Monday, February 10, 2014

Ana Paula Damha - 1st semester reflection

First Semester Reflection 

  As Martin Luther King Jr. once said, "You don't have to see the whole staircase to take the first step", and profoundly believing in this, last year was the year I chose to change my overall academic performance and become the student I always wanted to be, with the goal of applying to the Stanford University in the future, possibly to major in Biochemical or Industrial Engineering. 




   When I look back to last semester, I consider myself happy and satisfied with my overall achievements and developments, even though I still want to pursue several goals and reach higher achievements. I believe I still have a lot to improve and strengthen about my academic and extra-curricular performance in order to be the ideal student not only for ISC, but also for Stanford. Over the last semester, I was able to improve my GPA, making it 4.0, as well as improving my abilities in Math and my participation in extracurricular activities. Throughout last year, I was the president of the Global Issues Network (GIN) team at my school, for which I went to Ecuador in order to present a project about government corruption in Brazil. I am currently the MUN director at ISC, as well a member of the Green Team and CSIP team at my school. These and other projects make me excited to learn and achieve a high level of knowledge in several distinct areas, but there is still more to achieve: my current goal is to enroll in the National Honor Society (NHS), as well as to be chosen as a Chair in the BRAMUN meeting this year and participating on the STUCO.
 
I always believed that organization was the key for doing well in ISC, and this year I could prove to myself that by organizing my work and properly managing my time, it was possible to get everything well-done on time. I think I made good use of my time, as I was able to hand in all my work on the proper deadline, but I don't believe the time management I do now is going to be enough for the IB, and therefore I am planning on finding better ways to get organized with my work in order to successfully achieve the IB diploma. Even though my learning and my grades improved greatly, I don't believe I have made full use of all resources that were available to me, so I plan to go deeply into all that ISC offers me in order to be more organized for the next two years of High School that are ahead of me.

In order to improve my general performance at school, I intend not only to plan my time better and get involved in more projects, but also improve myself as a person in order to make High School less stressful. Some changes like working better in groups, since I enjoy working independently, or perhaps looking for help when I need it can provide me great help, and I am willing to go after these changes as well.

Up and above all, I will seek for motivation everyday, and will make my dreams the source of my inspiration to change and become the best student I can possibly be, so that one day I can reach the staircase after taking many small steps.