Well, Hello.

     Lately I've been reminiscing about the things I've been blessed with. Sometimes I wonder how different my life would be if I snapped out of feeling bad for myself in leadership would be. The reason at the top of my head that I didn't join Leadership my second year was that I thought I failed. That I didn't deserve to be in leadership after the mess I made in 7th grade. I wish I knew before that it wasn't exactly true and that if I did join another year that I would've known how to make sure I had improved my bad qualities. There are times when I always thought maybe I'd never let myself drag but my schedule is catching up to me. I finally caught up and realized everything I was doing wrong, I don't act clueless, never confused, learned to prioritize and wished that I was like this in 7th grade but sometimes things are meant to be that way. Since there's probably no one reading this, I'm gonna just talk about my after-leadership experience. Not knowing how I was going to do my 8th grade, I decided to try out something new and joined band. That was the turning point for me when I really learned how to be disciplined and made great friends while playing my heart out with other people and having a fun time side by side with these amazing people. Within a few months of the beginning of band, I made it into advanced band. I practiced harder and harder everyday because the was a huge gap of my playing and those of other people but I eventually made it to be one of the strongest players of the band, making it into advanced honor band. Anyways for my other classes, I did really good, nothing but A's and B's for the first semester but towards the 3rd & 4th I was always sick and very ill.
     Somewhere along the line I figured out that leadership was the reason why I was able to get my shtuff together in 8th grade and understand what was wrong and what there is to let go of. For me, that was my fear. For some reason I always feared doing things wrong in leadership that it ended up being everything I do, I do it the way I feared I would. If I stayed the same way I was in my first weeks then things would've ended differently maybe I could've been great friends with Mr. Ing. It makes me laugh that I do these blogs now and I used to always miss blogs even though they were such easy things to do and are easy grades but smh at old me :( Now in High School, I finished Marching band which took up my schedule 4 days a week usually till 8:30 or sometimes midnight when there's football games to perform in the stands. Then there's concert band which takes up another day of the week so my last 2 available days are taken by student council. It's quite the task but I enjoy the challenge and helps me keep up with all of my work like how I expect it to be in the future. All of this leads back to my leadership experience which I always have been grateful to experience. If there's even a small chance you'll see this, thank you Mr. Ing, for the amazing opportunity you gave to me on the 5th of September that year. I also always heard about Jerald #2 which makes me laugh lots, but eventually I hope Jerald #2 if he hasn't yet can turn that around and learn from those mistakes. It's been a fun one. With much joy and hopefully a wish full of friends and family, Merry Christmas. -Toad, Picktwo, and Jerald

The Final Blog

     My leadership journey was so bumpy that it's too dangerous to put a roller coaster on it. A basic summary is that I started off great, and I started dropping a lot. So it all started when Laila recommended me, and I got into leadership after an eh interview. I was so happy and determined to do good. Which I did, for only the first quarter. The second quarter, I had a hard time following things. Our whole period started falling around that point and that's when I started to stand out, negatively. I had my vest taken away and it took a lot of effort and determination to earn it back, but it wouldn't be easy. Then after that problem was resolved, we moved onto Quarter 3, which means YEARBOOK! So honestly I didn't have a mistake as BAD as the ones made in the second, but I did need a lot of reminders and close calls before I actually could do this properly, but at the end of the day, I didn't get the grass shaded properly and I had to get it edited for me because I was absent for almost a week. That's also a problem this school year, my attendance. I'm always sick, and other than Chad there's always people in Period 5 that are always in the "sick chain". But this is just negativity in these past sentences. The school year wasn't really horrible, but neither was it the best. It's either good or alright but I wouldn't say outstanding. Other students stood out more than others, and people who weren't up to expectations were categorized. There's a lot of things I don't know what could've made this school year worse. So I'd just rather be more happy that we didn't have a rough school year and a rather good one, especially in the first and fourth quarters. I mean after all our class was great, we had a few bumps along the way but it's okay because we all became closer and that's what makes us Leadership 2015-2016.

     Highlights of the year: Well for starters, getting accepted into leadership was probably the main highlight of this whole blog. Retreat was amazing. We didn't have a lot of glaring mistakes or problems this year. I got closer with most of the people in leadership, especially my group leaders, Chad and Deriecka. I got to meet new people and experience something different. Learn more things that make so much more sense and makes me seem like an idiot. There is a lot more highlights but I can't remember most of them because there was a lot going on in most of them. Lowlights of the year: Well for starters, my period ran into some problems along the way and me and Miah eventually dropped a bit, but me mostly. And then kaylin had some attendance problems which affected her too so Chad and deriecka had a lot of things to deal with. And then there's Laila, she went out of her way to make a recommendation for me and I ended up being a nuisance for her, I had my moments though, and hopefully Laila got her rank back because she's probably mad at me but I don't blame her, but I owe her a lot and this is not helping at all.

     Lesson Learned: Things gotta change. Obviously if something doesn't gotta go right, then you gotta fix something so that it'll actually work. It's like trying to use a key sideways, straighten up and maybe something will happen, (basically I mean it WILL). Why do you think your having these problems? You gotta change the way you do things and make it better. If I'm being honest, I tried to change things but it wasn't the correct change. That's just exactly how I dropped in leadership, because what I tried to do was wrong, if I try to fix it then it's still wrong. Why? Because I don't think before I try to fix it. There's a narrow gap between me and the correct thing to do, yet I still can't get it right. There's still a lot I have to work on. And this is definitely one of those.

     How to improve on this: Just think. Use common sense. The only thing I'm good at using my head for is pretty much my school subjects, but when it comes to interactions, I have bad common sense and its really glaring. I need to just mention the fact that everytime I go to a place, or am sent there, I always have trouble getting it or I have horrible detection skills because sometimes I don't even see those things. I feel like I know what steps to take to get there since sometimes I already am like that, but other times, I really need to know what to do because there's times when I get it perfectly and times when I just look stupid or I am stupid. The In-Between part, is non-existent when it comes to me. So that's something really important.

Retreat Cheer W/ PERIOD 5!

4th, and Final Quarter Blog!

     This is the 4th and Final quarter. This quarter felt nonexistent because of how much time passed by. Taking pictures of the 8th graders for slideshow around the mid 20 day mark, to writing my semi-last blog (there's also yearly) at the 3 day countdown. If you ask me, I'm not ready to leave leadership or move on to eighth grade. It won't be the same and I still haven't improved as much as I should have. But that's one way to continue my endless journey towards my goal of "self-confidence" and "time management", but I'll discuss more about it for my yearly blog. For now let's focus more on important things this quarter. It could be orientation, which was a pretty successful part of this quarter, having to hold up banners for our speakers or even doing the dances for fashion show. There's also yearbook passing out, which only lasted for a day but it was something. And awards night, which was something that was well 50/50, the night itself was okay, some mistakes or misconceptions but the next day was more of the concern for us. I feel like that no matter what, I'll be able to find what I really needed in leadership, because for some reason, I wasn't able to myself.
     Highlights of the final quarter: Our orientation was great. We didn't have as much mistakes as we could have made, our speakers were doing a good job, our dances were decent, and our tours were pretty good. I also think that awards night was pretty successful. There wasn't a lot of obvious mistakes, there were some timing issues with the students on stage and having them stay there long enough to take pictures though. Our Gradution Program and Slideshow is finally done and now we have to wait on Gradution. And this quarter had a lot more of things but these are things that I really remember clearly, other than the elections we had today.
     Lesson of the Quarter: There's many lessons I could choose from this quarter, whether it's being too complicated when I think, or being an insolent indi.. I mean not overthinking, I think I could say it's pretty much both. I need to stop thinking about things too much and actually listen instead of thinking, because I've done this the whole school year and it hasn't worked out for me, so that's something I learned this quarter and is very important for me because I need to just stop overthinking and making myself look stupid.
     Something I need to work on to be more successful? Well I just said it in the last paragraph (lesson learned), but to get more in depth I guess, I can say focus. I need to focus on what I do so I don't forget about something, or lose that trait of thought. There's a lot of things that it could be interpreted into when it comes to me but that's what I think because of the fact that most of things like this if not all are problems about focusing. So that's something that is incredibly important in my opinion because it's become very apparent.

This Week...

     This is the final week of our 3 week rotation, or was at least. We had music in which I worked by myself at least twice this week because kaylin and sometimes Sierra were absent. On Friday which seemed really important, I was actually absent for a change. It was kind of interesting because that's the only day I took a day off even though I was practically not in great condition like this whole week. But now we are at our final 9 or 10 days of school and we are getting so much closer to 8th grade grad and me moving to 8th grade next year, which is kind of exciting and scary at the same time.

     Highlights of this week: Final week of rotation didn't go down, or at least not a strike at all these past three weeks, closer to the end of the school year, graduation program and slideshow are done, andddd summer is coming! Lowlights: Music did have some mistakes, some have been pretty noticeable like timing or even volume control, I was absent on Friday and I ended up missing a lot more than I thought, and it's also a lowlight: the end of the school year.

   

   Lesson of the week: Don't spend time moping about something you did, what's done is done and all you can do from there is move forward. If you ended up accidentally making a mistake, if you can't fix it, then don't waste your time thinking about it. Just move on or else your just gonna be wasting so much time doing what? NOTHING. So it's important to just keep going and don't let yourself get down unnecessarily.

 

TB to when they locked my phone in the freezer for like 10 minutes...

Personal Display Board #4 10 items

For my fourth and last Personal Display Board, I will list the 10 items I will have for it.

1.) Magic Notes
2.) Group Photo (Pd. 5)
3.) Leadership 2015-2016
4.) Both Leadership Shirts
5.) AR Goal
6.) Orientation
7.) Conditional Acceptance Paper
8.) My Vest
9.) Deriecka and Chad
10.) McPick2For2Deal

Orientation 2016 in a nutshell!

     Orientation is one of those events that we've been planning for ever since the first quarter, or well at least mentioned since first quarter. This Orientation was successful, there were things we could've improved on, specifically me with my banner. Other than that it was great and speeches got better as the orientation days went on and on. The tour was solo'd by me and I was accompanied by Matthew and just in case I forgot something he would remind me, but he only had to remind me of something once and then all the other times I had it. The fashion show was amazing and pretty good, but the grease lightning timing could've been superb but it wasn't quite. 

      Highlights and Lowlights: The fact that we could show the sixth graders how Ilima is and letting them see how the school works, it was just so fun. I'd say another highlight is that with this Orientation, we're probably changing students minds about whether or not they would want to join Ilima instead of another school like Ewa Makai or even Waipahu. A lowlight is that for parent orientation, Matthew forgot to hold up Deriecka's sign and Kaya had to take his place. Another lowlight is that it was most likely our banner that was the one that couldn't be handled properly so we gotta take that as a lesson.

     Lesson learned from Orientation: In order to succeed, you must have cooperation with everyone and work together on things. This Orientation was a great way to teach us that. Everyone had a role to play in order to make this successful, and we needed everyone in this to make it work. Like the people who taught us dances, the people who had speeches and even the people who were just visible in the fashion show. We needed each of them to make this click and that's what made this so special.

     One thing that we could improve on is timing. When I say timing I don't just mean queues, I mean times leading up to this. We could've taken more time to work on the tour and finished dances and banners so much sooner than it should've been. The amount of time decreased should've been that Mr. Ing could make changes to Orientation without him having to worry about the changes being too soon and won't interfere with Orientation plans so far or it being a disaster.

Orientation Coming Soon!

     Within the next few days, Orientation will be here. We have our yearbooks, we have prepared for Orientation for a long time, and we showed our newbies how to get the job done. Now we need to finish one of our biggest obstacles, Orientation. Some of the things extremely necessary for Orientation is not yet ready, like tour and some speeches. We had T.V. this week, at the beginning we had some troubles but we eventually became really great. Matthew really wanted to go on T.V. but he's not allowed to until I think he comes next school year or some time else. But probably not anytime soon. I think Jerilyn wanted to go on too but I wasn't for sure. For Pd. 1 (Math): We did Module tests and Homework quizzes. Pd. 2 (Science): We did a skit which I think we got an A on but hasn't yet been inputted into JupiterEd. Pd. 3 (Home Ec.) We made fried oreos which were okay but they weren't perfect. One of my group members took the fork I was wetting out of my hand and stuck it in the frying pan which made a huge splash. Pd. 4 (English): SBA SBA SBA SBAAAA! Pd. 5 (Leadership): Orientation, TV, Yearbooks, and Kaylin and Miah possibly missing in action for Orientation. Pd. 6 (Social Studies): We had a rude sub on Friday, no common sense, according to the association, considered "mentally retarded" with her 1.1 GPA during her schooling days, horribly racist, and just outright rude.

     Highlights of the Week: Orientation is coming on Tuesday and we are just so close to being ready but not quite there yet. Home Ec. has lots of cooking and labs now. My grades are straight A's so far. Successful T.V. week (especially with the newbies because they learned their job fast but made some mistakes). And lastly, being able to make my skit great. Lowlights of the week: Orientation could possibly go down hill depending on whether everyone is there or not. Miah has some sort of flu, same with Shay-Anne, and I don't know about Gabby but she has a fever. I have no idea about Kaylin but she's been missing just about the whole week. 

     Lesson of the week: You'll never know something/ if you can do something unless you try. That's why before you say something like I don't want to or I can't do it, then make sure you actually aren't the one that is needed for that kind of thing. Always try before you decide something for yourself that you can't do it.

When Chad put my phone in the freezer