Humanities Portfolio 2012

I’ve learned that hard work can make you stay up the entire night perfecting something, but when you get results you realize that it was all worth it. I worked so hard on the autobiography and my results weren’t just in a grade, but also I had a result from myself. I used to be afraid to put so much about myself out for someone to judge, but maybe it’s a good thing to put all my emotions out in my writing. From doing that in the paper I got the amazing opportunity to present it at University of Penn, where the adults had nothing but great things to say about mine and my peer’s work. I also got my quote put onto the mural my school did, so now in my work I don’t hold back anything.

We did a podcast project where we interviewed someone in our life and tried to get a story out of them. That was the most stressful project of the whole year because since I interviewed my little brother (10 years old), it was very hard to get a story so I had to edit it to make it into a story. I felt like it was not good enough but then when I got feedback it was all good so I realized that sometimes I am too hard on myself. From that I learned that in my work to take a step back and try to look at my work as if I wasn’t the one that created it.

At Science Leadership Academy we publish a lot of work so we have to take things more seriously because then there becomes no room for mistake. With the help of Leah Stein and her dancers we participated in the Art in the Open Festival.  We were split into six groups and told to find a location four blocks away from the school to prepare a dance. If we were not going to be performing for an audience, I feel like the performances would not of been as strong because then there would to a place for people to be able to make mistakes and play around a little more.

From the year we also wrote journal entries, ending the year with more than 100 combined in our English and History class. From these, they were not as stressful and we didn’t feel like they had to be perfect, until we were told to publish 3 of our favorites. It taught us that even if we don’t want to do something or take it seriously, there is always a reason that we still sound. My entries that are my favorite can be seen here, here, and here. They talk about art, life, and leadership, one of my quotes from them are,“​I learned that groups make decisions by leadership and strength.” (Journal 11).

Overall, this year has taught me a lot academically but also about myself.  I’ve done some great pieces of work that I never thought I could accomplish things and be so proud of my work. I learned about how my writing style is, which is that I like to do fact based papers compared to creative writing. Finally, like I stated above, I learned that going all out on my papers is not a bad thing. I feel like before now I didn’t like writing all that much because I was always holding back things that I wanted to add because I didn’t know if I wanted to take a risk and make things personal. 

Some other pieces of work from my year…

Pipeline Monologue

Descriptive Essay

Lord of the Flies Thesis Paper