationship with the person. My goal in school is to maintain a friendly relationship with my peers and teachers, which automatically causes me to talk informally to them in person and occasionally in emails. I have learned that this is not the way for the future with jobs and interviews and such.

3. Informed decisions– Thinking about your future 5, 10, or 15 years from now, what are some themes / aspects of life that you want to keep central to your planning? What are some key values that will drive your decision making? (100 words)

My main goal for my life is to enjoy everything that comes my way, regardless of how bad it is, there is always a brighter side. I want the creativity from my possible careers to transfer into my regular everyday life so that I can enjoy how fun or colourful it is on a daily basis. I hope to have many healthy relationships in my life with friends or colleagues or even mentors and such. A key value of mine is to take things with a grain of salt (which is literally the opposite of what I said earlier but hey.) because I need to know what to do with my life if everything goes downhill.

A mirror, a window, and a sliding door each represent ideas of how one can look at something and relate to it. The mirror represents the viewer being able to relate to a story or character so well that they see the character as themselves. The window represents someone looking into the story from an outside angle, not being able to relate to the scenario. The sliding door represents the viewer’s ability to connect with the story that you are now one with it, stepping into their world. I like this representation of how literary can be viewed from so many different points of view, and for most pieces, this idea would work.

I’ve never really been the very optimistic type. I’ve always had a habit of looking at the problems of things way before I start to look at the bright side. This habit of mine has caused me to put less effort into things and made me feel hopeless a few times. That’s why one of the goals I have chosen for myself is to look at the greater things in life than the ones that make me feel down. A personal goal I have for myself in particular is to try and make people proud. Do things that I would congratulate others for, and I’ll hopefully start learning to be proud of myself. For academics, I’ve never tried to put an effort into much, except for art. Art makes my brain calm down and push back the stress for a different time, and I wish that it could be the same for the other subjects that I take. So the goal that I chose to help me with this is to try and look at things from a different perspective, and learning not to judge them from past experiences.

 

I think that a factor that led to my lack of enthusiasm or optimism is just all the past things that people have done to let me down and made me feel terrible about the things I made or did. I just learned to automatically look at the flaws first and point them out before people attack me with it beforehand. I’ve begun to notice that this way of thinking is not the greatest for growing up because becoming a young adult with this mental attitude would cause a lot of problems and complications with getting jobs, living a fulfilling life, meeting people, etc. So, that’s why I think that that should be one of my goals. My personal goal of making people and me proud of myself comes from my battle against bad brain stuff. I’ve never been happy with anything I’ve really ever done and I think that if I tried hard enough, I could kick it into the ground and fight against it. But, I guess that takes time. Patience is also a mini goal for myself. A lot of my close friends help me through bad times, but I don’t want to burden them with the problems I can try to fix myself. Now that I think about it, all of my goals are related to each other- They all have to do with me changing the way I interpret things. The last goal is simple, just to change my perspective on something I dislike, usually for academics.

 

My plans to achieve my goals are mostly focused on studying and welcoming challenges into my life without me being stressed and depressed about it. I think that the goals I have chosen myself really fit in well in where I need to improve my daily life. They could make me happier, allow me to face things with the glass half full, and so on.

 

STRESS, STRAIN, AND A HURTING BRAIN

How stress affects us as students and what it can do-

For starters, this is a very big topic to tackle, so I‘m not going to be able to cover everything, but I can speak from experience. 

Stress is a big thing nowadays. In any adult with a busy life, or just a regular student. I’m almost 100% sure that if you ask any student if they’re stressed or have been by school, they will say yes.  Students from middle school all the way to grade 12, are all going through a lot of worries, whether it be from school, homework, or some other reason.

Stress, when unattended, can lead to some dark outcomes, such as some hints of anxiety, depression, or even suicidal thoughts. Basically, the brain can get so overwhelmed and send you into a panicked yet numb state. Now I promise you, I’m not making any of this up, because I myself, have gone through a majority of these.  

Stress, when left alone, can lead to devastating outcomes, including Now I promise you, I’m not making any of this up, because I myself, have gone through a majority of these.  

I’m definitely not saying that I know everything about this, but I believe I know enough. Stress, in my case, has changed my life completely, and not in a good way.  It made me look at things in different ways, for example, getting up in the morning seemed so much harder. I couldn’t find a reason to get up, as if nothing mattered anymore. I was too scared to look at anyone I knew because I was scared they would judge me or see me differently, wrong, maybe even dumber. I was too scared to face my teachers, because I was scared they would frown upon me when they see that I’m behind on things. Stress does some hurtful things, I’ll tell you that.

Stress can also lead to overworking, or the fear of not getting everything finished on time. It could force the brain to finish things ahead of time, which may seem like yeah, that sounds great. But, working ahead might lead to many mistakes, not changing things up as you learn more over time, which could also possibly allow you to gain the habit of being work-free and leading you to forget about deadlines, pouring a lot more stress on you. I’ve known people who has had this happen to them, and it’s depressing, really. Watching them be proud of what they’ve accomplished, just to have that overcome thing come back. It’s like its own tiny little monster, feeding off of you, and when you think it’s gone, it comes right back to bite you in the butt.

Now, for a student to go through that amount of stress is kind of impossible on their own, which is why councillors exist. They are there for everyone going through tough times, and are always willing to chat. For us, we have Marie-Anne Glavan, the high school councillor.

“I’ve seen hundreds of kids, all for different reasons. Sometimes for self harm, suicidal thoughts, death threats, stress, and for other things too.”  

She has helped so many people in so many ways in such a different way than other councillors even try to think of going for. Her aim is to get kids to open up and share what they’re going through, so she can help come up with ways to get them through whatever it is they’re stuck in.

I find that teachers unintentionally choose to ignore these things. They choose to push them aside as if they didn’t exist. I completely understand that the school would do anything to help out students, but a lot of the time, they don’t understand what’s actually happening. Such as kids with anxiety. They’re usually too scared to tell the teachers or peers that they strongly don’t want to go up and speak in front of the class, or something along those lines. Most teachers just say to take a breath and it’ll be fine. I understand where they’re coming from but they just don’t understand. It could cause panic attacks or for the student to be frozen and being unable to speak.   Trust me, it’s true. It has happened to me and it is definitely not fun.

I’m just proud of whoever came all this way and has gone through stuff like that. It’s really about the people who surround you and care about you. Stress and mental issues are really hard to overcome, and it really is amazing how people can overlook those tough things.

 

Graham Rawle is the author of the book: ‘A Woman’s World’, which its layout is made from cutouts of books, magazines, newspapers and others similar to them. It tells a story of a woman, who is actually a crossdressing man, living in a city, as a woman would.

In the ‘project’, we had to use magazines and newspaper cutouts to tell a story, about anything we wanted. Being me, I decided to make a short story about the Loch Ness Monster. (You can already tell how my year in English is going to unravel…)

I believe that ‘A Woman’s World’ isn’t a foundational story itself, but its a foundational WAY of TELLING a story. Does that make any sense? It is the first book (to my knowledge) to have cutouts of different things stuck together to make a story, taking bits and pieces from all over the place and putting them in a different order, creating something entirely new.

I’m still not entirely sure.

This speaker, Sabrina, had been diagnosed with cancer at the age of 26, which was not uncommon in her family. The cancer the had was the easiest to treat so nothing went wrong, but after a while, she discovered she was pregnant. When looked at by doctors, they had all assumed there was something seriously wrong with the child, but it was discovered long after that it was a mistake, and the child was born perfectly normal and healthy.

The thing I took away from this is that there are many mishaps and unfortunate events that can occur through one’s life, and instead of looking at it like a big wall that you can never get past, look at it as something that would stop you only for a short time, and soon you would be able to continue on whatever path you’re on.

The speaker started off studying to be a lawyer, and soon fell in love with wildlife after a trip to Africa. Since then, she has been helping all kinds of endangered wildlife, especially elephants. She also explained how the media uses certain species of endangered animals to gain an audience, which caught my attention.

Out of this talk, I’ve learned to look at the whole picture when looking at only one part of a problem.

 

(Didn’t gather enough information and notes)

This talk was about the struggles of fostering difficult kids in difficult situations. The speaker had taken care of a 6 year old boy, who purposely got into all kinds of trouble, just because he believed he was not good enough to be loved or cared about.  This really hit close to home for me because I’ve experienced feelings like this, but hearing this from an adult’s perspective is very eye-opening and quite depressing, really.

This story was overall my favourite, because it shows how much pain someone can give to another, without realising. It makes everyone think of their actions in a different way, looking a step ahead sort of. Always thinking, ‘is this the right thing to do?’.

One of the stories I heard was about how 61 Nepali kids were given full scholarships in the US but were withdrawn soon after. All had given up their spots in Nepal, where they were studying at the time, to go to America. When they had found out that their scholarships has been withdrawn, they had to fight their way back into other schools that were offering their help. Out of all 61 kids, only 54 had been accepted and granted full scholarships.

This story made me realise that many people are granted things that can be easily taken away from them, and it opened my eyes to how many sacrifices some people make just to go and achieve their dreams. It gave me a new perspective on how others live and have to give things up for opportunities that their family couldn’t achieve.