glorialiu8-blog

[glorialiu8-blog]

august 7th: welcome post

Failure is simply an opportunity to begin again, this time more intelligently. Henry Ford

With the new school year of 2018-2019 coming up, I thought it would be perfect to create a studyblr in order to spark some sort of motivation inside me and to, hopefully, improve my writing/blogging skills. 

For me, school doesn't start until early September, so I have about a month to do a few preparations and to get ready for the rough year ahead. I've gotten so much better with productivity and dealing with procrastination over the past year. Freshman year was my year of learning and has truly been able to teach me many lessons about the best way to deal with stress and failures. 

For you guys and also for my own self-update, I will attempt to list out some assignments and what I have to do left during this summer.

1) Pre-calculus Honors CTY Johns Hopkins' online course: For those of you looking for exceptional online courses to take over the summer, I highly recommend the CTY (Center for Talented Youth) online courses. The online courses are so much different than the physical CTY camps. Those camps are more for the social experience than the learning experience. The CTY online courses are mainly self-paced so that you can manage your own time with videos, lecture notes, sample problems, homework assignments, chapter tests, and more- the resources are endless. The professors give in depth explanations, and your assigned teacher will be able to answer any of the questions you may have about the topics you are learning. I'm taking the pre-calculus honors class with Stephen Goodloe as my instructor and Edward Burger as the main voice of the videos that are available on the webpage. I am finished with Chapter 9, and waiting to take the chapter test, leaving only one more chapter left for me to finish along with the final. Because the course is self-paced, I have been able to finish way more than my peers have been able to finish. 

2) AP Physics: I will be taking AP Physics next year and by what I have learned through the summer assignments, this will be my one of my hardest courses yet (but also the only AP I will be taking). Although my math foundation is pretty solid, physics requires the ability to connect certain topics together with a high understanding of all concepts. I have always struggled with connecting the dots and I hope that with extra help and diligence I will be able to succeed in physics and other subjects as well. I have successfully completed 2/5 sections of my physics assignment, need clarification on 1/5 of it, and need to complete 2/5 of it. Overall, I think I have just enough time to finish everything by the start of the school year, but I could've done better during the beginning of the summer. 

3) US History 1 Honors: Although this isn't an AP class, it will be the hardest course I will be taking next year. We are set to use an AP textbook and many of my fellow upperclassmen have told me that this course is basically an AP level course due to the level of understanding and commitment you must have. The summer assignment is also terrifying. We have to read 100+ pages, outline them, as well as set up tables and read even more articles about the same topic. Sounds pretty boring but I have learned to embrace the history of America. One of the things that keeps me going with my history assignments are taking notes. I don't know why, but taking notes for me provides a sense of relaxation. I like to use different methods to annotate and highlight my notes. 

4) Everything else (french, english, etc.): For all of my other subjects, there really isn't much to be done as I've basically finished everything else. 

I will try to give you guys an update on what I plan to finish (in the morning) and what I have done (in the night) as part of my daily tumblr updates. 

If you also want to check out my studygram, please do! It's @studywithgloria and I started it on July 18th, so it's still developing. 

If you've gotten to this part, I thank you for being able to sit through my lengthy explanations!

See you guys tomorrow, Gloria Liu