Blog 1.3 - Ayse

First week

This week was the week after our major subject midterms. We did our midterms in AEP. I was so nervous when I saw the piece of paper. Answered all the questions, and although I was not confident in a lot of them, I did better than I anticipated. Secondly, this day was four days through my meditation sessions. I was on a roll with a 4-day strike! 

It was time for our final presentations. I talked about my recent interest in books. I chose 1 topic only, as Miss Disa stated. After I finished my presentation and sat down back on my chair, I definitely felt the improvement from my first and final presentation of this term. I realized how focusing on the main topic, and giving details but not going too far from the main focus is really important while presenting. Another point I took note of is the importance of knowing your audience. For instance, if the listeners don't know what the book you are talking about is and have no interest, try to grab their attention by talking more about your favorite and give a brief explanation of what the book is about instead of just mentioning the title of the book. These are just a few things I have learned from this experience I have gained. I am glad that Miss Disa decided to include 'Presentation' in our curriculum this year. 

Second week

Anis and Nurin presented their power points and they did a great job! I could definitely see everyone's improvements, so I thank Miss Disa for that!

This week I completed my 10-day breathing session! So what exactly is my opinion of this new exercise Miss Disa shared with us? I LOVED it! And I am being brutally honest right now. I feel like I might be the student who enjoyed it the most among all the other AEP students in FIS. Every time I had to do breathing exercises, I was excited and simply wanted to get started. I would close the lights, comfortably sit either on my chair or on my bed (back straight of course), and slowly close my eyes. As I listened to the calm voice of the speaker, It gave me such peace of mind that It felt like it was solely just me, my breathing, and the speaker's calm voice in that few minutes, fully cut off from the world. I'm not exactly sure how to describe what I felt, but I hope, you readers understand what I'm trying to say. The only hassle was writing my reflection on Padlet every day, it's not like it was difficult or anything, but I would tend to forget or just get too lazy to type it down. At some point, I stopped writing a reflection for 2 days so I had to start counting the days again. 

Third week

My experience this morning: "The school bus driver vulgarly pressing the bell as I rush downstairs and put on my hijab, I wear my shoes, ran the few steps through the long hallway, and take a seat in the bus as I am panting. After a few minutes on the ride, I realize something... guess what? I LEFT MY MACBOOK AT HOME 🫠 . I was feeling immensely upset and anger was filling me up, but what could I do now? Nothing, absolutely nothing." Anyways, getting back to the afternoon of this day, the bell rang and I was late to class, are we surprised? No. When I entered Miss Disa's room, the others already started the word game so I joined in. As always, it is a great start to awaken my sleepy brain. After this, it was time, time to use our gadgets. Everyone was taking out their gadgets as Miss Disa announced that we would be dressing up Barbie in the Miro board. Basically, we had to dress up Barbie where she is going to three different job interviews. I was excited for a split second, but then I realized that I did not have network data nor did I have my MacBook👏🏼👏🏼, good job Ayşe🙃. Anyway, I had to do something about it, couldn't just sit around and do nothing, so I opened my phone and borrowed data from Hanis. Downloaded Miro, which took FOREVER, literally around 15 minutes (I'm so sorry Hanis). Joined the Miro and started searching through Pinterest. It was fun, but to tell you the truth, shopping online can stress me out, so I was going as slow as a turtle, and the small screen did not help. I was only able to dress up Barbie for the interview as an office worker and an influencer. A tough and tiring day as you can probably tell. 

Conclusion 

These past few weeks have been a lot. I can confidently say that It was the busiest I've ever been even though the exams week didn't start yet. I never knew grade 12 would be so intense. Every day, I would get at least 2 assignments, and then there were the college applications, plus the teacher's day organization. It was crazy, everything was just piling up and time management not being my strong suit did not help either. I got overwhelmed and when the realization hit that nothing would get easier, instead, everything would be far worse than this in the next semester scared me so much. So I made something clear: I have to do a better job managing my time well, organizing things properly, and getting myself together. Because I will soon be stepping into the real world, where it will get tough, way tougher than this. I have to try my best now to at least be prepared for what's coming. 

Good luck to everyone! This school year is going to be one steep, rocky hill to climb.