Author: Lily

AMK Minds – Final reflection

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One of the biggest advantages that we had was that both my co-chair and I knew the service very well. This let us be able to collaborate efficiently and effectively on both internal issues as well as external issues with our clients. As a result of the relationship that we have built up over the past three years it made it easy for us to work together allowing us to overcome challenges which presented over the course of this year service.

This year after taking on a more leadership position I got to learn more about the issue of how intellectually disabled people are treated in Singapore. As I had to teach others about the issue of intellectual disabilities in Singapore and how they typically do not live their life the same way that people without them do it made me realise what a significant issue this was. People that live with intellectual disabilities whether severe or mild deserve to have a good quality of life. Additionally when looking at the carers it makes me realise how much that they also give up for the clients. This made me appreciate the work more specially as it’s not an easy job to do.

Issak is the name of the man that we have been working with for the past three years and his resilience and commitment to the clients made us as a service more resilient, especially during Covid. We understand the importance of this issue and why it has to be done and therefore we established a real sense of importance within the service. We wanted to make sure that people that did show up was showing up for the right reasons and we made that very clear from the very beginning. Although not many people like to do service we aim to make the service as soon as possible making sure that people stay motivated and produce good products for our clients. Although not everyone was as engaged as others we overcame this by making sure that everything was checked thoroughly and if something was not of good quality at me it was never sent off. I have thoroughly enjoyed taking on a leadership position this year and I hope that when I carry on the service next year and do the hand off people continue to enjoy the service.

Coaching basketball – growth

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Previously I had never coached or helped coach a team, and typically when I helped referee it was teams who knew the rules and just needed someone to squash their arguments rather than tell them that they can’t do something or that they did something wrong. I find coaching a lot different to refereeing as you build a relationship with lots of the players even if you only see them once a week for an hour and a half. I struggled with finding my voice when speaking to the entire group, this was hard for me to understand as typically in my own practices I am quite vocal. Through my involvement in coaching it has made me become more aware that I need to be confident in my skills and my knowledge in the sport and that it was OK to ask my coach for help when needed if the girls were not listening or needed further clarification.

As I progressed through this season I was given more responsibilities from doing warm ups, demonstrating ball handles or telling them what activity they were going to do next. I found this challenging at first as I didn’t see myself as an authority figure to them as I am only 5 years older than them and we go to the same school. To the end I found my voice more and became more comfortable with giving instructions and trying to make the sessions enjoyable for the girls. I measured my improvement through verbal feedback with my coach and the reception I received when giving advice/hints to them during activities.

Coaching basketball

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This was the plan that I created for helping to coach basketball. This greatly helped me when it came to organising what to do and when it would be appropriate to do it. This was seen in the ways that the children responded. Additionally, the plan helped with my motivation and others motivation to continue the activity. Through providing a fun activity for others, it allowed for them to stay committed whilst seeing them progress, which in-turn motivated me.

Sports ethics

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Although originally unsure about what sports ethics would bring I think that it not only educated me but taught me valuable skills. My partner and I decided to make a podcast on the importance of sports psychologists and how they can benefit both professional and high school athletes, highlighting the ethical issues of not having psychological support. A challenge we faced during the process was that I was unfortunately out of the country for the majority of the process of making the podcast. We overcame this by making sure that we communicated and worked on our document together. This helped us hit our deadline.

The issue of sports psychologists is highly important to me as I have seen people who would have benefited from having coaches trained in helping their athletes when their sport was of high demand. Through my research in this topic it made me understand the demands of sport better and also made me reflect on my experiences with playing basketball. We aimed to understand the ethics of having, or not having, a sports psychologist for student athletes and the possible consequences of this. This topic was chosen as a result of its importance to us as student athletes as well as for everyone who plays a sport, more specifically at a higher level. My moral principles greatly affected this process as I believed that it was integral that many high-performance athletes have access to psychological help as well as physical help.

AMK Minds – Second reflection

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Due to COVID-19 there have been many issues in our outreach to our service partners, the most prominent one being that we were not and are still not able to meet them face to face meaning that instead of doing live sessions we had to figure out a way to provide the same service from afar. A risk we faced was that my co-chair and I would come up with a way of providing them with information and it would be invaluable to them. We overcame this by making sure that we called the partners multiple times before we started to plan and produce videos that we would then send to them.

Although we were able to overcome our internal issues, for me it raised the question of how ethical is it to make videos on rotation every 3 weeks which could be causing more harm than good? Because of this moral issue we tried to produce many videos of high quality making sure there is a clear plan for each video and that they get approved by both the two chairs and the head of local service before sending it off to our partners for them to show the clients.

The Great Gatsby: Chapter 1

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What defined this age in American history? In what ways is this relevant to the novel?

  • The lost generation are the writers, artists, musicians and intellectuals who came of the age during the first world war and the “roaring twenties”
    • The war stripped their illusions on democracy, peace and prosperity leading to doubt and cynicism 
  • Jazz became popular in the twenties as consumer culture flourished due to unprecedented economic growth
  • The telephone and the radio changed the social lives of Americans
  • Jazz would have to have been listened to in real life before the introduction of radios

What defined this age in American history was the growth of the country and how it had adapted over the years bringing in new technological advances. With the rise of consumer culture this is relevant to the novel as we see characters such as Gatsby and Tom having cars and phones, this shows their wealth. Additionally, with them living on West Egg their new money was attributed to the growth in the economy. The Jazz age also relates to Gatsby’s parties as it was a place where both men and women would go to listen to live music and let loose, therefore his want to see Daisy meant that he would hold stereotypical parties that drew the attention of many women. 

What is the meaning of the novel’s epigraph?

It talks about what a man will do to try and win a lover. This relates to Gatsby’s love for Daisy and how he strived to gain Daisy with his use of money, but money can’t buy love nor happiness. 

What are some of the features of the novel outlined in this lecture?

  • Contradiction
    • Due to Nick being an unreliable narrator the readers can find himself contradicting himself within lines of a statement. An example of this would be although he claims to have this moral high ground as he has lived a life with advantages, Gatsby who grew up poorer and off worse than him has more money than him and has achieved more. 
  • Implicit 
    • Additionally, from Nick’s unreliability the readers are forced to think about what happens and fill in the gaps in chapters due to Nick not knowing what is happening at all times. This is seen when an additional narrator Michaelis was added to try and figure out what happened during Myrtle’s death.

What are some of the concepts/themes explored in the novel? What significance, in particular, does the historical background of modern America have in the book?

  • Vulnerability 
  • Morals
    • Irreligious society that believes in wealth
    • What can be interpreted in the new American times
    • Snobbery 
    • Golden 
  • White supremacy
  • Unreachable/intangible

These concepts work together to form the book and help highlight the idea of Nick being an unreliable narrator. As the twenties were seen as a start of modern America the morals of the book question what are the new morals of the new American society as it has evolved. 

What is meant by Nick being an “unreliable narrator”? Give examples. 

  • Insecurity
    • He’s not sure about who is with, what he is doing and what is happening
    • There are areas in which there are gaps in his narration because of his lack of knowledge meaning there is a lack of certainty
    • He states facts, but then takes them away

Grade 11 exams paper one reflection

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What are your key takeaways?

I think overall it went well, when reading back on it after the exam I realised where my mistakes were made. I think I identified both the literal and abstract understandings of the text but when writing about them, sometimes I lacked in-depth analysis and didn’t explain them as well as I should have. For structure I found that I forced myself to stick to three paragraphs as that’s what I believed I had the time for which forced me to write big long paragraphs instead of shorter more in-depth ones. Finally, for terminology I found that although I was using some terminology and trying to gage the stylistic features of the advertisement, I think for analysis I needed to know more terminology regarding ads.

What will you feed forwards to your next piece of analytical writing?

In my next piece I will try and think of the structure of my arguments more and what can be chunked together in a paragraph to make them smaller. Additionally, I will study the terminology so that I can score higher on my use of terminology and have a bank of words that I can use to analyse text types more in depth.

Thetis

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In what ways can Thetis be understood as a transformation of power?

Throughout the poem Thetis is seen to shape shift. In the beginning she is seen to be a small song bird, crushed by the strength of her pursuer’s hand. She then shape shifts to larger animals such as an albatross, snake or a lion, showing that she is transforming to stronger animals to try and escape her pursuer, yet none of them work highlighting her lack of power when her pursuer is involved. During her transformations she is beaten by him in every stanza, even in the last one where arguably the largest transformation happens, she becomes a mother. For some this is seen as her being trapped in a form that she didn’t chose as a result of her being raped, for others it gives her freedom as she is now free from having to shape shift, giving her the power that she needed to escape the pursuer.