Hi, my name is Kara and if you’ve read some of my blogs, you might know that I like loud music, drawing, and writing a lot (in both ways). I’m in grade 7, so I won’t be going to high school next year, but I’m excited for grade 8. I’ll have the same teacher, but one down is probably that my friends aren’t in my class.
Some things that challenged me this year were probably my mental health. I’ve made a few posts on this, but I think it was mainly really bad at the beginning of this school year. COVID took a toll on all of us, I think, and I couldn’t focus on a lot of my work. I didn’t like the big change in routine at first, but I got really into it after a while.
What I hope to accomplish more next year is to be more focused on my work and my grades, but also working on myself as a human being person. I think one thing I start to do is really neglect my hobbies and mental health when I get too pressured with my work, and I really can work on doing stuff for me and not for school during the summer, so that’ll probably help. I also want to find some more things that I enjoy doing, because my hobbies are very limited currently. It’d help with my OWL presentations, and probably be a good fuel regenerator for me.
I think I definitely learned a lot this year, not just about myself but literally in class. Some things I really liked doing were blogging (obviously), doing OWL presentations (only the ones I actually liked i.e. the drawing ones), and ELA related stuff, reading books and what not. I got into journaling and my writing’s really improved (not that it was bad to begin with), and Writer’s Workshop was a fun activity to do. The presentations did give me some anxiety, which is weird because in grade 5/6, where I had very low self esteem and confidence, I could do a presentation perfectly and clearly. I have been getting better at my public speaking, though, so I’m not too worried about it.
All I’m really hoping for is that next year, we’ll be at least more normal than before, without masks and social distancing (I am still fidgety about not doing those protocols, but it would be way better especially for people who haven’t adjusted to COVID restrictions in the past 1.5 years. I personally have kind of gotten used to them, and I think it would take a while for me to get used to it not being like this. It would be better, though.