Looking Back At Grade 11 English

Ha, semester one has been over for more than two months, and I still haven't written my personal reflections for English and physics. Such a procrastinator...

Anyway, grade 11 English was probably the most stressful course that I have had in my school career (so far). For one, its workload was a lot heavier than those of the other courses. For example, I remember that during December, we had this many things due:

• Speech 
• Macbeth culminating activity (mine was a story book)
• ISP essay

This may not seem like too much, but considering that the Christmas holidays started on December 16th, and the fact that these three big assessments were all due before the holidays, I really think that the schedule was a bit cramped.  

Looking Back at Grade 11 Mathematics (Functions)

I don't really have much to say about this course, since there was nothing particularly memorable to me; I moved through the course rather effortlessly. Did pretty well (98), but worse than grade 10 (100).

However, this is not to say that this course was unimportant. Many concepts introduced in this course are actually ones that frequently appear on contests or ones that just come up a lot when solving math questions. For example, trigonometry with radians and geometric and arithmetic series are all things that one must know.

Also, it was through this course that I realized my greatest problem: I often misread the questions. On five out of eight tests, I misread the question somehow, and as a result got 2-4% lower (per test) than I could have gotten. This obviously served as an important lesson to me, and I now make sure that I underline the key information in each question so that I don't make any mistakes.

Looking Back at Grade 12 Chemistry

When I took grade 11 chemistry in grade 10, I got a high mark with a relatively small amount of effort. As a result, I grew a bit overconfident and thought that, hey, grade 12 chemistry would probably be just as easy as the grade 11 course!

Unfortunately, I was wrong. Grade 12 chemistry was — though not by a lot— more difficult than grade 11 chemistry. We received labs which we had to hand in on the day of the experiments, there were more theory-based questions on tests (as opposed to calculation-based questions), and the teacher just seemed to mark harder. For example, for the communication questions on the tests, I would lose 0.5 to 1 mark no matter how much detail I tried to provide.

Anyway, I didn't really study hard until after the second test, when I realized that my mark for the course was a meager 93. But even after that, I didn't work that hard; I rarely did any of my daily homework, since I thought the questions were all very similar anyway. And in retrospect, this lack of practice was probably what caused me to make so many careless mistakes on the tests.

Looking Back at Grade 10 Mathematics

I have always been good at math, and it has always been my favourite subject because it has few assignments and a lot of quizzes and tests that I can easily do good on. Also, math has always been my strongest subject, and it has almost always been the subject that I got the highest mark in (the time that I didn't, it was the teacher's fault...).

This year, however, was different. There were a lot of assignments from the class, most of them stupid and meaningless (see Stupid Assignments and What's the Point?), and it was very painful for me to finish them. Also, this year, the tests were not easy any more. Not because the material got harder, but because the teacher added so many extra things to the standard tests, making the tests a lot more time-consuming to finish (see relevance). I also became confused about the extent to which I should show my work (see Obvious? It's Subjective).

As you can see from the number of posts that I have made because of math class, I was very... stressed out about it. And as a result, I didn't like the subject as much as I used to. I still liked the actual classes (for there was one girl who was very funny), but thinking about "math" began to be less pleasant than before.

Interestingly, despite all this, math still ended up being my best subject. In fact, this math mark was the highest that I have ever gotten! Personally, I think I should have gotten 1-3 percent lower, for the teacher lowered the   denominator for many tests, but who cares...

As for the things that I have learned from the class...there was really only one new thing— trigonometric functions. All the other things, such as quadratic equations, I have learned before, and they were merely review for me (even though I did get better at them).

I hope grade 11 math will go well.

Go back to intro and a list of all posts in my grade ten reflection series

Looking Back at Grade 10 History

Before the start of second semester, I did not look forward to having history at all. Not only did the subject not interest me, the prospect of having tons of essays and other creative assignments was also unpleasant. Furthermore, I had heard that it was very difficult to get a high mark in history class, so this was one more reason for me not to look forward to the class.

Then, second semester started, and my lack of interest soon turned into strong dislike.

I remember how frightened I was after we spent the first two classes just to introduce ourselves to each other, and the third class to do a group presentation (which was unmarked). It was dreadful to think about how future classes would be, because the first three classes were already filled with my top three dislikes about a class—group work, presentation, and wasting time.

Fortunately, things got better very soon. We began to take notes, and interactions between students became a lot less frequent. Sure, the classes were boring—a lot of the time the teacher was answering stupid questions such as "Where is the Atlantic Ocean?"—but at least it was bearable. Also, most of the things that we learned in the class were things that I did not know before, and this made me quite glad.

And, for some reason, we never did the "creative" assignments! We did not have to write a letter and dip it into tea to pretend that it was written sixty years ago, nor did we have to pretend to be women during WWII, trying to create shopping lists. I was extremely relieved that we did not have to do these assignments.

We did, however, have two major group presentations. But surprisingly, I did very well in both of them! I suppose it was because of the amount of time that I was given to prepare, as well as the group members with whom I did the the presentations.

And as expected,

Looking Back at Grade 11 Chemistry

Note: I took this course in grade 10

Overall grade 11 chemistry was an easy course— the marks were mostly based on quizzes and tests, and the course material really wasn't that difficult. As a result, I got a pretty good mark in it.

However, I wish the course was a bit harder and that the teacher covered more material in it.

From my memories, there were about twenty or thirty minutes of free time at the end of almost every chemistry class. In addition, there were probably more than 7 "free study periods," in which we could do whatever we wanted. I feel that we could have accomplished a lot more in the course if the teacher hadn't given us all this free time. Perhaps he could have taught us some of the grade 12 material, or gone deeper into each of the topics.

Nevertheless, I learned quite a lot of stuff in the class. I learned to name the most basic of the organic compounds, to do stoichiometric calculations, as well as to identify the various periodic trends. I also learned more about acids and bases, nuclear reactions, and significant digits. In addition, through the final project at which I failed, I learned about the most common ways in which cancer cells could resist cancer drugs. So it wasn't that I learned nothing from the course, just that I could have learnt a lot more.

Next up: Looking Back at Grade 10 History
Or, go back to intro and a list of all posts in my grade ten reflection series

Looking Back at Grade 10 Civics

I don't really have a lot to say about my civics class, as I don't have much memory about it. This is partly because it was a half-credit class (so I only took it for half a semester), and partly because everything moved on quite smoothly.

Civics class was very easy. I had few assignments, and the assignments that we did have were all very easy, save for the final project. As for quizzes and tests, I only had a few, and they were all so easy that studying for fifteen minutes would be enough

This is not to suggest, however, that I learned nothing from the class. In fact, I believe that I learned much more in civics class than in careers class. In civics, I learned about the brief history of governments and democracy, the different types of government, and the various government roles in Canada. I also learned about the major political parties of Canada as well as their political platforms. In short, I learned many new things in civics class during the short period of time.

The only thing that I didn't quite like about the class was the final project. It was a project where students had to make a presentation about a charity, and its goal was to make students become more active citizens. I never liked this kind of sanctimonious stuff, and obviously I didn't like the project.

Finally, the reason why I quite liked the class was that I got a very good mark in it. Yes, even though I said that it was an easy course, I didn't do that well in the presentations (we had three of them) and was expecting a  final mark of about 94. However, to my surprise, I got a 97! To date, I still can't understand why I got such a high final mark, especially when most of my marks were between 94 and 96. Hopefully it wasn't because the teacher entered the marks wrong...

Next up: Looking Back at Grade 11 Chemistry
Or, Go back to intro and a list of all posts in my grade ten reflection series

Looking Back at Grade 10 Careers

Out of all my grade ten classes, careers class was my least favourite. I learned practically nothing from the class, and it had extremely meaningless assignments with incredibly stupid marking schemes. I was so irritated by the assignments that I made the post I Hate Career Studies!

 So what exactly was irritating about the assignments? Well, for each assignment there were requirements that were not relevant to the assignment at all.  For example, we were asked to include cover pages, graphics and page borders for almost all of the assignments. Even more ridiculous, I would lose about 2% on each assignment because "my border wasn't creative enough!"

I really want to talk about the issue with the page borders, for it was simply unacceptable. For the creativity component of the assignments, we had to "include creative things such as page borders and graphics in our work." And that was exactly what I did. For each assignment, I would draw straight, green lines to outline the page(s), and I would include a picture or two. However, each time I would still get only one out of two marks for the creativity section of the rubric. The reason? My page border wasn't creative enough! This was just plain stupid, because the requirement in the section clearly stated "include page border." It never mentioned that our page borders had to be creative! Also, I included a comparison between my page border and one of the creative page borders, just to show how the creative page borders weren't really aesthetically pleasing...

Is the creative border really better?

Now, setting the assignments aside, there were still many things that were dissatisfying about careers class. For example, we watched a bunch of boring movies that weren't related to the class! Also, the teacher really didn't teach us anything, and most of the time we were just wasting time in class.

Fortunately, not all my memories about careers class are negative, for I liked the final project of the class. The final project was basically to research an occupation that we were interested in, and to write a report about it. True, there were still a lot of stupid requirements. However, I really enjoyed learning more about economists and their work. 

Overall, I am just glad that I finished this stupid course with a good mark.

Next up: Looking Back at Grade 10 Civics

Looking Back at Summer School

Note: In case you didn't read my previous posts, I took the course Sociology, Anthropology and Psychology for summer school.

It's ironic that I am writing this post even though I haven't finished writing the Looking Back at Grade Ten series, which I was supposed to finish a week or two ago. However, I just want to write this post as soon as possible, before my memory of summer school starts fading.

Also, I actually have quite a lot of things to say about summer school. Therefore, in this post I will have many sections,  with each section including a major aspect of summer school that I want to talk about.

Teacher's Misunderstandings
At times I was very irritated because of the teacher's own lack of understanding of the subject matter. She often gave out examples or explanations that clearly didn't apply, and at times it seemed that she really didn't understand the material herself.

As a result, it was very difficult for me to write the tests. I couldn't answer a question based on what I knew, but instead I had to answer it based on what I thought she knew. For example, she once misunderstood the meaning of "quota sampling," so on a test when we were given cases to see whether the sampling method was quota sampling or not, I had to circle the options that she would have circled (which were wrong).

This task could sometimes become even harder

Looking Back at Grade 11 Computer Science

Note: Even though this is a grade eleven course, I took it in grade ten.


Computer programming has always been something that I am good at and interested in, so I was very excited to be in this class at the very beginning of the school year. Indeed, I easily mastered the things that were taught in the class and I enjoyed doing the programming assignments. However, there were a lot of annoyances that made the experience in programming class a lot less enjoyable.

First was the marking scheme and how my teacher marked. She made the programming assignments so easy that a perfect or close-to-perfect mark was almost guaranteed for each of the assignments. As a result, even those who were not very good at programming got pretty high marks. And as everyone ended up getting very similar marks in the programming assignments, the reading assignment marks became the factor that decided whether your term mark was higher than the others. This placed me at a slight disadvantage because I wasn't very good at those assignments. Fortunately, I did better than most on the exam, so my final mark was still higher than them. However, I thought that the gap was a bit too small...

Yes I know that I  am sounding a bit arrogant, especially because I am referring to those who got 7-10% lower than me. However, judging by the questions that they asked me and how frequent they asked me those questions, it's pretty safe to say that they should have gotten a lot lower. Anyway, I will now set the issue of marks aside, as I believe that I have done enough ranting about marks already.

Looking Back at Grade 10 Science

The first thing that I could remember from science class was that it was boring. Almost everyday, the teacher would tell us to open our text books and ask for a volunteer to read a particular section of it. I often got so bored that I wanted to sleep. She would also do her power-point lessons, and those were even more soporific because during those lessons the lights would be out.

The second thing that I could remember from the class was that we did quite a lot of presentations. Actually, we only did two, but since usually there would only be one presentation in each class, two were considered to be a lot. And as usual, I did horrible in the presentations. Not just my usual horrible, by extremely horrible because I practised so little that it could well be said that I didn't practice at all. I mumbled through both of them, and I also skipped quite a lot of content because of my nervousness.

Now thinking back, I am actually glad that I have had these two presentations. These failures would always remain in my mind and they would always be served as a reminder of how bad I can perform in an oral presentation if I don't practice. They have actually motivated me to work hard on my subsequent presentations (even though I still did horrible on all of them).

I don't have much to say besides these two things. The course was generally easy, and my teacher was an easy marker. And besides the things that I learned in the optics unit, I would probably use everything that I have learned in this class in the future. Mitosis and the organ systems would be touched up in biology, and of course the basic things that we learned in the chemistry unit, such as balancing chemical equations, would be used in any future chemistry course(s).
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Next up: Looking Back at Grade 10 Science
Go back to intro and a list of all posts in my grade ten reflection series

Looking Back at Grade 10 French

Oh such a year of disappointment for French! At first I was doing very well in it, but then suddenly I started receiving bad marks for assignments and projects that I thought had good quality. I was fine with this, though, because perhaps it was just that I got complacent and in the process lowered my standard for "good quality."

The real disappointment came with the summary unit. My French teacher had very strange (and to me, unreasonable) expectations for our summaries that I simply couldn't accept. For example, she wanted us to paraphrase the original texts to an extent where "my neighbors" would become "the people that live beside me." This was intolerable. Not only was this unreasonable, it also made making summaries a much harder and more time-consuming task. As a result, I only got a 72% on the reading exam! I really didn't think that I deserved this mark, because I was positive that I didn't do this bad. Anyway, because of this horrible, horrible mark, my French mark dropped below 90% and I knew that with only the writing exam left, it'd be impossible for my mark to rise up again. That was probably my saddest moment during the first semester.

Perhaps it was hugely because of the frustration that I had in French, I have decided not to take the course next year. My time table was already filled out with other courses, and the discontent about the subject simply stopped me from trying to make space on the time table for it. So unfortunately I probably won't be improving my French skills in the future, and will probably forget all the grammar rules that I have learned this year. In fact, I don't think I would be able to remember anything that I have learned from this class a few years later. How sad (I am not saying this sarcastically). 

Next up: Looking Back at Grade 10 Science
Or, go back to intro and a list of all posts 

Looking Back at Grade 10 English

English:

Like last year, my English mark was my worst mark. However, unlike last year, I was very satisfied with my performance in English class and I had almost no regrets because I felt that I have (almost) tried my best. Also, even though the actual number of my mark was not very impressive, the mark was very good if compared to the rest of the class. Oh, why do I make it sounds as if the only thing I care is my marks? No, absolutely not, at least not for English.

One of the most important things that I have done in English class, or in the whole school year, was writing my reading journals. At the time that I was writing these journals, I couldn't think of anything to write for weeks, so as a result I really had to look into the tiniest things in my life and in the book (that I chose to do the reading journal with). However, now that I think about it, these things weren't tiny at all. They were all very important, just that they were the things that I had ignored in the past. Anyway, writing these reading journals had enabled me to really think through all the things in my life, and this has allowed me to understand myself and what I believe in.

Fahrenheit 251 by Ray Bradbury, the book that I read for my reading journals. Funny how this book was also about thinking...

It'd be unfair not to give credit to all the other meaningful assignments that I had received in English class. Each of these assignments required me to write an opinion paragraph on a topic that I have never really taken consideration of.  In order to write a well-justified paragraph on each topic, I had to really think through the topics, and as a result I would know my true opinion on the them. For example, for one of the assignments I had to write a paragraph on whether I think clothes are important to my identity. When hearing the question, I immediately thought "no." However, after thinking through the question, I realized that my answer would actually be a "yes."

Also, these English writing assignments/projects has inspired me to start writing this blog. Writing this blog may not be a big achievement, but it does allow me express my (unhappy) feelings and it is definitely a better pass-time than playing online games. Also, it can help me preseve information or thoughts that I will probably forget in years.

One more thing: I should talk about the speech that I did in the class. Even though I got a horrible mark on it—a 72%—I really had fun with it. I did my speech on game theory, a topic that really interested me, and I do not regret choosing it as my topic as I had learned a great deal about the topic because of this speech. Still, the mark should be low enough for me to realize that I must do better next year.

Oh, one last thing—I promise—one other special thing about my English class was that I met some really interesting people in it! Since we sat in little groups, we all talked a lot within our groups and as a result I have gotten the opportunity to know my classmates better and I realized that some of them are actually very funny and/or nice. I've even made friends with some of them!

Next up: Looking Back at Grade 10 French
Or, go back to intro and a list of all posts

Looking Back at Grade 10 (Intro+ Links)

I have been wanting to write this post since about three weeks ago. However, since I didn't know my marks for my second semester classes, I was reluctant to write anything at all, fearing that knowing my marks would make me want to change the content of the post.

Now that I know all my marks, I can finally start writing! I'll write about my first semester classes first, and then my second semester classes. Also, among the classes in each semester, I will sort them using the marks that I got in them, in ascending order. Interestingly, this way all my courses will be in order of the marks that I got in them, for my worst second-semester mark (careers) was higher than my best first semester marks (science and computers).

So here we go (I have decided to split it into several posts, since each section is very long, and cramming them all into one post is too unpleasant to read):
English
French
Science
Computers
Careers
Civics
Chemistry
History
Math
(Will update as I have more content)