The school year so far...

I've been going to this school for nearly two years, so I think I've formulated a pretty solid, albeit complicated, opinion of it. One thing I like about FAIR Downtown is the art. I love art class. It's probably my favorite time of the day, and I like that art is integrated into other classes. Often, larger projects have some wiggle room for creativity, so I can tailor it to my own style and make something unique.

However, the school does have room for improvement. I would like to see basically more of everything; more art and more learning and more options for what classes to take, etc. I think if the staff spent more time thinking about the curriculum they could formulate plans to give us interesting information more efficiently. I say this because I miss academic support. I miss academic support and I think the classes are too long! Last year I had a nice half hour to do my homework. But I also used that time to just read about and look at interesting things. Often, throughout the day, things come to mind that I want to learn more about. A teacher will say a word or mention a concept that I want to learn more about, and academic support was a time where I could pursue those interests.

I think the class I am doing the best at is painting. I'm not talking about grades per say, but more in just terms of productivity. Almost every day, I go there right after I finish eating and I don't leave until I have like three minutes to get to class. I basically just love doing art, and I love painting, and I love Mrs. Conwell. She sort of lets me do whatever, which is great because the art room provides a lot of materials and a lot of possibilities. For example, right now I am working on stencils. I make the stencil in photoshop and then trace it over on a transparency. Then I put that on the overhead projector and make the large version, which I can then cut and paint. Most of these things I do not have at home, so it's great.

I think the things I am most struggling with is not a particular class, but just homework in general. I just have this problem where when I get home, I want nothing to do with the first six hours of the day. At home I do many things; play music, listen to music, watch movies, and just hang out in general. This goes back to academic support. When I'm in school I have the momentum of all the activity going on, so I can do my work really fast. But when I go home I am tired and I just want to jam to some tunes, you know? So I guess I just have to buckle down and do it. I have found that if I do my homework right when I get home it's the best, but that takes so much willpower...

My plans for 4th quarter are pretty much "stay the course". 3rd quarter I didn't do so good, so I'm just going to have to buckle down, like I said. It's like running a race. At the end of it, you're tired and you just want it to end. But when you see the finish line, if you just push yourself one more notch you can sprint to the finish and finish strong. I actually did that once and went from about 5th place to 3rd. So yeah I am going ot make this promise: all A's for 4th quarter. not even an A-