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Books have the power to shape our world and change people’s perspectives, however, to do so it’s important that the author of the book is one that is able to provide insight. It’s more difficult for a male author to write about a female because as a male, he wouldn’t have the types of experiences or emotions that a female could have and vice versa.

An example of a book written by a woman that has shaped my thinking is Home Fire by Kamila Shamsie. This book has provided insight into the role that the media plays in inducing stigma in the perception of minority groups. Because of Shamise’s use of structure and narrative perspective, we have been able to gain a unique insight into the family such that when we come across articles that put the family under a bad light, the conflict in views allows us to see how the media can manipulate what they show the audience for their benefit.

The MBTI has shown me multiple times that I have an INFP-T personality. This means that I am introverted, intuitive, I make decisions based on feeling, prospective, and turbulent.

There are many strengths to having this personality type. Some advantages include:

• Being idealistic – People with an INFP-T personality have a resilient attitude as a result of believing that the intentions of all people are inherently good.
• We seek and value harmony – We don’t value having more power than others, instead of working to ensure that everyone’s perspectives are heard.
• We are open-minded and flexible – As long as our principles and ideas are not being challenged, we’ll support what other people think is right to do.
• We are very creative – Using our visionary nature as well as our open-mindedness, we are able to see things from potentially unconventional perspectives.
• Being passionate and energetic – When something captures our imagination, we put a lot of effort into dedicating ourselves to the project, putting our time and energy into it.
• Being dedicated and hard-working – Our tendency to understanding the meaningfulness of what we’re doing gives a sense of purpose when it comes to accomplishing something that we believe in.

On the other hand, there are also many weaknesses to having this personality. Some disadvantages include:

• Being too idealistic – Sometimes we take our idealism too far, which can make our expectations higher than they should be which sets us up for disappointment. We may not idealize our coworkers, but idolize them, forgetting that no one is perfect.
• Being too Altruistic – We sometimes see ourselves as selfish because we want to give more than we are able to. This causes us to push ourselves to commit to a cause or person, forgetting to prioritize the needs of other people or ourselves.
• Being impractical – Sometimes we become too dedicated to a project or interest which can cause us to neglect important daily activities such as eating or drinking.
• We dislike dealing with data – We can be too focused on the bigger picture that we forget about the more important smaller details. In this case, when data is presented to us that challenges our ideals, it can be challenging for us to deal with it.
• We take things personally – We often take criticism personally instead of using criticism to improve ourselves. Difficult to Get to Know – We are quite reserved and self-conscious which makes it difficult for people to get to know us.

I generally think that I do align with a lot of these traits but there are also a lot of things that I disagree with. For example, I’ve started to accept criticism a lot better and I’ve started to use criticism to improve myself. I’ve also never seen myself being too idealistic as I do understand when people make mistakes that are reasonable. I do agree that I am quite open-

minded, and I do also agree that I am very creative as evidence of my passion for music.

A large reason for a lot of these conflicting opinions is due to these traits being quite black and white. For some of these traits, I am actually quite close to the middle, which is probably due to how I have been changing how I approach certain situations.

Whenever I think of people who I enjoy being around, there are many traits that I believe these people have. Patience,
critical thought, self, and situational awareness, honesty, resilience, thoughtfulness, caution, and generosity. In some cases, I see a lot of these traits myself and can be a large part of why these are the traits that I think are good. On the other hand, whenever I think of people that I do not enjoy being around, a few more traits come to mind. Recklessness, apathy, dishonesty, stubbornness, laziness, and obnoxiousness. When I think about it, I also see some of these traits in myself. At times I can be apathetic if I am frustrated or am finding something or someone boring. If it is a person I dislike I tend to be stubborn. This can also be a probable reason as to why these are the things that I dislike in a person.

One of the traits that I do want to develop is self-awareness. Although I do think that I am pretty self-aware, it is still the trait that I want to develop the most because I believe it has the biggest benefit of being able to understand and capitalise on your strengths as well as to know and improve on your weaknesses before they have detrimental effects.

On the other hand, one of the traits that I want to avoid is being egocentric. I want to stay humble and understand that I have a lot to improve on, even where I believe that I am strongest in. I think that staying humble allows you to have a higher ceiling for success and potential because you understand that there are things that can be improved beyond how they are already.

This year, I would like to develop the trait of self-awareness. This is important to me because I am aware that there are a lot of things that I don’t know about myself and I am aware that those things can have negative effects on others. I believe that this will help me understand what I should continue to do and what I should work on to better portray myself to my peers. I think that this will help others find me more approachable and more developed as a person. I dislike people who don’t understand the consequences of their actions and are unwilling to change but I see this in myself because there are somethings that I do not quite understand yet, and I am unsure if the things I am doing only have an effect on a specific person or if it’s something that everyone is affected by. This bothers me because I am not sure if people are intimidated by me to the point where they don’t want to tell me the bad things about me, meaning that it is difficult for me to improve, but I think I can overcome this by asking others what think my weaknesses on or by thinking about why certain things have happened that could have been caused by me.

1. The only previous formal experience in mathematics is the IGCSE additional-maths course.

2. I associate maths with elegance, because of there being solutions to complex problems that turn out to be simple. I am excited to start the HL Applications course because I’ve always cared more about how maths is used rather than trying to prove why certain concepts are true. I’ve always liked discovering new things rather than trying to prove things that have already been proven.

3. The way I like to learn maths is dependent on how confident I am with the content. If I am learning new content which looks like it is outside of things that I have explored before then I would rather have someone explain the thought process before start to work independently.

4. When I find myself stuck I tend to just get help instead of continuing to try, which admittedly is a lazy option but it allows me to see where I went wrong, and in the long run will show me where I tend to make mistakes and will make me more likely to figure things out on my own.

5. My strength in maths is self-management. I know my weaknesses and I always work to improve on them, but one of the things that I would really like to work on this year is organisation because I tend to procrastinate a lot.

6. a 250 word limit is way too limiting for how I write posts like these.

Greta Thunberg is a 16 year old Swedish climate change activist, known for being the first person to start a schools strike for climate outside of the Swedish parliament building. Greta’s school strike against climate change has spread to 71 different countries, creating what could be one of the largest global climate change protests ever, nominating her for a Nobel Peace Prize. Nobel Peace Prizes are awarded to one person who has “done the most or best work for fraternity between nations, for the abolition or reduction of standing armies and for the holding and promotion of peace congresses” once a year, and for a 16 year old to be nominated for her actions shows that anyone can be nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize if they put in the effort for it. Greta represents the youth of the generation who will be living through the environmental consequences caused by those who won’t be living through them. What Greta is doing is really effective in terms of creating a long lasting action on sustainability as it aims to change the mindset that people have when it comes to the environment. Not everyone understands the consequences of their actions. This is quite similar to my Critical Challenge Project in which we aimed to change the mindsets of people because we understood that by simply putting a ban on certain actions, it would only limit the areas in which they could commit to those actions. For example, if we were to put a ban on ordering food on campus due to the plastic consumption, students would still order food outside of where it effects them, such as in their homes or in other locations. Creating a lasting action involves changing the way people think, and making them be aware of their actions. I think what Greta has done is important because it shows that any student can make a change as big as what Greta has. An example of her doing this is during her TEDx talk in which she talked about the urgency of the situation and how people should be panicking because of how bad the situation is getting. She also made adults who have the power to make direct changes be able to empathise with the youth, explaining how that although the problem may not affect themselves in the future, it will affect the youth, their children and their grandchildren. During the Critical Challenge Project itself, my group faced many challenges and obstacles. The main challenge that our group faced was trying to find a solution that would work within the time frame of the project. As the time span of the project is only a few weeks, there isn’t enough time to dedicate to large solution, but in the case of Greta and many others, there isn’t any time restrictions other than the point of no return, when the environment gets so bad that we can no longer fix it. We weren’t able to dedicate to three of our initial ideas. For example, we had initially attempted to increase the amount of plastic recycling on campus, but after a meeting with Nathan Hunt, the head of sustainability on campus, we realised that the amount of time and manpower required to carry out a project like this would have been too difficult. We also realised that the financial costs of a project like this for both the school and any recycling services would be too great to make it worth it. We overcome these challenges by being resilient and restarting from the beginning to come up with a different idea. The biggest weakness of the group was not respecting the complexity of the issue, as this is what caused us to come up with solutions that we would later realise would not be feasible due to factors that we could have been aware of, though in the long run it would not matter in terms of creating a long lasting solution because the more you make mistakes with solutions the better your solutions will be. What’s important to learn about this situation is that you don’t need to be wealthy, you don’t need to be smart, and you don’t need to be supported by family members or friends. All that matters is that you understand the problem and you have a proposed idea on how to resolve the issue, whether it be raising awareness or protesting. Everyone all around the world, if they are determined enough and are willing to put effort can make a change in the world.

This year of service has started out a lot different to how it started last year. This year is a lot to do with problem-solving and actually planning out things, but not in terms of planting or gardening, but in terms of creating a shelter for the garden. The main problem with our garden right now is that it’s getting more water than it needs. Our plants are already being watered through an automatic system, but our plants are still being watered by rain which is over-watering them. We planned out a shelter that was portable as well as easy to make so that we could cover our plants when it rained. I think it’s an interesting change to an approach to service because it’s not just about the cause but also about how to be more efficient.

Throughout my life, and even in the present, I am constantly learning more and more about myself. When I was younger, I moved and lived in different countries, went do different schools, and many times I have had to leave old friends and make new ones. These events have taught me that things in life that make you feel discouraged are just events in life that shouldn’t influence what you are in the future. The time I have spent in multiple countries has taught me about what it is like to start from scratch, and to learn about things from multiple cultures. Now that I live in Singapore, I have found the experience easier to deal with, and I don’t have any regrets about moving.

A lot has changed moving into High School, and a lot of it has to do with the subjects that we have. Science has been something that I have enjoyed a lot, and now that I am in High School, the combination of Physics, Biology, and Chemistry has made it interesting. Mathematics has also become a lot better now that I am in High School, and this is particularly due to the Additional Maths course that I am apart of. I am unsure if it is just because of the course, or if it’s just because I am in High School, but the way we view maths is a lot more interesting than just doing math for the sake of solving problems. It has become more about getting a logical understanding of how things are connected, and understanding where these “shortcut formulas” that a lot of people use to get by come from. Throughout my life I have learned what my strengths are, what my weaknesses are, and I have become more self-aware of what people think about me. For example, I am particularly strong in independence, where I tend to be more productive in an independent task rather than a group task. I believe this is because as you add more members, productivity starts to decreases exponentially.

One of my weaknesses is time management. There are many things I would like to improve on, especially academically. For example, as the amount of topics we have to study increases, I want to be able to manage my time in order to effectively improve my learning. I think the best way to do this is to increase my expectation for work and to realise that the amount of work that we are currently getting is not just a one-off thing, and that I should try to get used to it. Some more specific parts that I would like to work on is listening skills. Since the Spanish curriculum has changed, making listening larger percentage of your final grade, learning how to actively listen in different exercises is very important. I think the best way to work on this is to practice. Listening is a skill, and is not something you just learn in a matter of hours. It’s something that you need to develop, and it’s something you learn in the long-term and through your life experience.

A lot of people have different opinions on whether human rights should be universal or culturally relative. The main reason for this is people’s beliefs, that can be influenced by religion. Human rights such as the right to life seem like they should be universal, but in some places, there are honor crimes and beliefs that killing others is okay with the right justifications. This leads to people believing that the right to life isn’t a right that everyone should have and that religion should have a higher priority than human rights in terms of what is okay and what isn’t. In my personal opinion, human rights should always have the highest priority in most cases. People that kill others for the sake of honor and respect is wrong.