The purpose of this unit was to learn about the elements in a healthy relationship so that we can integrate into our life relationships. We achieved this by choosing a famous fictional or non-fictional relationship, then analyzing whether the relationship is healthy by using the elements we learned in class such as respect, stereotypes, consent, and media portrayal. Our group decided to analyze Christiano Ronaldo and Georgina Rodriguez’s relationship, and we concluded that their relationship is healthy mainly due to the the instance when their baby passed away during childbirth. Georgina openly said that Christiano greatly supported her after the incident, showing that they respect each other’s boundaries and have healthy communication that positively impact their relationship. In addition, Cristiano Ronaldo and Georgina Rodríguez are a public couple who show several signs of appropriate consent in a relationship. A clear public example of mutual consent between them is Georgina’s acceptance of Ronaldo’s marriage proposal, which she openly shared on social media.
Throughout Unit 3, we learned that healthy relationships are built on mutual respect and respecting boundaries. Boundaries are personal limits, such as not wanting sexual contact, and crossing them through pressure is harassment and a sign of an unhealthy relationship. The unit also taught the importance of respecting gender expression, gender identity, and sexual orientation. Gender expression is how someone presents their gender, gender identity is their internal sense of self, and sexual orientation is who they are attracted to. Throughout the unit, the most important ideas I learnt were the healthy relationship characteristics such as consent, communication, and the balance of gender roles, as well as the impact of gender stereotypes and social pressure.
I enjoyed the football unit and practiced passing, dribbling, and transitioning. Although I didn’t improve too much technically, I believe I earned valuable experience in leading a team tactically and technically. In future football units, I believe I can improve more in terms of supporting the players in my team even more by giving them tips and making more efficient moves during games.
I used to think mental health issues were separate problems and not too interconnected with other mental disorders. For example, for OCD, I initially thought it was only a severe obsession that causes some discomfort to daily life tasks. I didn’t realize that it links to other mental health disorders and more serious problems in daily life. Although I did understand the difficulty the patients, it wasn’t as strong as I do now.
However, after finishing the unit and listening to presentations about various mental health conditions, now I acknowledge the each mental health issue isn’t isolated, but is connected with other problems as well, escalating the severity of the problem, while causing more harm to daily life. For example, OCD causes loneliness, addiction links with conditions like depression, and depression strongly impacts sleep and food intake. After realizing the complex connections, I now have more empathy towards people that have mental issues, as I understand the other surrounding conditions affect the person too, making it harder to resolve the conditions.
Establishing baselines: My WOOP Goal focuses on limiting my daily use of smartphone, especially on social media and video games. By using the app Opal, I believe I will be able to see good results of better focus and time management, as it will restrict me from using certain apps when doing productive work such as homework.
Outcome 1: Less dependency on social media.
Outcome 2: Better sleep due to less use of tech.
Outcome 3: Better focus and less procrastinating.
Establishing baselines: By using the app Opal, I believe I will be able to see good results of better focus and time management.
Part 2 Multimedia Analysis and Review: Opal blocks distractions for me whenever I start a study session. After 7-10 days of integrating it to my life, I will be used to quickly focusing and maintaining it when I study. This will allow me to procrastinate less and use my phone less, focusing better on my tasks and breaks. Opal’s core feature is blocking any distracting social media or video game apps such as snapchat and clash royale. It allows me to select as many apps as I want, and will block them for any amount of time I decide to block them for.
The function I used the most in the app is obviously the blocking feature, as it’s the core feature and why I initially downloaded the app. The feature I used the least is looking at the leaderboard for the app usage, since I am currently the only one I know using the app.
I believe Opal’s marketing goal of “Take control of your day by blocking the apps of your choice, whether it’s on your phone or desktop” suits the actual result of usage quite well, as I was able to significantly benefit from the app, and use it on my phone and laptop. According to Opal’s weekly report, I will save more than 12 years on phone compared to my previous week’s phone usage if I keep up the pace.
I was able to focus much better, which lead to decrease of procrastination, more sleep time, and more control of my time. Therefore, my hypothesis was pretty well supported. However, one negative aspect is that when I block apps, the notifications are completely blocked. Although this helps me with my focus, sometimes I wasn’t able to respond or check important texts from my parents and friends. For pure focus, the app is quite helpful, even the free plan. On the other hand, for daily life, it can be negative due to not allowing all notifications to be seen when the apps are blocked.
When I try to go into the blocked apps, it temporally restricts me from going in by showing interesting messages and showing me how many times the app has been blocked today, while the block session is active.
The app also rewards me with cool opal stones when I reached milestones like “100 hours focused” or “used opal 10 days in a row.” These interesting design and functions motivate me to use Opal more, so that I can collect more stones.
The app makes money from different subscription plans that contain more enhanced blocking compared to the free plan. Subscriptions block access to apps completely for a distinct time, with no simple way of stopping the block, making getting distracted even harder, whereas for the free plan, I can stop it whenever I want with a 20 seconds wait. Because subscriptions is the way Opal makes the majority of it’s profit, there may be advertisements of them, causing slight negative affects towards the efficiency.
After each week, Opal gives me a summery of the week’s smartphone usage, and it even tells me how much time I’ve saved from my phone since downloading and using Opal.
Evidence of at least 7 days of usage
So far, my smartphone usage has declined greatly compared to before installing the app, especially in social media. I believe even Opal’s free plan has the potential to build healthy work and focusing habits for my future, and I will continue using it. I don’t believe app dependency is a large issue, as after building the habit, I will not need any fundamental support anymore.
Throughout this unit, I learned about the different parts of human brain and how teenage brain differs to adult brains. By learning this unit, I understand much more about what my reactions are based on, because I now understand the roles of each brain parts and how they react to or cause stress.
The most surprising thing I learned about the teen brain is that the prefrontal cortex doesn’t fully develop until one has reached 25 years old. This is surprising because people usually consider 18 year olds as fully grown people.
When adults understand teen brain structure and characteristics, they will be able to communicate better with teens when they are under stress, because understanding why teens act in a certain way will help adults adjust their actions and words based on the triggers and situation of stress.
For me, box breathing is a great way for me to cope with stress. Sometimes, I get nervous and my heart beats really fast during high-staked football matches or before presentation. The stress causes me to not be able to fully process information and act towards it, and since box breathing slows my heart-rate down, it will help me perform better and calmer.
For my final product, I created a ppt with my group mates which contained a potcast of us explaining how teen’s mental health differ from adult’s, and why teenagers behave in a certain way. The main reason why teens overreact in stress is because their prefrontal cortex isn’t fully developed and the amygdala is developed earlier. This causes the teens to overreact emotionally instead of processing information and thinking with the PFC.
Throughout this unit, I improved a lot in terms of spins and smashing compared to last semester. Before the start of this unit, my play was simple and basic, without any techniques applied. However, the more I practiced this unit, the better my spins and smashes got. Although it’s still not the best in terms of accuracy and stability, it got much better than before. In addition, my the accuracy of my basic skills improved as well.
I believe with the improvements I made this unit, I will be able to play better against challenging opponents. For the next table tennis unit, I want to improve my technique and accuracy even more, while improving my serve.
For the probability fair, Ryan, Max, and I designed and created a variation of a Plinko game. The game’s goal is to put the ball into the box, try to avoid the obstacles, and let the ball go into the winning cups. There are three levels of prizes of the winning cups. Level 1 consists of 3 cup, with the prize of various candies. Level 2 has one cup, and the prize is either a coke or a squishy. Finally, level 3 has the hardest level and the winner gets a Nintendo 3DS. At first glance, it’s easy to win the prizes as it’s almost guaranteed to win the prizes once it passes the obstacles, but the difficult element is not getting the ball stuck throughout the course.
Overall, our group worked greatly collaboratively. we worked together when designing and creating the game. For prizes, everyone brought some. When there were conflicts regarding the design of the game, we voted and resolved the problems.
In the Science Fun Food Fair unit, my group and I focused on salmon salad and created a detailed advertisement poster. The poster included scientific and nutritional information like the health benefits and risks, chemical formulas, and data on key ingredients such as omega-3 fatty acids and sucrose. We also added a section about the taste of the dish and why it’s considered both healthy and delicious. We shared and presented about our food to many people during the fun food fair.
Before making the poster, we completed a planning document to organize our research and decide how to present our findings. We also created and included a data table that showed physical properties of the ingredients before and after heating, such as color, temperature, odor, and water solubility. This helped us understand how cooking affects food on a chemical level.
This unit helped me connect science to real-life choices by exploring the health impacts of various ingredients.
Our task was to create a documentary on a certain historical event. My partner and I chose “The Inchon Landing” of the Korean War as our topic. After choosing the topic, my partner and I researched 4 long articles each related to the Inchon Landing and the Korean War, annotating all the 4 crucial elements of the event. After that, we progressed into writing the full script for the documentary. When we were done with that part, we recorded the full script, and found all the pictures and videos that match the script while being appropriate for the documentary. Finally, we edited all the audio, photos, and videos into the documentary.
One thing I did well in my documentary was taking responsibility to do all the leftover work at home. When my partner and I couldn’t fully finish the documentary during class, I finished it at home.
One thing I need to do differently is to not spend too much time on tasks where time isn’t necessarily decided, such as documentary editing. Next time I will detailedly plan out how long I will spend on these kind of tasks.
I explored the topic “Apartheid in South Africa.” Throughout exploring the topic, I learned the extreme racial injustice that black South Africans faced during Apartheid and also the importance of racial equality.
To prepare for my Bacha Kucha style presentation, I summarised everything in my planning document into a brief essay. I also had to choose the pictures that match my content in my ppt. The challenging element about the presentation was practicing to present without any note cards to look at. I spent around 30 minutes to practice the presentation.
My skills in analyzing devices and structures in texts developed throughout 7th grade. My top 5 books of 7th grade is “The Westing Game,” “My brother Sam is dead,” “The war the saved my life,” “One came home,” and “Where the Red Fern Grows.” One book I would recommend is “The Westing Game” because the book teaches the readers to not judge anything, as nothing presented at the start of the book matches the reality. In some sense, this book is also challenging as it is difficult to predict the upcoming events of the book.
