In grade 9 I met new people and got to build new relationships. Unlike last year, I was in a class with people who I didn’t know well before. I tried to push myself out of my comfort zone and to try and build new relationships, which I think I succeeded at. I also tried to push myself to study for my own benefit without needing the pressure of expectations as the only motivation. I tried to grow interest to different subjects I disliked before so I could improve at them since I would be more willing to work on them.
My highlight this year would be the expedition trip to Japan. I got to meet people from Dover with a lot of different characters. Japan is also a place I wanted to visit and to see their culture and how different it is to mine. Throughout our travels we got to see how they live and what their values are. Overall Japanese people are very polite and keen on learning new things, they were very welcoming to us and didn’t hesitate to initiate a conversation. Discovering and learning about new cultures is very important for self development for me, we can see the good and the bad of certain cultures and learn new lessons to improve ourselves. In Japan I learned that being polite is not hard to do but it’s still very effective and self care is also very important.
Another one thing I learned is that in every situations you can only rely on yourself. Throughout the trip I faced many challenges of hiking on a steep slope and everyone in my group was already having difficulties facing the hill alone, they not even speaking about helping out others. During the climb I wanted to push myself further because I knew I could. It was hard and challenging to me but I pushed through so I could prove to myself that I can do it. After I managed to push myself further than I thought I felt proud of myself and accomplished. This trip got me to prove to myself that I can do anything I want as long as I am willing to sacrifice things for it.
I hope that in grade 10 I will continue to push myself outside my comfort zone and be more open towards learning new things and meeting new people