Throughout my year here, I have had many successes although still have areas for growth. Three things that I would like to celebrate Are, my growth throughout my race season, advocating for myself and challenging myself in my academics, and my achievements socially. The areas that I still have lots of room for growth in is my focus and memory as well as being able to work well with others and in group work. I am a person that always has to be challenged and that always has to do the absolute best that I can in any subject. I am currently in Precalculus and Advanced physics as well as Spanish 3 and these classes are all very challenging for me. Math 2 however, the grade level math, is on the complete opposite side of the spectrum for me. It is extremely easy and I find no reason to take it. In the beginning of the year, I didn’t do anything in that class because I found it useless. I began to do work in math 2 that was for a different class. Some other people and I had to advocate for ourselves so that we had something to do in that class. We are now challenged and given a POW that sometimes has an open ended answer so we have to answer that question to the best of our abilities. We then come together every Friday and talk about how we approached it. In Precalc, we just finished a project where we had to graph 9 trig functions as well as 5 polar graphs. This was very challenging and it took me a while to understand it and get a hang of it however now, I am very proud of my work. In Advanced Physics, we are working on a very fun and challenging project. We are using gyroscopes for balance and I am creating a unicycle that will be aided by the gyroscope to stay upright, making it easier to ride. I find this very challenging however it is so much fun to make and understand. This semester, I have gone through so much socially, some helping me have more friends, and some causing me to lose touch with some. I have made new friends such as Kealey and Des and to know that they are there for me offers me so much happiness. I have become so much closer to my DEVO friends and meeting new people in DEVO as well. I have strengthened already tight bonds making it hard at times but even better overall. I have been through thick and thin with some of these people, making me a better person, learning from new experiences and learning from mistakes. Even though I have done a good job at tightening relationships, I have also broken a few and feel that I could do a better job at reaching out to others and people that I wouldn’t normally talk to. This first semester, I have found out that I am an introvert and this semester I really started to see that in me. In Shane’s humanities class, we took a test to see is we were introvert or extrovert and many other thing. I was an introvert and at first that surprised me but then I realized that it was true. I would also like to celebrate my fall racing season. My first race of the season racing JV, Juniors, I placed 11th which was not too bad. By the end of the season, I placed 7th overall in the state amongst all other Juniors. I am very proud of this achievement. I think that I could however work more toward being faster and stronger, beating the other juniors. I have made many new friends that do DEVO as well such as Emerald, a freshman here at Animas. DEVO has shaped me so much as a person and as an athlete and I want to celebrate this achievement. I want to celebrate so much however I have so many more spaces in which I could grow. One of the areas that I could grow in is my ability to work well in groups. I always want to take the lead and just immediately show everyone how to do it and solve the problem quickly like in Math 2. I have already learned most things in that class so in group work I just want to jump in a finish it all however I need to work on backing off and letting them work through and give ideas and try and figure it out before jumping in. Or just staying out and only answering questions. I also tend to like to do all of the work such as in our Siddhartha project. I am so proud of this project and think that it is really amazing. I am proud of Des and want to thank her for helping me. I do however feel like I took too much control and I wanted to do it all on my own. Through this project I was working on backing off more and I think that it mostly worked. I could have let her do more and I feel like I could have let her have more input on what it turned out like however it still turned out outstanding. I also have lots of room to grow in my focus, attention span, and my memory. I have always had a really hard time remembering things so I have to write down anything that I want to remember however I sometimes forget to remember to write it down. Funny how that works right? My brain bites me in the ass. This year has gotten a little bit better and I have been writing things down more frequently however still forget things very often. I need to find other ways to compromise with this and find new ways to work with my memory and not just blow it off. I can not sit still for long amounts of time merely because my brain doesn't work like that. To be able to focus I have to be very engaged physically and mentally. This is definitely somewhere that offers lots of room for growth. I want to celebrate this year as a whole for making me the person that I am today and making me stronger in so many areas and challenging me in my weaker areas. I have had so many successes, just as many challenges and still have so much room for growth. I will keep pushing myself to grow through these next four years here and for the rest of my life. Thank you.