Essay #13

   

       Building Blocks:
An Essay Looking Back on Middle School and Its Challenges
     8th Grade English

      May 15, 2012

         Mia Perry

As a young child, I watched a television show called Time Warp Trio, an educational yet amusing cartoon about friends who traveled together through time. Although watching the numerous episodes was one of my favorite pastimes, I was too young to be able to fully grasp the life lessons hidden in the depths of all of the action. There is a quote said by one of the featured characters from their adventure to China, “Wushu Were Here”, that was, “To those who are eager to learn, every challenge is a lesson.” Looking back over all of my past middle school years at Pine Point School, there have been 9 main challenges that have helped shaped me as an enthusiastic student.

The first year of middle school, 6th grade, was my introduction to the numerous challenges that I would come across in different forms throughout the rest of my time at Pine Point. The Bird Report, a long term research paper done on a particular bird, was my main challenge during that year, and it taught me multiple skills to help me improve on future projects. First, I learned how to manage my time and take proper notes that would assist me in writing the paper. I developed useful researching techniques after being introduced to the school’s online databases and trustworthy websites. In addition to the bird report, participating in the Greek play helped me learn effective ways to memorize passages and phrases. Being the chorus leader, I had to memorize passages that varied from short to long, and I described the story like a modern narrator would. Now, I use a similar approach of reading the lines and constantly repeating them in my head, and then repeating the same lines out loud. The vocabulary and root words quizzes in English class were another challenge for me, because each quiz only had about five questions, and any wrong answers carried a lot of weight in your overall grade for that quiz. This influenced me to study more and check over my answers multiple times before handing the quiz over to the teacher. 6th grade’s challenges were more intense than I had expected, although they left me well prepared for expectations for the next year. 

The Movie Poster For The Play That We Performed

I was an avid learner in 7th grade, and there were not as many challenges due to the preparation that we had in 6th grade. Nightmare at 20,000 Feet, a play selected for the 7th grade to perform that particular year, taught me to be calm and composed when I need to be. I had to sit still for hours as my peers, acting and portraying different characters, took their turns while I waited to act out my short scene. This challenge bestowed a trait of patience to me that is useful in current English classes to help all of the hardworking students to succeed. In addition, math was slightly challenging for me, but luckily my teacher, Ms. Call, was able to help me with these problems. She taught me multiple lessons about using different methods and acronyms such as PEMDAS, a way to help students grasp the concept of the order of operations. These different strategies continue to be of aid to me in my math classes with Mr. Hambleton. Earth Science, another class led by Ms. Call, was a challenge for me. There were multiple tests and quizzes during those two semesters, but I pulled through those challenges and I was able to get lessons out of them. Since I am not skilled at taking tests, this helped me to find adequate ways to study and read over my notes to effectively know and understand the material. 7th grade was another difficult year for me, yet I learned valuable lessons to help me during 8th grade. 

Striving to succeed and learn more and more each day, I have been a particularly devoted and determined student during this current 8th grade year. In history class, I learned how important our past is, and how previous events have shaped our country and our world into what it is today. We have learned about multiple wars in this class, which has taught me that I can do well, even through difficult struggles. We are currently focusing on how after World War 2, creating bonds with other countries, multiple areas globally have joined the United Nations, a group of countries that have joined together to help us stay peaceful with each other.  This example also reminds me of how I have become a more sociable person and branched out with who I talk to, who I socialize with, and who I eat lunch with. At the start of this year, I stayed around the same group of people that I knew well, and I didn’t feel as if I wanted to socialize with students from other grades. On and after the trip to Washington, DC, I began to grow as a person and talk to more 6th, 7th, 8th and 9th graders. Finally, I obtained new skills to assist me in test taking, since that is one of my main academic weaknesses. We discussed multiple study techniques during our weekly class meetings, and we received handouts, advice, and acronyms to help us improve.  I have been able to apply some of these methods to my science and history tests that we have had during the second semester. Although this year has not been as much of a challenge as previous years, I am still able to learn from my mistakes as an eager learner.

Challenges remind me of building blocks. They wobble, shake, and sway when stacking them on top of each other, and will either create an amazing structure or crash down into disarranged rubble at the end. This symbolizes how people’s lives can be when they are faced with challenges, and how they can either be patient so that everything will come together, or they can rush and be hasty, which causes all of their work to fall apart. As a meticulous worker, I have already encountered multiple stumbles while building my structure, and hope to have a rewarding outcome as I continue to grow and learn.
Self Assessment
1) One writing issue that I am continuing to work on is making transitions that notify the reader that there is a new point in the paragraph without being awkward.
2) One possible strong point in this essay is the use of FAST words to help create a continuous flow throughout most of the sentences.
3) One possible weak point that I see in my writing is that I might need to vary the lengths of my sentences more so that the sentences are not all long or all short.