End of the Year Reflection

 

 

 

I have learned many things this year, whether from difficulty or success. These are some of the feelings, experiences, and lessons I’ve learned on my first year in middle school.

I remember the first day of school. My hands were sweating more than a NBA player during a game. I spent the last week of freedom looking for a book we were supposed to read during the summer. I woke up as early as 6 o’clock looking for a library that would be open during the Labor Day holiday, but came up with no luck. I looked all over websites to see if I could find a free eBook version. When I finally got into school with no idea what the book was about I was a nervous wreck. I was freaked out when it was time for language arts. I walked in and heard a kid telling the teacher that the book was great. The teacher replied, “Hope you read it well, because we’re going to have a quiz on it today.” I almost blew up but my emotion quickly changed when the teacher said that she was just kidding. From then on I learned never to wait until the last minute for things because next time I might not have such a lucky break. This year I will get that summer reading book without the last-minute rush.

Wet. No sleep. Uncomfortable. This was camping in New Hampshire last year. Even though we had a tarp above the tent, drip by drip, water was still leaking in. My parents were up all night drying and putting towels on the corners of the wet, big tent. The next day we went into town and bought a giant tarp big enough so that it could cover the entire thing and you couldn’t see the bright red tent any more. That night another storm hit and the sound of raindrops was like mice scampering on the roof. I woke up in the morning expecting a wet sleeping bag, but to my amazement the tent was dry! The tarp protected the tent from the rain and not even a drop of water could be found in it. Learning a lesson the hard way can be more satisfying whether it’s getting a summer reading book on time or protecting a tent against the rain.

A problem I had was waking up on time for school. Every day I would have an alarm on, but all I did was turn it off and return silently to my dream. I tried going to sleep earlier, but in the morning I would still fall back asleep. Almost every day I would get to school five minutes before class, kick my bag into my locker and run off into Chorus or Intro to Law. One afternoon while I was at home I sat in my bed and thought of ideas to solve my problem. Then it hit me – maybe I could use two alarm clocks, one to get me stirred up and another one to really wake me up! That night I set up my alarms and it worked! My mom was impressed and I got into school on time. I now don’t have a problem with sleeping too late anymore and can always wake up on time.

Another difficulty I had during this year was keeping my grades up. On the first day of school I didn’t have much homework and I found out that I could just do all of it after school and come home with little or no homework. After that realization, I thought that middle school would be a breeze until there was a mini-quiz on quantitative and qualitative observations in science. A mini-quiz is a small five-question quiz that was not supposed to be hard, but should still be studied for. I thought a five-question quiz wouldn’t be hard at all and went home with an empty backpack. The next day I quickly handed in the quiz and looked forward to an A+. When I got my quiz back I was appalled. I saw four x-marks and only one check! It turned out that I mixed up the definitions for the two words. If I had studied I would have gotten the four correct instead of four wrong. After that horrible mark, I stepped it up and did the extra credit and handed in all of the homework. Two days later, I saw my average go up from a twenty to a ninety-nine! I know now that you have to study for any quiz, big or small.

This year has been fun: being with my family, making new friends and learning lessons that will change my life. Next year I hope to improve on these in order to avoid pitfalls and maximize possibilities for success as I enter 7th grade.