3rd Quarter Reflection

    Out of all of the books that I have read this quarter, I think that Murderous Minds was probably my favorite, because I have always really been into neurology and psychology, so it really opened up the window to learn more about those subjects. Also, it was the first non-fiction book I have read in a really long time, so it felt refreshing. I also learned a lot from the book. For example, in a past blog I had written the most interesting thing that I read was "an estimated 1 out of 100 adults is a psychopath", so now when I walk around in the mall, or if I'm in my car, I just creepily stare at people and wonder whether they are psychopaths. Overall though, I think that Murderous Minds helped to branch out my taste, and teach me a lot more than I would have learned from rereading Looking For Alaska for the fifth time.

    I think that my biggest improvement in the third quarter has been researching and providing reliable and strong evidence in my pieces. After the argumentative piece, and now with the Holocaust web quest, my skills in researching has improved significantly. For example, I used to use evidence from answers.com or from any website that had an answer that I was looking for; now I try to find more reliable sources like websites that end in .gov, instead of trusting random sites. Going along with researching, I now know what evidence to use and what to throw away. For example, I used to play it safe and add as many quotes of evidence as possible just so I knew that people got the point, but I was so repetitive in my writing that the arguments became really boring. Now, I know that to truly create a strong argument, you have to chose one, or two, to the point, and reliable quotes. This skill has not only helped me in research papers or in argumentative pieces, but it has helped me format all of my other paragraphs, whether that be in a blog or in an AOW. 

    The most challenging part of third quarter was probably the two papers that we had to write, because we haven't had to do that in any of our classes recently,  so it was tough to remember the format and citations. It was also pretty challenging because, personally, I felt like every time I read it, there was something wrong, but I didn't really know how to fix it; whether to change the word choice or to just take out that sentence. Even though, the papers were challenging, they helped me a lot in preparing for high school essays (which I am grateful for). 

    Since the new year, I am really proud that I don't have to stay up until midnight to finish homework since I haven't been procrastinating as much. I think that every year, my new year's resolution is to stop procrastinating and try to finish homework as soon as possible, but I never really accomplish it. Now, I have really been putting in the effort, because the bad habit of not sleeping until midnight or after, was really making me cranky and stuff, so now I have been finishing my homework before 10! I also think that because I am getting rid of procrastinating so much, the quality of my work is more up to par. Since, I'm  not doing homework last minute now, I have more time to actually revise my work and make sure that it is up to par.

Comments: Carlos, Amelia, Abdiel