Category: Grade 9

https://time.com/3838524/emotional-intelligence-signs/?xid=time_socialflow_facebook

Upon looking at these 18 behaviours, I find myself resonating with most of these behaviours. That being said, these behaviours are definitely not areas where I see myself constantly applying, almost rather an on and off. One of these behaviours did catch my attention and it is the idea of not seeking perfection. That may be quite an exaggeration way to put it, but I tend to try and do things in the best of my ability and further to perfect the outcome, which I understand from experience that it can take up a lot of time, and almost certainly, end up in not being able to achieve that outcome. I also tend to get hurt more in my mistakes than the things I achieve even though they may be of the same weight and I guess that is why I have this sort of “perfectionist” habit. As a little goal to myself, as something I have been working on in the past few years, I want to be able to start moving on quicker and not being hung up in trying to perfect the outcome. This may be rather peculiar, but I have been working towards this through one of my subjects, English. Under time conditions, I spend way too much time trying to “perfect” my intro(exposition) that I always almost end up writing too little after the time runs out. Up until now, I have been making efforts to stop this habit of mine and working towards efficiently finishing my intro and restraining myself from being slowed down in an attempt to achieve perfection. This skill is something I would like to start transferring and applying to my daily life.

The first week in Grade 10 didn’t really feel any different, as a matter of fact, I still feel like I’m in Grade 9. It definitely feels weird to have a grade below us, the grade 9’s. If I were to highlight anything this week, it would probably be the hint of stress I am starting to feel. It’s not really a good highlight or an obstacle, but I feel like I am starting to realize and understand the weight of the position that I am in right now as a grade 10 student. All this time, we have been preparing towards IGCSE and it doest feel real to be already facing the exam in just about a year. That being said, I am quite looking forward to finishing off my IGCSE exams and I also feel like I am more motivated to study. As someone who is a big procrastinator, having something that pushes me to edge is quite what I need to make me really do work. Not really a good thing, but I can’t help my year long habit so it is what it is. This year, I think out of the 9 subjects I am taking, I am aiming for 6 A stars and considering the results from last year, I do think it’s possible. Academically, I think one of the academic obstacle is English and realistically, I think I might get a B. If I were to set a goal, I think it would be to work on improving my English writing capabilities and widening my vessel to become more flexible in my writing style. In the end, I think this year is going to be a hard grind but what I can say for sure is that I can’t wait to get this over with… with good grade.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Learning or experiencing something new can be quite scary, but our lives are shaped by these various encounters, whether good or bad. I found myself as from one of these very experiences has played a significant role in altering the outlook and path it has on my future and in my life.  The past me will see himself to be quite carefree, rather careless in everything I do, almost like a baby turtle that has just hatched from its egg, moving only instinctively towards the shore. But it was that one incident when I got a leg injury when things started to feel so real. The injury was a tear in the ACL(anterior crucial ligament), rather a rare injury for someone young like me, more common towards adults. The seriousness of the injury and the consequences has had become a life long reminder to me. The process that led to many arguments, debates and eventually the surgery have all become a crucial memory of my life and I believe it has shaped me to become more resilient and responsible. Although I saw this injury to be a negative experience for me, I think I have been able to learn a lot about myself and also the ability to apply some of the skills that were naturally borne out of the process. And now I can ironically say that an injury that could have potentially negatively affected my life has instead become a motivational factor, a reminder for me to not repeat the same mistake again and to also become a better version of myself.

The struggles and challenges that I overcame feel like it has all become the first small stepping stone for me to move on in life. The experiences I have had so far in high school has been quite the journey and I also do believe that it is around these years where my new interests and hobbies may be born. One of the biggest highlights or achievement for this year may quite be keeping up or exceeding my expectations in the new curriculums that were just introduced in high-school. Economics has always been an interest and now that I am doing it, I can gladly say, I’m enjoying the “heck” out of it. There’s just this whole new perspective of looking at reality, the bigger picture and how its all been simply broken down into small units is just fascinating. Graphic design has also been another one, and ever since middle school, I have always thought art was “cool”. I would never have imagined graphic design playing a huge part of our life, in tricking, making deception and affecting our choices in life. I think throughout high school, I have become more keen to learn new things and to challenge myself. Paddle Nepal has been without a shadow of a doubt the best trip I have ever gone to and this was my little personal challenge, to try and come back to sports ever since that injury by kayaking every day for about 2 weeks. This trip has taught me a lot of things, in becoming more self-aware, aware of your limits but also being confident in your abilities, in having the growth mindset to overcome big obstacles, the intimidating rapids. And best of all, to have fun. Rather cliche but the people in Nepal, the instructors were very cheerful and lively and if anything, they knew how to have fun. They have taught us many tricks on the kayak, songs, and their culture and I think it’s amazing to see this whole new perspective, to get insight from these people. One highlight of this trip was being able to do a full roll in the biggest rapid of the trip. It was the last day of kayaking and we were getting ready to hit the last rapid. What I can say is that this was the biggest and scariest one yet. As I went into the rapids, I epically capsized but I was able to come back with the smoothest roll of my life. And that feeling, I couldn’t have felt more accomplished and satisfied.

All I can say now is that I cannot wait to see what lies ahead. Not only just the academic goals that I have set myself but also to see what I may aspire in the near future. This year-round, I feel like I have been able to do something significant during service and being more committed. The service is AMK minds where people that are either or both mentally or physically challenged that come to our school to interact with us members of the service. This is my first time participating in this kind of local service so it was all new to me. One of the challenges to this service was being able to feel comfortable because our purpose is to create this bond, to interact and fun with one another. Though later it became weird that that was even a challenge when you just forget about the little things and decide to just make friends.  Hopefully, it will just be positives all the way, though I do believe making mistakes early on is a big part of success. What I do find scary is that I may never find something that I would like to pursue, a goal or a purpose. But right now, I think I would just like to focus on the small things that I enjoy right now and I look forward to seeing myself change over the course of the next few years of high school.

 

“Our student-writers rose to the challenge, producing authentic, responsible and powerful pieces”

How far does this describe your experience? Consider the insights* [to journalistic storytelling, to our community] that you gained, and the personal rewards and challenges of the process.

 

I feel like I have done a respectable job in producing an authentic, responsible and powerful piece. I think I was able to produce a piece that was genuinely reflective of Ella’s journey of her invisible disability, whilst providing a proper exposure to the audience of the topic. A personal challenge to me was remaining objective because of the constant consideration I felt of being too judgemental. As a sensitive topic, I had to be careful in the choice of my words as to not offend or disrespect Ella or those who are experiencing the same condition. In that sense, I think I was sensitive in the way I was balancing my facts and interpretation of my article. I believe I have not misled or exaggerated parts of her story, though I may have included personal sentiments of Ella’s story. For that reason, I think I have been authentic with my interpretations but at the same time being responsible by being considerate and not miscommunicating facts. But all of this only came to me after the Draft 1 attempt, after learning that I may have made some judgemental statements. With regards to producing a powerful article, I chose to provide Ella’s real-life experience and related it to the wider youth community in our school which gives impact by providing audiences a chance to empathize. This emotional connection allows readers to have a deeper understanding of the topic which can further inspire them to have a persevering attitude.

 

Think of the word “disability”. What do you see? Many are more apparent than others, especially if you see them on wheelchairs or without limbs. But has the term “invisible disability” ever popped in your head? Many disabilities currently recognized in today’s society are completely invisible. This is the case of a teenager who has struggled under the hidden nature of her disability and the complications that entailed.

Ella Joicey was born in England, in a small town called Lincoln when she moved over with her family to Myanmar at the age of 14.  She spent most of her high-school there and lived a normal life just like any other teenager. . .

At the start of grade 9, Ella was diagnosed with ulcerative colitis. A disease that is life long and causes long-lasting inflammation and ulcers (sores) in your digestive tract.

“It mainly affects young females at the age around 13.”

Ella lived her high-school life carrying this disability, where she slowly lost her freedom. As time passed, Ella began to feel the strain of her disability on her.

“What was really hard was not being able to see any of my friends, ” Ella said.

“It’s not who I am, but my personality felt like it was dampened on. I didn’t have enough energy to be that person.”

“7-9 pills a day.”

Ella’s symptoms for ulcerative colitis started to show around the end of 8th grade. She knew that something was wrong with her, as she felt her stomach “throbbing”. Although, she had little to no clue that she had a chronic illness.

“I thought it would go away. I was like, ‘you know, it’s fine,” she says as she reflects on the choice of hiding her symptoms from her parents.

“They didn’t really find out until we were on a summer holiday.”

At the time, Ella lived in Myanmar, where her town lacked the proper medical treatment she required.

“It was literally one clinic, on the top of this public hospital,” she said.

As such, Ella was forced into having to fly all the way to Bangkok every weekend.

“I was then tested many times until they finally found out what it was. I was given 2 pills a day, and then increased to 4 until it was about 7-8 pills.”

In the end, these pills had no visible effect “It didn’t work,” she says. She proceeded to take much stronger drugs and “was then put onto steroids for 4 months. ”

“You get sick more easily, you get tired a lot easier, it was just really bad.”

Her disability also significantly affected her diet.

“I had to change my diet, I couldn’t eat dairy, fruits, vegetables, I was basically eating rice and meat.”

After months, Ella’s struggles finally started to subside due to the effect of the steroids. “I started to get a lot better,” and was slowly released from the steroids. But the problem wasn’t solved.

“Even though I felt a lot better, things weren’t still that great.”

“Invisible disability.”

Ella has spent over a year of high school ever since she was diagnosed with this illness. What did her friends think? How did they support her? Ella simply said, “My friends had no idea.”

“My friends knew I was sick, but they had no idea how bad it was,” she said.

Why? “I just didn’t want to be different; I didn’t want them to treat me differently.”

Ella spent her entire 9th grade hopping in and out of school, where she missed out in many school events.

“I didn’t go to prom, nor my semi-formal, I didn’t go to any high school events,” she said.

“I did feel like I was left behind a bit.”

Ella considers her condition as an “invisible” disability, as her well-being was hidden from sight. She mentions how it is common for people to make assumptions from just glancing at a person.

“You could be in a hallway, and you see these people walking around you, and you can assume that everyone’s fine but in fact, someone could be suffering more than someone else,” she explains.

In the UWC community, troubles may arise in students’ and families’ personal lives, but it is difficult to support and empathize with them when students hide their struggles. This hidden nature of the disabilities may incentivize students to continue hiding their struggles, due to how they don’t want to be perceived as “different” and dislike the idea of people pitying them.   

Ella is an example of how the school community assumed she was a “normal” student with poor health.  And although this assumption might seem unsubstantiated, it is the direct product of Ella’s choice to hide it from her peers.

There is a prominent problem when it comes to people making unsubstantiated assumptions at face value. The facade that people carry disguises their real struggles and emotions. But the hidden nature of the disability is a probable incentive for victims to further “hide” their disability from others. This combination of the issues could be what lead to the emotional struggles Ella went through.

Moving Forward

After spending 2 years of her high school in Myanmar, Ella has moved to Singapore to a boarding house in UWC. Despite having not fully recovered, Ella did not want to be tied down by her disability.

“I had to take into control of my future, and what I wanted to do with my life.”

Now, Ella has seemed to have opened up about her disability and is even sharing it to people who are complete strangers like us.

“Ever since I have been in remission, I have been more talkative and more open about it,” she says.

“It’s not like I hide it anymore if they ask me about it, anyone can ask me, I am fine talking about it.”

This change of character could be the confidence she regained every since being in remission but it is also the action that she wants to take.

“Not many people know about these kinds of disabilities.”

“It is an issue and it’s not just an issue that’s happening to me, it’s happening to millions of people around the world.”

Ella continues her next 2 years of high school at UWC, where she enjoys doing the activities she couldn’t have done before, slowly filling up the holes that her past high school life left her as she continues to move forward.  

“You just got to get through it, to get over it and move on, otherwise nothing changes…”

 

 

Making my own collage was more or less an activity that I found entertaining. At first, I really didn’t use any thought process in terms of what I was going to do and what words I was going to find. One thing I did was I kept cutting out words that I thought was “a good word”. Words that add more expression, more description to another. And so at the end of the day, I ended up with a bunch of words that had almost no correlation. That’s when I changed my way approaching this piece of work and I started to find words that can actually start to connect these words that I have randomly plucked out of a random magazine. My final collage ended up being something that hardly made any sense but for some reason, the piece felt impactful. I feel like the different texture and the font gives out a different feeling and meaning to more than what the word means. An expression of indirect meaning, an allusion towards the different context that these words had originally in the magazine. And so with all of these words that are expressing different “feeling”, it almost feels like its a powerful piece while being very confusing. Graham rawle being originally a graphic artist, I think I can start to understand why he started choosing this style of writing to convey his story in his own artistic way….

Fostering children, when things don’t work out.

I found this story quite informing, I think I learned a lot of things from the speakers’ experience and it also gave me some awareness of this problem. I would never have thought how much of a trouble it could be to just take care of a 6-year-old child, but from the story, I learned how an experience the child went through could have such a huge effect to the personality and the identity of the child. If I were to write about this, I think it would be interesting if I can take the angle of the child, the perspective of how he sees the world as I believe it would be the most impactful in terms of reaching out to people and raising that awareness of the harsh reality of these foster children.

Moving forward while looking back, my refugee story.

This was quite surprising, I never knew Ms. Joy had such a deep background story. There wasn’t typically anything that really stood out for me but the phrase she mentioned, “moving forward while looking back” really resonated with me. The way she explained her experience and gave us an idea of what it is like to move forward while looking back felt like something that was in common with me and even some others. About a year ago, I tore my ACL at the age of 14 and it is considered pretty young to have an injury like this. Ever since I worked hard to get back my strength in my leg so that I can go back to sports. About now I think I am almost in the condition before I injured myself. This idea of moving forward, but I still can’t leave and forget what has happened in the past. I still have to look back from time to time so that I don’t repeat what happened about a year ago. It’s not quite the same example as Ms. Joy but I do definitely feel that idea of moving forward but also not forgetting and leaving behind what has happened. If I were to take an angle on this story I believe I would take her point of view, as she did mention she felt like media portrayed refugee camps as a “scary” thing and by writing an article almost in like an op-ed, I believe it can open people up towards this false impression.

From the Jungles of Borneo to the Plains of Africa, to the Black Markets of Vietnam: a Mission to Save Endangered Wildlife

I am quite surprised we were even able to get such a high profile person to be a guest in our writer’s Fortnight program. Though I am quite disappointed I wasn’t able to ask any questions, maybe a bit intimidated. But to be honest, I didn’t have any question that I was keen to ask. Though I still do think that I did learn quite a lot of interesting things about her. She was studying law and was walking the path to becoming a lawyer and yet just a visit to Africa made her change her mind into studying to become a zoologist. 2 completely different studies. That aside, there was a lot of things she was talking about, don’t quite remember everything but she did give us a lot of insight into what it takes to be a conservationist. Logically thinking, as a conservationist, you would normally think they would be spending their time working on solutions and ways to help preserve the habitats and the wildlife. But it seemed to be more than just that and actually, it was more on towards what the people and the government wants so that they can find ways that benefit both the animals and the government/people. This just shows it takes insight in order to understand these kinds of things properly. I think our world has been built around these impressions that arise from media and the internet. It’s something that can’t be helped and it is impossible to understand what is really going on until you find someone who knows what’s really going on. I think it would be interesting if I could take the perspective of Tammie Matson and write about what it takes to save endangered wildlife.

Diagnosed with an Invisible Disability

Not being picky but I definitely found this one to be most interesting and got me to think a lot. This disability seems to be called colitis and it basically is when there is something wrong with your large intestines. While she was talking about her experience, at first I thought there seemed to be a sense of insecurity. The fact that she didn’t mention this problem and kept it hidden from her parents for a while and also not telling a single person about it. But as she kept talking, there seemed to be a reoccurring theme about being “normal”. She wasn’t directly saying it but she seemed to be frustrated with this idea of being treated differently because of her disability. She also mentioned how she was happy that nothing really changed and that hardly anyone treated her differently but also there was the other side where she felt like she needed some support. A contradiction. She then goes on to talk about why she calls it an invisible disability and it comes quite simply, and it is because people can’t tell. She gave us the example that when you see other people in the corridor, you instantly assume everyone is fine because it just doesn’t look like there is a problem. But in reality, someone could be suffering a lot. One interesting idea that came up throughout her story was that maybe it is an invisible disability because ever since she was diagnosed with this, she wasn’t able to partake “normal” events that would otherwise happen in high school; a class trip, semi-formal, prom etc. It is like as if she is slowly being left behind, almost invisible as she is not there on those events. Going back to the idea of being “normal”, it ended up concluding that she just didn’t want to be different and that is quite understandable. From what she says, even until now, nobody knows about her condition, only her parents and not even her friends at this school. Though she did say she was open to telling her friends if they asked. This is interesting because for someone who has first decided to hide the symptoms of the disability from her parents and even to her friends, to almost like broadcasting her story about her disability to us, coming to writers fortnight to share her story seems like a huge change in character. After this interview, I realized this is quite the “invisible” disability. Since it is “invisible”, you actually have the choice to be “normal” because nobody will ever know until you tell them or you show them. Disability, on the other hand, can be seen normally by other people(like sitting on a wheelchair due to an injury) and so it will be harder to fit in because people will definitely treat you differently. A cool angle on this story could be on one of her friends or her parents, to see what it was like in their perspective before they realized it was a huge problem.

http://www.jessicalahey.com/the-gift-of-failure/

Failure is something pretty much that all humans have experienced, that is of course not including Swayam. It also shouldn’t be something you should be afraid of, unless its IGCSE, IB exams. Anyways, I feel like a lot of people don’t learn from their mistakes. People just keep repeating them. I myself do this occasionally and it really does get annoying because you could have just lost your opportunity in achieving something. As a teenager, I think its important to fail as many times as possible so that when you move on, you wouldn’t make the same mistakes again. As of now, the mistakes we make can be turned around and you can learn from it, but if you are an adult striving in the real world, I think that mistakes is that last thing you want to make. But, even as an adult, theres always something you can learn from, and just maybe you can make things turn out better than before.

Goals for G9 and G10

Goal 1: I would like to get more organised and responsible for my own learning, to stay attentive and productive during classroom task as well as homework

Goal 2: To work hard on my rehab, to be able to go back to sports by this years December break.

Goals 3: I would like to be more committed to service this year.