Portfolio Entry 1

Throughout my time at STEM I’ve come to learn a lot. More than I ever would have at any other school. I have learned about the five qualities, the people, and the environment. As a STEM student I use all of the 5 qualities to my advantage and my wellbeing. I’ve learned what they mean and how to use them to help myself. Persistence is the quality that I have grown most upon. I believe that I am a very persistent person but I feel that I use to not be. I had a rough time accepting that things were not perfect the first time around. Although STEM has tried relentlessly to teach me, that drafting is important. I feel that I still ignored them and continued to believe that I was right and that my first draft couldn’t of been any more perfect. I think that throughout my junior year I’ve grown to understand that im not perfect, and neither is my writing.  I’ve become a better person through stem, and ive learned to use the five qualities to my advantage. The qualities weren’t something that I learned about in the sixth grade and forgot about, I’ve carried the knowledge of them throughout my entire time at STEM.

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One of the artifacts that has helped me understand persistence more is the personal budget project in Economy. Although this was one of the most practical and useful projects for myself and the future. It was unbelievably difficult and frustrating. Everything from student loans and interest, this project continued to through curve balls. I had almost no understanding of any of these terms, and had to look a majority of them up. I wanted to give up on multiple occasions. Just look up the answers and move on. I had many struggles with this project and none of them had an easy solution. We were given an excel document which made the project seem easier. But there was so much that you had to research and so much to understand, it was overwhelming and difficult. But in the end, I knew that this class was meant to teach me something. You cant learn anything from cheating, I knew that I needed to think about the future and what learning these terms would mean to me. I knew that my future self would be thankful to my past self. It was this that pushed me to learn and continue to try even through my struggles.

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A second artifact that shows my growth in persistence would be my entire Chemistry grade. My 10th grade year I struggled an unbelievable amount in Biology. When I came into my junior year I knew that chemistry followed in the footsteps of biology. I knew that it would be a struggle just like last year. But this year was different, I took better notes, I worked harder, focused more. I didn’t goof off, I made myself focus in a class I knew would be difficult. I have a hard time with tests and I always seem to lose focus and information when I sit down to take one. I came in after school almost every day I could, I would talk to my teacher and learn the information rather than just write it down. I participated more in class and put in the work that proved that I had what it took. It wasn’t easy, dimensional analysis got the best of me on more than one occasion. But over time and by not giving up, I was able to slowly improve my grades. Currently it’s the class I have the highest grade in and I fully plan to keep it that way.

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For my final artifact im going to use my Chinese workbook. Ive taken Chinese every year that I’ve been able to and I don’t plan on switching. But that doesn’t mean that there haven’t been challenges along the way. I enjoy Chinese class an awful a lot and its grown to be my favorite class. Thought the teacher I’ve learned more about the culture and the language then I would have with anyone else. I may not be the best at Chinese, and I certainly don’t understand the grammar as well as anyone else. But I never gave up on it and I certainly never decided it wasn’t worth it. I gave it my all and I had friends to help me out along the way. I believe that one of the only reasons Chinese is going well for me is because of persistence.

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Overall I fell that I have grown most in persistence throughout my junior year. None of it has been easy, but it has all been fun and a learning experience. I am thankful for the 5 qualities and I have persistence to thank for getting me through the year so far and I hope it sticks with me for the rest of it.