This week we worked with our production group and it was decided that I would be set in a leader role in the Documentation group. I had to check in with my group to see what they were doing then report it to the teachers. I remember that last year's POL the teachers said that they wanted me to be more involved in a leading role so they put me in this role. I was able to communicate with my group more and strengthen my skills of leadership. It also helped me gain the skill of of checking in with my teachers and emails and telling them the process that we did and what we are working on. What I noticed when checking in with my group I realize that it's much easier to work like that because you know what everyone is doing and you're able to maintain organization within the group. Preparing for festival while having to do work for the documentation group and the zine group made me a little stressed but I was able to do it.
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This week was a stressful week. Since the SAT was on the 10th, it made me realize how close I am to college. Along with the pressure of studying for the SAT, we also had a lot of homework to go along with it so it was hard to balance that out along with my extracurricular activities. Something that I liked about the homework that week was that for math we had to meet up at least an hour with our study group to study for the SAT. For humanities we have like these surprise SAT essays and we get graded based on Reading, Analysis and Writing and since we had to do that twice, it gave me a good image of what the SAT essay section would be like. Throughout junior year, I learned some helpful tips to use on the SAT like everyday for mat, Mr.Carter starts the class with a SAT warmup and the time you have to solve for it is 2 minutes like the real SAT. That helped me with my internal clock because each section of the SAT is timed. Even though I did some stuff that would benefit my grade in the SAT, I wasn't able to do anything that would benefit myself like having me time. I really wanted to sleep the whole week but there were other things saying otherwise. Even though a lot of unfortunate things happened that week, it didn't affect me as bad as I thought it would and I was still able to be on task and finish the things that I had to do which makes me happy.
This week we had a field trip to Dr.Kauffmans lab. We went to UCSD and saw a few HTH graduates that are students at UCSD. I thought it was really interesting how they viewed HTH and UCSD. It makes me realize the pro’s and con’s of attending High Tech. One of them is the workload that we are given isnt hard at all and it doesn't prepare us for college because college gives us bigger work loads. Another thing that on of the students said was that HTH lets toy “BS” your way through and it is really easy to get A’s but in college you actually have to spend time with your work. When we went to the lab, it was split in three different groups. The first one we saw was the machines that the lab uses. One of them was to vibrate the things like samples to keep them active. Another uses a magnet plate and a small magnet inside the liquid container and it mixes it. It was really interesting how it all comes to use. The second station was how they separate the DNA strands and I thought that was really interesting. They put the DNA solution in a jelly like container that has small sections for it and the Jello is in a solution that the pH stays the same so it wont tamper with the DNA. Then they use electrical currents to separate the DNA strands and it shifts through the jello to the other side. The last station teaches us how they slice the mouse brain. Something interesting that I learned was that the brain had to be in cold temperature and our temperature for our fingertips can “melt” it. It was really interesting to see how they work in a lab and it was an interesting experience.
I felt like this week was a stressful week because I didn't get enough of sleep but i was still able to pull through.This week we were working on our zine pages of our own social topic. At first I thought it was supposed to be a zine that has everyone's topics included in it so I put urbanization being the cities in the background, Mother Earth in the middle holding up the crumbling Earth signify the environmental crisis and people surrounding her wearing animal as clothing signifying animal cruelty. On thursday everyone got critique from Akiko who works at the art museum at San Diego. During the critique she said that the zine was supposed to be about our own topic not everyone's combined so I was confused but I was ok with it. We also had to prepare for a Socratic seminar that was about empathy, the questions being why is empathy significant and how does it work with American values. However since the socratic seminar was on Friday, I was absent that day so I wasn't able to attend. But working on the socratic seminar prep, we had to do a free write of those questions, it made me think to what extent is empathy necessary?That question was a interesting one for me to think about.
The ride to San Francisco in a cramped bus was exhausting. I didn't have a pillow so my neck was uncomfortable and it was freezing cold however I was sitting next to Sabrina and she let me lay on her in a comfortable position. When it comes to sleeping I want every second of it. On my ride back I was more comfortable because I bought myself a neck pillow and I was next to Lorena and I was able to sleep more comfortable with her. As you can tell I love talking about my sleep and about my friends because I was able to spend time talking with my friends and getting closer to them. Something that was memorable that I heard from the college students was in Cal Poly SLO how they described one of their buildings, comparing them to a mullet, professional at the front and non-professional at the back.She said that the first floor there's frozen yogurt place and that completely sold me because I love Frozen Yogurt. then when they described the floors above she says that they have an office and classrooms. My thoughts on college, I felt like I didn't know what to do like attending a college or what to study in but now that I saw a few that I might want to look at and possibly have a dream College. Attending this trip cleared out a bit of my path for the future. A college that I didn't like so much was UC Berkeley the reason why I didn't like it was because there wasn't a lot of of trees around it and when we had a tour around it i didn't find it interesting at all.However when it came to UC Santa Cruz I enjoyed it a lot because it was in a forest and the tour guide said to us was they don't use cars to get around because they want to help the environment so they take buses around the campus. Another thing that was interesting was that you have to stay in the dorms for the first year so you could get accustomed to the campus and the buses. When it came to Cal Poly SLO I enjoyed it because it was really interesting and they made their own chocolate. I also heard about how freshman's in engineering create a business for the first year and have like an elevator pitch for it.
This week I presented my social topic which was animal cruelty. I was the last person presenting on the first day. I was really nervous because I needed to fill in five minutes about my topic and we were getting graded based on presenting the information and how we present luke loud voice, eye contact and body language. I was nervous during mine because i only practiced once and I was focused on making a script for the presentation. When I presented mine, I think I provided good examples and I was very detailed. At first I thought that I didn't meet the expectations but when my peers told me that I did good, I was happy. One of the presentations that I liked was Sydney’s because the titles that she had for each slide was a cat call that she experienced. I found it really interesting because she looks like an adult but she is a junior in high school. When she said that when women defend themselves, men tend to respond aggressively and that can lead to physical assault then rape. I have experiences cat calling and the first time it happened, I was really surprised because I was with my brother when it happened and when the person said it, it felt like that is something that is normal for the person to say.
This week was a busy one. We had a professor come in and explain the difference between the female and male brain. I thought that the lesson will be difficult and the vocabulary words would be advance but surprisingly it was really informative and it answered a lot of curious questions. Something that I found to be really interesting was when a female rat was born is injected with testosterone, when they grow up they will not have any kisspeptin protein in her brain and she will never ovulate and will take on the characteristics of a male rat.The reason why I found this interesting is because you can alter female's brain at birth to make it have traits of a male. Moving onto Friday we had a field trip to the place where we will exhibit. When we were there we were given zines and asked what does the cover convey and inside the zine, what does it talk about and what social needs are being taken. Then there were some advocates that came in. Someone that struck me was Diana Pastora Carson. I was able to relate to her because she has a brother with a disability and from him she treated others with respect and helped others be included and have a sense of belonging in their community. Since I also have a brother with a few disabilities I can relate to her passion against injustice/segregation with people that have disabilities.
This week was a pretty fun week. We began our student proposal which was about being an advocate for a social issue. Once we decided what we wanted our social issue to be, mine being about animal cruelty, we had a field trip to Museum of Contemporary Art at San Diego. With the student issue, I had to do research and create a presentation for my social issue. I am pretty passionate about animals and animal rights so when I had the option to choose a social issue, I was excited to choose this one. When we went to the museum there was a certain art piece that struck me which was “no +” which means no more. I thought it was really interesting because you can add something like no + guerra or no + tristeza which means no more war and no more sadness. What I liked about this was about that you can add whatever message that you want to bring more attention to. I just really like the depths of such simple words. The art piece was also related to our social issue project. Once we finished with that we went to create our first zine for our social issue. It was fun to create but I was kind of disappointed about my zine because there was a lot of blank space and it wasn't what I wanted it to be but it was fun creating it. When we finish with our zines we had a gallery walk and there was a few that struck me that I liked. I liked Alexandra's, hers was about menstruation and her zine had images of pictures of the waist down and she put smudges of red between the legs giving them the message of menstruation I really liked it because I was able to relate to it because I go through it too. Her explanation for the reason of doing it was because having periods and such is a taboo to talk about it for some reason even though it is nature. I really enjoyed this week because it made me think about art rather than just staring at them and moving on.
Second semester of junior year started just a few weeks ago, January 3rd. During the first week we were introduced to a new topic that was related to the nervous system and how people react to certain situations they were put in. Along with the neurological science behind a teenagers brain. The first reading we were introduced to was “The Pleasure and Pain of Social Life”. In this reading it explains the neuroscience of social pain and pleasure and how we describe it similarly to physical pain. In reading this article, something that has struck me that has made me understand the neurological science was when someone is excluded from a social group or social event the dACC (dorsal anterior cingulate cortex) reacts to it. Being that the dACC is the region associated with the distress of physical pain. The reason that people react that way is because the connections with mammalians. They are unable to take care of themselves at birth and require to stay connected with their caregivers to provide them with the food and water and increase their chances of survival. So people have a need to connect with others to increase their ‘survival’. Another activity that we did was watching a video of why teenagers have an evolutionary advantage. We had to take visual notes of the video and something that caught my attention was the reason why teenagers actions are connected to risk taking. The reason being that at the neutral ‘bored’ state, dopamine levels are low at the striatum but when we experience something new, dopamine levels rise. It does not only cause risk taking but makes teenagers adapt faster to the environment, retain information faster than adults and are open to trying new things.
A way that I can connect to what I am learning in class to real life, or in this case my life is that I am learning a new language that is Korean. Since I am at a young age I catch on quickly and I am able to keep interest in learning the language. So far what I have learned has kept me intrigued with how the nervous system functions and I am looking forward to learning more. |
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March 2018
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