I think that I practiced my writing skills especially well, as well as my reading skills. The only problem is that I didn’t really study all that often. I didn’t study that much outside of school, and when I did study anything other than reading or writing, it was for a few minutes at most.
I think that I could study a lot more at home to make my grade even better. Sure, I’m doing fine without studying. But, it’ll get me further if I do. An example of something I have spent a lot of time learning about is how to properly use things like particles in sentences. It’s been a hassle, but I’m getting there. I’d really appreciate feedback on a lot of my work, and I’d prefer it being said to me directly. Then, I could understand it a lot clearer.
Over the second semester, I’ll still utilize Japanese. To me, it’s too interesting to just forget just like that. I’m going to practice some reading over the next little while. I hope that it helps me improve.
If I could travel back, I’d definitely tell myself to study more. I’d also tell myself to try and expand my vocabulary beyond just what we’ve been taught, so I’m able to extend further than I already am.
Original Logo DesignLogo Scaled Down (Scale Factor: 1/2)Logo Scaled Up (Scale Factor: 2)
This was a math project in which we were tasked with creating a logo. Once we made our logo, we had to redraw it at a scale factor of 2 or 3, and then redraw it at a scale factor of 1/2. For my Logo, I decided to draw a crown. (I know the pictures suck. Give me a break.)
Core Competency Reflection
In this project, I demonstrated some Core Competencies. Specifically, Creative and Critical thinking. It takes a while for good ideas to come, obviously. So, when ideas don’t come to me right away, I look for some inspiration through music. After I listened for a while, my logo idea just popped up in my head. I demonstrated Critical Thinking when I was trying to figure out how big I wanted my original logo to be. I had to be open-minded when looking for an alternative solution when it came to the size of my logo. Honestly, I used to think making a logo was easy. After doing this small project, however, I realized it’s more difficult than it’s chalked up to be. This was like a mini-exploration, almost. I do want to find a way to plot a more complicated design that’s a little kinder to scale. I feel like if I asked for some feedback, I could bounce off the ideas of other people a little bit.
School in Japan is different than school in Canada. That’s a given. Why wouldn’t it be? There has to be some differences. There is in everything. Especially school. For starters, high school in Japan is grades 10, 11 and 12. I’d still be in middle school if I lived in Japan. They also wear uniforms. Most schools, at least. In Canada, only private schools have uniforms. I’d know, I’VE BEEN TO ONE. In Japan, the students are in charge of cleaning up after school. The more I think about it, the scarier the thought of it is. These are just SOME of the differences.
I feel like kids should have a little more responsibility in schools here. Cleaning up their classroom at the end of the day, at the very least. Some people our age are pretty irresponsible, so I think this could help fix that a little bit.
I suck at rock paper scissors. I’m GARBAGE at rock paper scissors. Every time I win a singular game of rock paper scissors it is pure luck, I swear. If I got any leftovers in school, I’d have some sort of blessing or something, I don’t even know.
The mascot that I chose is Shihotan. She’s from the Tokyo prefecture and she’s affiliated with the Tokyo Judicial Scrivener Association. She’s described as an “innocent white rabbit” and “is full of a sense of justice and ambition”. Honestly, I didn’t have any major reason for picking her. I just thought she was cute, and I like cute things, obviously.
Japanese Mascots have this sort of charm compared to Canadian ones that I just can’t really explain. There’s also a lot more of them. I can’t remember all that many mascots from Canada, but if I researched some more about Japanese ones, I think they’d just be more memorable to me.
I think that mascots are popular in Japanese because of how unique each one is. When it comes down to design and movement, each Japanese mascot is unique in both their designs and their movements. The creativity is obvious. As much as it is charming, though, I think Canada could take a different approach when it comes to mascots. It would be nice seeing some of these things becoming really popular, but I think that there has to be some originality to the ‘aesthetic’ of the mascots.
If Coquitlam had a mascot I think it would look like:
How I manage my stress in my day to day life is very… questionable. I care for my wellbeing regardless, but that doesn’t always mean I’m doing it all that well. I often write things out to calm myself down, or go play some games that calm myself down. Honestly, some of the games that I play calm me down (like rhythm games), while others just make me more agitated (shooter games, fighting games, etc.). So it’s both a cause of my stress and a coping mechanism. Sometimes it’s more of a stressor than a coping mechanism, and sometimes it’s the other way around. It’s helped me calm down on many occasions, but at the same time, I’ve gotten very stressed out because of some things that happen on social media, or because of games. But, I’ve found ways to use technology to support my wellbeing. An example of this is a self-care app that I’ve downloaded on my phone, which has helped me calm down a lot when I get stressed out.
Core Competency Reflection
I can explain when something is unfair and advocate for others. Oftentimes, I find myself in situations were something is unfair. I’m able to stand up for myself and explain to someone else when I find that something is unfair. It may be stressful to do so, but I manage well enough, even under that stress.
I find it easy to be part of a group. I don’t find it difficult to work with other people. I find it easy to contribute to things, even when the group manages to stress me out. Taking up a role and responsibility isn’t all that hard for me to do.
I am kind to others, and support others when they need it. Especially with people that I don’t know, I try to be helpful and supportive. I know how stress can affect someone’s mind, and I know that not everyone will be having the best of days. So, I try to be supportive of others when they’re trying new things, or doing something that they’re not comfortable with.
We want to have enough money to pay a down-payment of 15% (minimum) for a house. The places that we’re looking at all cost around $800,000, so we need to save up $120,000 for the down-payment. The house market has stagnated, so the prices aren’t expected to change in the next three years. We already have $80,000 saved up for a down-payment, and every year, we make an additional $10,000 to add to those savings. But, even with the additional $30,000, we’re still short of our goal. So, what can we do do get there?
Our options include a 1 year annual, non-redeemable GIC with an interest rate of 3.5%, a 3 year non-redeemable GIC with an interest rate of 4.2%, and stock investments. Of course, we can also use a standard savings account to help reach our goal. We can divide the money however we want, as well.
So, keeping our options and our goal in mind, this is my solution. During the first year, we can put $60,000 into a 3 year GIC. Then, we can put $20,000 towards stock investments. The interest rate for the 3 year GIC is 4.2%, so by the end of our first year, we’ll have $62,520 from the GIC. Now, let’s say that the stock market isn’t doing so well during the first year. We’re losing about 6.9%. So by the end of our first year, we’ll have $18,620 from our stock investments. We also earned ourself an additional $10,000 to add on. We’ll just keep that in a savings account. So, we have a grand total of $91,140 at the end of our first year. Obviously, we’re short by quite a bit. But now for the second year. The $62,520 should be going up because of our interest rate, so now we have $65,145.84 saved up from the GIC. The stock market’s doing better now, so we’re gaining 7.5%. So, by the end of our second year, we have $20,016.50 from our stock investments. We have another 10,000 to put into our savings account, giving us another 20,000 dollars, and bringing our grand total up to $105,162.34. And now for our third year. We have a total of $67,881.97 from our GIC. And this year, the stock market’s still doing quite well, so we now have $21517.74 from our stock investments. And at the end of our third year, we have another $10,000 to add to our savings account, bringing our total from our savings account up to $30,000. Add all of that together and you get our grand total of $119,399.71. We’re less than $1000 short of our goal by the end of our three years.
Visual Representation (Numbers = Years Passed); Made using Excel
My Justification
I thought this solution would work out, even though it’s short of our goal. Why? Because this is only one outcome. Stocks aren’t all that predictable, after all. It’s hard to tell whether or not they’ll go up or down, but if they go up, then the risk is really worth it, in my opinion. After all, you can still earn a bit of money to reach your goal relatively quickly if you have less than $1000 left to acquire. And if the stock market’s doing very well, you might be able to make some extra money to keep.
Collaboration With my Group
Working with my group went pretty well. I’m honestly kind of surprised that I found it kind of nice, considering the fact that I normally don’t really enjoy group work all that much. My group members helped clear things up when I was confused or didn’t completely understand what we were doing. Most of us shared our jobs, too. Sometimes, I would calculate, sometimes another person would calculate, while someone else wrote down the calculations. We all contributed and brought up different solutions and ideas. I didn’t use any of the solutions that my group proposed, though. The solutions that we brought up all worked pretty well, but I wanted to try and come up with a solution that was unique to me. If I were to rate my ability to collaborate with my group members, I think I’d give myself a 3.
Core Competency Reflection
I can advocate for myself. When we were talking about making up our own solutions, other people took the lead. But, I also brought up what I thought was a good idea.
I can take on roles and responsibilities in a group. Everyone shared different roles while we worked. I was able to take my own role and be responsible while we were working together.
I can work with others to achieve a goal. When we were doing group work, we were all coming up with ideas and trying to make sense of the problem. I think that we all bounced off of each other pretty well, and that helped us reach our goal quickly.
I can reflect on my thinking. After the group work was finished each day, I often thought about what I had brought up and what I had done. I often thought about how I could’ve done things differently, and where I might’ve went wrong. I actively tried to understand what we were doing, and I actively reflected on my previous thought process when it came to the assignment given to us.
I pickedくちさけおんな (Kuchisake onna, also known as the Slit-Mouthed Woman) to research (because why not). Ever since I was 9 (I THINK), I had this small urban legend phase, so I’d watch these little videos on YouTube about random ghosts and spirits, fully aware of what they were about. And that’s how I first found out about her. Ever since then, she was one of the only yokai that I ended up remembering, and that’s why I knew right away that I wanted to pick her.
Kuchisake onna is the ghost of a mangled woman. She wishes to ‘wreck vengeance on the world’ after what had happened to her when she was alive. Her face is slit from ear to ear in a bloody smile (hence her name), and she often hides it with a mask, a fan, or some type of cloth or handkerchief. She will appear during the night, catching the attention of those who would travel alone during the night. (She’s also fond of hard candy.)
Kuchisake onna is known for sneaking up on her victims and asking them (while covering her face first, of course) if they think she’s beautiful. If her victim says yes, she will take off her mask, revealing her slit, bloody mouth. Then, she will ask if she’s beautiful again. If her victim says no or screams out of fear, she slashes his face from ear to ear to match her own. If the victim lies and says yes again, then she leaves him alone… not. She follows him home and brutally murders him in the night. (Real family-friendly.)
Yes, I think that Japanese Yokai differ from western monsters and mythological creatures, but to some extent. While there are some differences, there are also some similarities when it comes to ghosts, spirits, and demons. Some have the same idea, that being haunting or wreaking vengeance on the world, while others differ entirely (like some yokai that bring good fortune to households, etc.) I can’t say this for certain, because I actually don’t know that much about that many western creatures, but that’s the idea that I’m getting.
For now, I’m going to say I don’t. Why? Simply because I haven’t actually seen one for myself. I’d see them as I would see a story, if that makes any sense. If I do happen to stumble across one somehow, or someone or something manages to change my mind, then maybe I might believe in the future. But for now, I can’t say I do.
The mousetrap car that I designed and built (side view)A top view (a very weird looking one but)
For this class, we were tasked with designing and creating a mousetrap car. We created our own designs after watching a few videos that gave us some tips and tricks to maximize the capabilities of our cars, and then drew and laid out four different designs. We picked the one that we thought was the best, and proceeded to build it ourselves. Then, once the cars were built, we tested them to see how fast and how far each of them would go.
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My car measured about 20 centimeters axel to axel, which was a little over what I originally had planned. I made the frame out of wood, and I had three wheels. One small one in the front, and two bigger ones in the back. I wanted the car to go fast (which is why I made it smaller than our maximum length of 30 centimeters axel to axel), but I also wanted some distance out of it, since that was what was going to be taken into account, anyways. I taped the ends of the wheels so there’d be less friction. As for how it performed…
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Well. It performed better than I expected, honestly. I thought it wasn’t going to pass, and I stressed myself out way more than I should’ve when I was building it. But it traveled 18 feet in 4.8 seconds, which was… well. Passing, at least. I think that I could’ve done a lot better, though. Maybe if I had made the wheels bigger, it could’ve gone further than what it did. And I would definitely use a different material for my lever. The skewers I used worked out eventually (I had to use two since the first one snapped right before my original test), but if I had used a stronger material, I think I could’ve done better.
At least the car worked. I can’t stop thinking about how much I stressed myself out building it.
Made on canva.comMade on canva.comMade on canva.com
Work Cited:
Hickey, Chelsea. “Teenagers: Why You Should Care About Your Digital Footprint.” Social Media Club, 22 May 2013, https://socialmediaclub.org/blog/from-the-clubhouse/teenagers-why-you-should-care-about-your-digital-footprint/.
“How to Protect Your Digital Footprint (Expert Tips).” Cyberpedia, https://www.bitdefender.com/cyberpedia/how-to-protect-your-digital-footprint/. Accessed 20 Sept. 2022.
Protecting Your Online Identity and Reputation (for Teens) – Nemours KidsHealth. https://kidshealth.org/en/teens/online-id.html. Accessed 20 Sept. 2022.
What Every Teen Needs to Know About Their Digital Footprint | Net Nanny. https://www.netnanny.com/blog/what-every-teen-needs-to-know-about-their-digital-footprint/. Accessed 20 Sept. 2022.
Personal/Social Competency Reflection
I know that my Digital Footprint can have a negative impact on my life. If I say something without thinking, that can easily be taken out of context. If I post something without thinking, it can be screenshotted before I’m able to delete it. Once I say something, or once I post something, it’s going to be there forever. I can’t get rid of it. So, I’m going to be making an effort to always make sure that I’m thinking logically and taking a breather when I feel it’s necessary, so I don’t say anything that I can’t take back.
You always have choices when it comes to the internet. You can choose to be anonymous, and you can choose to show yourself. Showing yourself is always a bad idea on the internet, however. I always choose how I want to present myself on the internet, by choosing and changing my screen name. I also make the choice to not comment on any posts that I might come to regret later on in life. It’s always my choice, and that’s how it’s going to be.
Honestly, I’ll admit that some of my hobbies have come from the internet. A part of my interest in art does come from what I see online. The talented people that put effort into their drawings really makes me want to try and be like them. But, at the same time, I’m always remembering that I have to be myself, and not model myself into other people, or a ‘more ideal’ version of myself. The internet can really make people think they need to change, when they really don’t.
I started doing chores at the RIPE AGE of seven, because my parents were practically begging me to start doing SOMETHING to help around the house. So I did one, simple thing. Which was simply putting my clothes away. I can’t say that I still do chores consistently, though. I have no idea how I am still getting an allowance. Probably because I do something twice a week or something like that. I do think I should start doing more to help, though.
Now, PERSONALLY. I think that children should be growing up with SOME of Japanese’s ideals when it comes down to independence. I just think it should start a little later in life compared to Japan. I mean, we watched an almost four year old go to get miso for her mom. Walking all that way at four seems too risky, especially with the dangers we have here in Canada. I’d think that eight years old would be a better age to start going out on their own to get things for their parents.
And I’m gonna be real here. I didn’t get to start walking to school until I was in seventh grade. Not even at the start of the year either. I didn’t get to start until like, May or June. Mostly because my dad was mega paranoid about it, but whatever. I didn’t get to go anywhere by myself until the beginning of grade eight. And I still haven’t gotten to take transit by myself. At all. It’s all because my parents are kind of scared, I think.
