The first semester of senior end is coming to an end and I am beginning to stress out. The only class I am really worried about not passing is guitar. Although I find guitar to be somewhat easy, it stills requires a lot of time and practice. Since I have been taking nursing assistant classes, most of my time after school every Tuesday and Wednesday is spent in that class. On the days that I do not have nursing assistant classes I am either catching up on homework for my other classes or attending a religious class every other Monday. Evening if I am not able to complete guitar on time for this semester, I still plan on completing it by the end of senior year considering that fact that it is my pathway.
During the middle of semester we started to incorporate flextime into our schedules. So far, it has helped out a little by giving me time to do certain assignments that I may not be able to do at home. Although incorporating flextime into the schedule does decrease the amount of time we spend in classes by a little bit, I feel like if flextime is used correctly it can greatly benefit students. As for how my senior project is going, I have finally been able to set up a job shadow. I will be job shadowing Dr. Posada. She works here in Lindsay. Although she does not work in the future career that I am interested in, she still works in the medical field. I hope that by completing this job shadow I will get an idea of how working in the medical field truly will be. My job shadow is scheduled for the 20th of January. I am excited yet also somewhat nervous and worried about whether I forgot something or not. However, I have doubled checked everything and I finally feel like I am fully prepared for my job shadow. Since my last journal entry, things have gotten a little more stressful. Although the amount of homework that I receive on a daily basis has remained about the same, I feel like I now have less time than I did before to complete it. I spent most of my time these past few weeks working on college applications and scholarships that need to be done as soon as possible since there is a deadline that is supposed to be met. I am also enrolled in a certified nursing assistant training program that begins right after school from 4:30 to 8:30 every tuesday and thursday which is also part of the reason that I feel like I have less time. In order to ensure that I complete my work and classes on time I need to start managing my time more wisely since I can be a really big procrastinator at times.
The end of the first semester of my senior year is approaching quickly. My most recent progress report indicates that I am on pace to complete all my classes except for one. The only class that I am considered behind in is guitar. The main reason I am behind in my guitar class is because I am supposed to be in the advanced class but due to conflicts with my schedule I had to take advanced guitar by myself during a different period. However, at the end of semester I still plan on passing all my classes. Moving on to the topic of my senior project, so far, I have completed most of the tasks that have been assigned. The only thing I am missing is my job shadow but I hope to get that done with before or during winter break. However, this means that I will not be able to do the early completion of my senior project. Either way, I hope to get it over and done with as soon as possible so I have one less thing to worry and stress about. Being a senior so far has not been very stressful, but that is only because it is the second week of school. However, these first two weeks have been full of many different changes such as a new bell, a new laptop, a new schedule and plenty of new teachers. I know for a fact that as the year progresses it will only become even more stressful. People mention how they felt as senior year was the easiest year out of all the four years however, I feel like it might actually be the most stressful when you begin to consider all the decisions you make that could possibly alter your life forever.
I am still not able to fully grasp the idea that I am finally a senior. I remember when I was younger I would walk home from school and run into high school students. To me, they looked like scary big kids who steal your lunch money like they do in the movies. But now, I probably look like one of those scary big kids to the younger students at elementary schools. I mean, is this what is feels like to finally be a senior? I don’t really feel any different than I did when I first became a freshmen. But the one thing I know for sure is that these four years of high school have gone by incredibly fast and during those four years I have made memories and friends that I will remember forever . As part of our senior project we are suppose to find someone who works at a job we are interested in and ask if they would be willing to allow us to job shadow them. I am currently searching for someone to job shadow. However, I feel like I might have a little trouble finding someone to agree to me being able to job shadow since I want to job shadow someone in the medical field. I hope that once I actually do complete my job shadow, it will give me an idea of what it truly takes to succeed in the medical field. My career goal is to become a pathologist. As a pathologist, I would basically be the doctor’s doctor. It would be my job to do the behind scenes work and actually look at body fluids and tissue samples in order to correctly diagnose a person. There might also come a time when I must perform an autopsy and determines a person’s cause of death. The idea of helping people and improving our way of living has always fascinated me. It amazes me how well our bodies were constructed and how everything works in perfect harmony to keep us going. My main goal for this year of course is to graduate, but not just graduate. I want to graduate with good grades and knowing for a fact that I will achieve something greater in my life. Junior year has been a year full of procrastination and sleepless nights. I honestly do not remember the last time I slept the full eight recommended hours of sleep but I know that at the end of the school year it will all be worth it. Junior year has so far been the most stressful year during my high school experience. However, I am certain that senior year will be the ultimately be the most stressful and difficult year compared to my freshmen, sophomore and junior year.
What I am most excited for this summer is going to Los Cabos in Baja California Sur. We plan to leave during the month of June and then we will be arriving back about a week later. What I am not looking forward though is coming back really sunburnt and in pain. I am also looking forward to being able to sleep in. I must take advantage of summer vacation and catch on all the hours of sleep that I did not have because I was doing homework. My goal for senior year is to avoid procrastinating. Every school year I go through the same cycle. Putting off work, and then waiting until the end semester to start stressing about all that work I have not done all at once. I want to avoid as much stress as possible during my senior year since I know for a fact that with everything else that going on during senior year it will already be stressful enough. My junior year consists of many memorable events and as junior year comes to end and senior year approaches, it reminds that I will soon be forced in to the real world. Next year I will be applying to Universities. I am nervous because once I leave to university; it will be the first time that I am without my family however, I am also excited because I will finally be able to go out and explore the world for myself. I am finally in my junior year of high school. Time flies by so fast. It feels like just yesterday I was a freshman, nervous for her first day of high school. I remember everyone saying that high school was going to go by super fast. At first, I did not believe them. Four years of high school seemed like an eternity at the thought of it, but now I realize that in reality it's not much.
Junior year has by far been the busiest year so far. I remember there were days where I could go home and not do much homework. But now I have plenty of homework every night. The classes I am taking this year are: trigonometry, intermediate guitar, chemistry, AP English, AP U.S. history and vet science. AP English and AP U.S. history are probably my hardest classes. Not because I find the content difficult but because they require much more work than my other classes. I am also a library's aide. It helps to kind of have a free period because it allows me to get some work done during that time. The period I have library's aide is in between my AP English and AP U.S history class so it gives me some time to reflect on what I just learned and time to fully absorb all the information i have just retained. I also plan on taking the SAT this year so I can feel out what it is going to be like, but also so I can get an estimate of my score and work on improving it for the next time I take it. This year I have gotten even closer to my two best friends. Their names are Daisy and Rosa. During our freshman year, Rosa ended up moving away to Exeter. It was during this time that I became friends with Daisy since we both had the same Spanish class. Two months later, Rosa ended up moving back, and ever since, it has been the three of us. We like to call ourselves the GG, which stands for "Garden Gang", since we are all named after flowers. Most of our classes are the same so we often help each other if one does not understand something. Although junior year has so far been the busiest year for me, it has also been the year that I have procrastinated the most. I would like to limit the amount of time I spend procrastinating and actually spend that time doing my work so I will not be stressed out at the end of the six-week grading periods, and especially at the end of the semester. The thing I look most forward to is finishing high school and starting college. I have begun looking at universities that are in-state just to get an idea of where I want to go. But first I need to focus on finishing my junior year of high school with good grades. |