It's been an extremely long time since my last blog! Over a month now to be exact, which means that we've a lot of catching up to do. Recalling the things that we did is going to be a bit tough, but I'm very thankful to have my exit tickets as references. I guess this is a true test of memory!
So, starting from August 26, a Saturday morning, we had an AEP session due to make-up classes that resulted from typhoons cancelling the previous one. As usual, we'd played word games to warm up our brains. Throughout the month, we played familiar ones like "Contexto" and "Hurdle," but we were surprisingly met with a new 1 called "Squardle." I think it might be 1 of my new favorites now because of how similar it is to the game "Boogle," which I love playing with my family. We even had a whole session just dedicated to playing these word games. (I loved every minute of this). From what I remember, this served as a break from the immense amount of essay writing we'd been doing.
Speaking of which, we'd been given multiple bar charts each with their own designated colors and "plots." 1 talked about the birth and death rates in England Wales, while others discussed India's GDP contributors from 1960 to 2000. Another displayed the amount of whales, seals, and dolphins over a 12-year period. It was all very interesting information and honestly quite fun to see, except for the fact that we needed to write essays about them.
Honestly, my love for doing these essays haven't really grown that much. I'm much more used to researching or sharing my thoughts on a topic, expressing my creativity, and letting the words just tumble out of my brain. It's almost second nature at this point. However, looking at a bar chart and trying to just focus on all the general points isn't something that's piqued my interest.
Nonetheless, the amount of practice that we've been doing has yielded quite a bit of improvement. I'm much faster now at writing the first 2 paragraphs and can somewhat easily identify the main features to be noted. The only thing that I'm really struggling right now with is the third and fourth paragraphs, breaking down the main points and expanding on them without confusing the reader. I'm pretty sure that we'll eventually get the hang of this soon, but for now, I'm really happy to have made it this far in the last month that we've been writing these practice tasks. However, it wasn't the only task we had to worry about.
Our AEP midterms took place on September 19 and was made up of 4 pages. It honestly was a relief to see that the questions were exactly the same as the ones on the vocabulary quizzes I'd taken online to review. I speeded through the exam and then checked it over again and again until I was satisfied. I turned it in and happily found myself getting full marks! Hooray! I was so glad that it was over.
As a reward, Miss Disa decided to have a challenge, girls versus boys edition. We played communitive "Scrabble" and "Griddle." The team with the most points would win. Can you guess who won? Yep, it was us girls! Haha! Better luck next time, guys! To be honest, I was quite shocked that we'd beat them at "Griddle," because it usually takes us a long time to come up with good words, but I guess we were very lucky that day.
But our break time ended quickly for our first major project for the year has been assigned on September 6. The due date was set for September 24. It was time to get cracking!
The mechanics were pretty simple. Basically, all we had to do was take 5 minutes out of our day to meditate. Sounds easy, right? This would go on for 10 consecutive days and would take place at whatever time fit you best. For me, that was at around 5:10 p.m., right after I got home from school and just before I'd start studying/ do homework. In order to do this, we had to download "Balance," a medication app, on our phones.
I decided to start the project on September 15, right before midterms. I knew I wanted to begin practicing so that it might help me be more productive in my time of need. Haha!
To be more specific on how this worked, the only thing we were instructed to do in the beginning was breathe in and out and try to focus on our breath. This slowly progressed into counting 1 with every inhale and 2 with every exhale. Then, we had to count each breathing cycle all the way up to 10 and then back again. Towards the end of the challenge, the app wanted us to do body scanning, a technique that requires a vivid imagination I'd say and lots of patience. At the very end of the plan, we combined both body scanning and breathing focus.
My overall thoughts on this challenge was that it was a very nice learning experience- 1 that I definitely would've never chosen or even thought of before. The only difficulties I really faced was remembering to do it and also body scanning. I didn't really like this technique a lot because I didn't feel a lot of tingles and it was very hard to visualize.
But other than that, it made me feel good about myself in the sense that I was treating my body right! Finally giving it a break is something I don't usually do and before this project, I always thought that sleep was enough and that it was the only way to rest the body. But now I stand corrected.
Mediation is a practice that requires a lot of skill and patience. Some people do it for 5 years while others do it for multiple decades and can really feel the effects. For me, I can't say that I'm 100% confident that it worked as I only for 10 days. I didn't really notice any big differences in my overall mood or stress level, but I'd like to think that this helped me even just by 1%. Because that's the thing about actually doing it and taking that first step. It makes you believe that you're helping your body be better and therefore, you feel better.
It's kind of like the placebo effect in a way. Either way, I'll live thinking that meditation did help me and my body get some rest and be more productive. And I think that's the beautiful thing about not only this challenge, but life as well. If you really try hard and make the time to do something, then you can say to yourself that you did everything in your power no matter what the result. You'll have no regrets and can then truly live.
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