Quarter 2

Although this week was one of the more relaxed ones, there was a hint of nervousness that I felt. Having been done with Quarter 1, I felt more at ease. The nervousness was most likely induced by the fact I only have 3 more quarters till graduation. The thought that I would soon have to prepare for more extensive activities and academics beyond high school felt strenuous. Nevertheless, I had to refocus on the already existing work and not procrastinate about the future when the present still needs to be tended to. 

This week I got to witness the landing of a Lifestar emergency helicopter. It was a very impeccable experience. I have seen on TV shows, people being rescued through helicopters, but seeing one in front of me was actually really amazing. The cabin crew of the helicopter was very approachable and kind. I asked many questions about aviation, decision-making, health support equipment, and the career path of the crew. The answers were pretty cool to learn about. I loved their rule for aviation: even if one person opts out the others will corroborate and avoid any issues as a whole. Overall it was an amazing experience, one that I will never forget.

We worked on the Civic Minded Contributor Activity Extension this week. We also began setting up a Linkedin profile to start building our connections. A screenshot of your Linkedin Profile page should be added to your digital portfolio under the Community Connections tab. We also watched an inspirational Ted Talk about a fitness trainer with a heart defect.

This week was filled with multiple challenges. It all started with the setting up of the Medical Terminology Course. We all received emails from Tunxis about the setup. When I went through some of the information in the email, I noticed the first problem. The password for the login was based on our SSN; since we omitted the SSN in our initial forms we didn't know what to do about the password. I told Ms.Stokoe about this issue right away so she could help the other students before they start having the same issues. 

Since I was not able to log in, I chose to work on some work for other classes. I do understand that using class time for working on different classes' work was not the best thing to do. I had numerous assessments lined up that week which is why I was compelled to use the time to study. 

Since I was so occupied with other subjects I kind of lost track of Healthcare. 'Source 4' was due soon but I had not gotten the time to research it. It was a struggle to manage so many assessments and due work. Despite the problems, I just continued to study for my assessments while I put Healthcare work on hold.

This week was pretty resourceful. While my peers worked on their medical terminology course, I used my time to catch up with the work I had been missing; specifically, 'Source 4' notes. 

I had a lot of trouble finding a new source to learn from because all the articles I found had the exact same facts as the ones I had previously explored. I had anticipated this problem would come up since my topic of homosexuality is a very under-researched topic. After spending a lot of time reading abstracts, and comparing article information I finally found one that had a different perspective than what I have read before. This article was on PubMed, which is a slightly different database than the ones I had been using before. The article I found is rather a long one: 44 pages. This article is more of a generalized view on behavior (sex-related and gender orientation related). I read through the first half of the article and took some notes which compare the sexual behavior of all types of people, including homosexuals. 

Apart from catching up I also had to finish the assignments that were ongoing. This week we were assigned to work on a self-assessment and reflection of our work as a whole. This was a good way for me to reflect on my positives and negatives, and ultimately outline goals to improve my work. In my reflection, I acknowledged my problems and how I will approach them in the near future, starting with completing my missing work. 

I would consider this week to be a big step back into organized and sophisticated learning. As I mentioned in the previous week, I was struggling to keep up with my work and kept on constantly pushing them away. I finally laid out a plan to get on task and become more self-aware and responsible. I utilized the Capstone Independence Rubric and Reflection assignment to outline what I had been lacking and what were my current positive attributes. Through this assignment, I was able, to be honest with myself about my efforts. After reflecting on my work, I had a discussion with Mrs. Pillar where we come to a common ground regarding work responsibility and respect towards the course. Following our discussion, I took time and submitted all the missing work including Source 4 Notes. I did change the article I was working on since the one I was previously using did not have any real useful information regarding the research focus. 

After catching up with class-related work, I now had to catch up on the Medical Terminology Course. As I had mentioned before I was unable to log into the course until this week. Now that I had finally logged into CommNet and BlackBoard, I was able to access all the study material. I started Module 1 and finished the two discussions that were due a while back and then started Module 2. After completing the work that was due, I could finally take a breath of relief. Hopefully, I am able to carry this work management and dedication into the coming weeks and stay on top of my game.

This week was comparatively fast-paced. I did not have a lot of pressure from other classes as well as limited work in Healthcare. I was able to cruise through most of the work during class leaving me plenty of time to spend with my family after school. This week I found a rather amusing source to work on. The article was titled "Multimodal MRI suggests that male homosexuality may be linked to cerebral midline structures." This source was very interesting because it had a lot of information regarding physiological attributes which contributed to homosexuality. This information was very different from the ones I have learned about through other sources.

 Besides working on the Source 5 notes I was also planning the mid-year ignite presentations. I started a Google doc where I would keep track of the important information that I might use for the presentation. Overall this week went by pretty smoothly considering I was able to manage the workload well and was persistent to complete work during class.

This week was also very simple and fluid. I was able to work on the medical terminology course and our mid-year presentations because this was the last week of classes before the break. I spent most of this break to re-read some older materials to renew any information I might have forgotten about. After I read over my older notes and reflections, I noted down some things that I wish to include in my mid-year presentation. This was helpful in not only finding topics for the presentation but also helping me recall my focus on my research progress. 

Apart from the plentiful work time, I did really enjoy the alumni coming to class and speaking with us. Having Alexa and Izzy was nostalgic as well as informative. Listening to their experience in our shoes helped me realize what problems I might be facing soon. This discussion also helped me learn about possible ways I can do better in my current work. Overall this week was pretty productive and relaxing

This week was filled with work from all my classes. For classes other than Healthcare, I needed to use my time very wisely to prepare for Midterms. I used my phone Organizer and Notes app a lot to organize the time I would spend studying for each subject as well as keep track of due dates for other works. for due dates. Specifically for Healthcare, this week was more of a relaxing one, due to all we had to work on this week was our Mid-year Ignite presentions.  Since I spent most of my class time working on the presentation I was confident. 

For the Ignite presentation, I was able to find very numerous pictures that were simple and did not take away from the main topic. The most time-consuming part of the presentation was organizing the pictures' citations. Thankfully I had hyperlinked all the pictures; Thus, when I made the citation slides, I cruised through them with ease. I have chosen to set some of my slides for longer than 15 seconds due to the explanation needed. 

As for the Medical Terminology Course, unfortunately, we have come to the last days of the course.  The last assignment for this week is to finish up the  Week  3 Test. After that no more discussion and tests.

Finally, for this week, we needed to put together 8 sources in NoodleTools. Lucky for me since I already had about 12 sources cited I did not need to do any additional work. The remainder of my time was spent on organizing my Google Drive and Sites. I ensured to change access for all the media/work/pdf on my Sites. Then we finished the week with a Digital Portfolio checklist for Quarter 2. This helped me see the access issues with the items on my sites, which I will be correcting moving forward.

Overall, this week was very productive and I hope I continue to stay on top of my work every week. 

This week was very eventful and maybe even a little tiring. Since this was the week of my Mid-Year Presentation, it was key for me to focus on Healthcare. Along with the presentation I also had to manage a math midterm and an AP Biology midterm. AP Bio was definitely the more time taking one. I had to study for materials from both Lab and lecture class which was all of the 8 Units of the curriculum except for 6 and 7. 

Initially, I spent most of my free time and class time collecting the essential materials for the presentations and organizing my speaker notes. I used most of my 7th-period study hall working on my presentation, finalizing it, and making sure nothing was left out. I spent the time when I was home, studying for the bio midterm. had all that was needed with the rubric. I reviewed with my peers to make sure our presentations were similar. 

Despite the tons of work, I did get to enjoy our visit to CESI, the Center for Education Simulation and Innovation, at Hartford Hospital. The experience there was amazing, with a lot of intriguing technology, simulation labs, and much more. I was able to experience and use a couple of the machines including the DaVinci; a machine used for non-contact, robotic surgery. Overall, The labs were just fantastic and they opened me to a whole new area of scientific learning.

Later that same day, I had to present my Ignite presentation. As much as I was nervous when I began, presenting it felt like a piece of cake! Since I had been so into my research, I had gathered a load of knowledge I could keep talking about for hours. Thus, when I got my feedback forms back, most of the feedback was praising my in-depth knowledge and interest in the topic. I feel this week went way smoother than I had imagined, which is great!! 

This week went pretty smoothly. I believe Healthcare as a whole did very well on the presentations and other classes even praised us for our extensive learning stretch. After having presented we reflected on our work and had discussions about what skills we learned or needed to improve after presenting. Most of the comments included things like time management and pacing the presentation. Overall the content in the presentation was very thorough thus no one mentioned adding more content.
Next later in the week we did our quarter 2 checklist for the most part I had everythign put in, that was needed. The only problem that most people in the class had to due wit hwas acess, to fix this problem I used my seprate email and shared my portfolio and just started making the doccuments I could not see viewable with anyone that has the link. This fixed the problem very easily. But only problem with the checklist stemed from not having my community contact log, I some how lost it, I searched online try to find the doccument but I could not. To fix my mistake I just wrote in the Doccument my community contact and the hours I currently have with what I am doing with my community contact. Similar to what you would need to fill out with the checklist.

In all this is now the end of quarter 2 a quarter that takes us half way done with our senior year. As I reflect I get insights that I did very good but not my best. My goal for the next semester will be to keep a strict schedule on when to get work done and study for tests.