March 2019 – My UWCSEA Learning Journey

March 23, 2019

Round Up

Three quotes from the article

In every area of life — from your education to your work to your health — it is your amount of grit, mental toughness, and perseverance predicts your level of success more than any other factor we can find.

Mental toughness is built through small wins. It’s the individual choices that we make on a daily basis that build our “mental toughness muscle.”

Mentally tough people don’t have to be more courageous, more talented, or more intelligent — just more consistent.

Some people might think that putting phone down during meals is something relatively easier than huge challenges like military exercises. It is true, but for some people, especially teenagers, this could also be really hard. Before we start our challenge, I had thought that I won’t be able to keep the rule for five days even though I try. But as I started to view this challenge optimistically as a good chance to talk to people more, it wasn’t that hard to follow the rules. We are having a end of year test in a few month. Since we have to revise what we did for a year, it will be really tough and stressful. Also, we are gonna start our first year of IB in a few month. In Korea, I have seen many friends who were not considered to be genius but got grades by constant effort. Once again by reading this article, I realised that mental toughness and consistency have a decisive influence on one’s success. So when studying for exam or doing works that challenges me, I will keep reminding myself of those two words and put myself out of my comfort zone.

I think we didn’t have any issues in terms of collaboration. We had talked about our personality test result for a long time and since we got the same time, it was easier for us to understand each other. We divided work equally and asked questions to each other about things that we were unsure of. We also reminded each other to record reflection on how each day’s challenge went. From working with different people, I think something I need most from a partner is meticulousness because I often forget details.

I could take a closer look at myself during this project. Our challenge was having screen free meals for five days. I had to stop myself from using phone during meals and by doing so, I could often find myself looking at screen even when I didn’t have anything important to do with it. And I will have to cut out distractions in the future. People next to me on their phones during meals made me want to use phone and I managed not to use it but it was really hard sometimes.

March 22, 2019March 23, 2019

Buddy Podcast Final

Photo of me&Germaine:)

Intro and Outro post

On my Intro& Outro post, I talked about google reminder that reminded me to have screen free meals. At first, that helped me a lot because even though I knew I had to put down my phone for the challenge during meals, it was hard to putting into action. But, at some point, I realised that I don’t need someone or something to remind me of screen free meals.

Partner Agreement

Before we start our podcast challenge, we had conversations on our partner agreement based on the personality test results. Both me and Germaine got the same personality type. The result said that people with type 2(helper) are good listeners but not good at expressing their ideas sometimes. So we promised to talk to each other when we have any problem. We also talked about quotes we found out from the reading. Firstly, we talked about importance of being collaborative, not competitive, when working as a group. Sometimes, people forget to talk to each other and just split work into several pieces and work individually. Also, we thought that it is important to try to understand other’s ideas and perspectives. Of course, since we are all different humans, we might not understand or agree with each other’s ideas. But work progress will be much more efficient once we start understanding each other. We also talked about TED talks we watched. I said that listening to others is as important as talking for good collaboration. Germaine mentioned quote from the TED talk the way people reach each other is by talking about common grounds and said that it is a good method to use.

Podcast review post

I listened to the podcast “Note to Self “One Couple Communicates only w/Emoji”. First of all, from that podcast, I learnt about what basic structure of the podcast should be and things that should be included in podcast such as intro& outro music and chunked segments.

Link to my previous post

Partner Challenge

Link to round up post

Round Up

Screen Free Meals

by Chloe&Germaine

March 17, 2019

Monologue reflection

What worked well in the rehearsal process?

There was steady improvement after every rehearsal. Actually, I remember on the first day we started working on developing physicality, I didn’t know either what I should do to start process or how to do it. But as I practised more and got feedback from Ms Parr, I got to have clearer idea of what I will do and was able to sort things out one by one.

What was challenging? How did you solve the problem?

Monologue “The heights” was quite unique. Lily tells the story she made to her friends , so there was story inside the story. I had to do storytelling from the point of view of Lily and play characters in the story she made, the nice woman and the little glass girl. I was worried because I thought that it might give confusion to the audience if transition from acting to storytelling is not natural. So for the moments when Lily was talking to the audience, I talked and behaved how Lily would do when she told story to her friend. And when the nice women was talking to a baby or for significant moments of baby and the woman, I focused on each character’s situation and emotions that should be conveyed to the audience.

It took long for me to interpret this mono in my own style. Emotions present in this mono are really hard to define as a single emotion, they were more of a combination of several similar but different emotions. So I tried to put myself in Lily’s shoes and imagined how it would be like to be sick, not to go to school, thus have no friend, and stay home all day long. Considering all of those miseries in her life, I could guess the reason she wrote this sad story of a baby girl could be related to her illness and lonely life.

Think back on some key learning? Why might have the monologue been important to you?

I realised that facial expression is really important. Previously, I had thought that it would have better effect if I move around a lot. Sometimes, I’ll need those movement to show dramatic moment. But how I use my facial muscles is also important, especially eyes. The audience will follow where performer’s eyes go, and how performer look at something/someone will affect the audience’s interpretation of the emotion present at that moment and even the whole story.

I also learnt that I should use movement effectively for a limited number of times because when the performer moves, even though he or she might not have any intention, it gives a strong impression to the audience.

This monologue was really important to me because I learnt so much things. At first, it was even hard to think about talking alone in front of the audience. But I managed to do so. And experiencing storytelling was a good opportunity to learn intonation and varied tone. Also, I realised that I still have to learn so much more acting skills.