Identity: who are you? What’s above the waterline? What’s below the waterline?

Age, race, skin colour, gender: I am sixteen years old this year. My race is Korean, and I am a girl. This information provides very limited information about a person. I believe that these qualities do not fully define a person. Nevertheless, they are qualities that play into the identity of a person, and I do identify strongly with my race and gender, and think of them as important parts of my overall identity.

Values, religion, sexuality, personality, thinking style, political views: This information is equally as important to my identity. Even in daily aspects of life, my beliefs may strongly influence my words, thoughts and actions. I think the combination of these qualities is what makes a person different from any other.

Personality in Working Groups: “paying attention to detail”

I perceive myself to be someone who likes to know the who, what, when, where and why before acting. When viewed negatively, it can be seen that I am a little slower than my peers, or perhaps too tentative which makes me less of a “risk-taker”. However, I do not think I am not a risk-taker because I am tentative to details. I think there are several positive factors about analysing the situation and thinking thoroughly when working in groups, especially when working with people who like to jump into action. With opposite personalities, there can be a balance of both thought and action.

Emotional Intelligence (EQ): What steps have you taking so far to improve your EQ? What trait do you want to take through the IB with you?

While I failed to achieve my goal of extending my average sleep time, I also had successes in appreciating what I had and not letting anyone limit the joy in my life. I think I have always been decent in appreciating the privileged life I was living, but this was a great opportunity to place myself back on track and start thinking about appreciation even more. Looking forward, I will continue working on my goal of improving my sleeping habits through my IB journey.

Self-talk: what is optimism:

When faced with the question of whether I was an optimistic or pessimistic person, I didn’t have an answer. I was sure I had some pessimistic traits, but I knew I had several traits of an optimistic person too. The reason I deemed myself as ‘pessimistic’ initially was because of my self-deprecating humour. The more I thought about it, I already had several optimistic traits, and I just had to recognise them and be aware of them more often.

Stress: my body’s physical responses to stress? Is stress always a negative thing?

My answer was simple, straightforward, and very ‘black and white’. This is what I thought: no, stress is a positive thing. For the most part, I enjoyed working under stress and saw stress as a main motivator for many things. Stress had always helped me do some tasks I wanted to force myself to do, and I thought I received a lack of stress from anyone other than myself. I knew my limited stress was still in the healthy range. After the ‘exam’ simulation, I confirmed that I was better working in exam conditions with academics. The exam simulation alerted my brain and kept me extra-focused. However, I also learnt that stress wasn’t only relevant in my academics. I thought about the stress I had about my piano exams and performances. Only until last year, I was still facing this stress, and it was not an experience I enjoyed. I had purposefully cut out this stress in my life, as it was taking away my enjoyment for playing the instrument. I still believe stress CAN be positive, but only when used correctly on the right person, and in the right situation.

Mental health—maintaining mental health:

I have always been quite confident in maintaining my mental health. I had always been good at blocking toxic thoughts in the first place. In the rare case I was troubled, I always had a way to discuss and organise my thoughts. I often look to my family for this support, as I am the most comfortable around them. With some other topics, I find it easier or more helpful to have a discussion with my friends. Whatever the case, I am confident that I can still continue to rely on both myself and others to maintain my mental health.

Question: what most got in the way of my success if anything?

Here is my one-word answer: motivation. I believe the thing I lack to most (that I wish I had more of) is motivation. I find myself not doing tasks I know I have to do, and the biggest reason for that being my lack of motivation. While it may sound rather negative to end on a note about failure, I see this as a small area for improvement that I can work on over a long period of time. I want to look for methods to improve this and keep this as a long term goal!