Connection ! * :) [8]

This week’s connection was made while visiting my sponsor. One girl, who is actually a part of my girls’ group, made her way to Ms. Ryan’s office with a brand new hairdo. She was a little more “fired up” than usual. I was more used to the sweet, always smiling version of her. This was something I wasn’t used to at all. She was upset about a boy that she had just ended a relationship with. Ms. Ryan actually spoke what I was thinking: her new hairstyle gave her a new level of confidence. When this was said, I thought of Jalysa. :) A person’s appearance does play a huge role in how they feel and act. I remembered Jalysa saying this in class before. Me only question to this though is “Why?”

Whacky Wedenesdays ! * :) [8]

This week's Whacky Wednesday was spent in Ms. Ryan's office. We had many visitors, some to check their grades and others just to talk to Ms. Ryan about a few things. There were two girls that came down that we a little "immature, but not in a bad way". This is how Ms. Ryan described them and after holding a full conversation with these two, I couldn’t think of any other words that would have been better. They did a little activity together (with the supervision and guidance of Ms. Ryan and me) completing sentences about themselves. For example, “something I like about myself is…” or “one thing that annoys me is…” It was really interesting. Although we were with the girls for about 30 minutes, I think we only got through completing about 3 or 4 sentences. A statement usually led to a discussion. One of these discussions stuck out to me the most though. One of the girls told us that she had a boyfriend, but after talking about him a little more, we found out that it was only a huge crush she had on him. We tried to explain to her that just because you like someone, it doesn’t make him your boyfriend. I don’t think she understood fully by the time she left, but it was worth a try on our part. All in all, I had a pretty enlightening sponsor visit this week.

Mondays with Morris ! * :) [8]

My Monday with Morris was relatively short this week. We didn’t talk about too much. We did have a little brainstorming on some more ideas for my presentations and he gave me some words of encouragement for staying focused on my research paper. I really need to work on my procrastination and he knows that and he’s helping me with it. He told me something that many people have been telling me: “Waiting until the last minute for things won’t work at all in college.” For more reasons that you may think, being a failure in college scares me to death. I will continue to work on being more time manageable and less of a procrastinator and hope to be successful in this. :)

Presentation Plans ! * :) [3/4]

As we all know, our presentations start in a couple months and it's time to start settling down on our plans for them. This is something that I haven't exactly done as much as I should have. I do have a couple ideas in mind though. With the subject that I have, it will be hard to present my project without lecturing the audience the entire time. I plan on showing videos and giving handouts to keep the audience's attention during the presentation. My mentor, Coach Morris, actually gave me the idea for before I actually start my presentation though. He thought that I should have the group do some brain teasers or look at a couple visual illusions. These are all a part of psychology and will definitely be attention-grabbers to give my presentation a great start. I will surely be doing a lot more brainstorming for more ideas. I'm sure my presentation will go really well! :)

Whacky Wednesdays! / Connection! * :) [7]

This week's trip to the middle school was definitely one to remember. I started off in Ms. Ryan's office. We talked about my presentation and paper, then we had a couple visits. The first was with Cody and my good friend Jeff. Ms. Ryan likes for these two to come in at the same time because they are total opposites. Cody is very negative and anti-social. Jeff is friendly and, as I learned in one of my previous visits, used to have trouble with making friends. Ms. Ryan had them do an activity on paper. The paper had the alphabet and for each letter, they had to name something that they liked about themselves. Our next visitors were Sam and Andrew. They've been having trouble with a bully. They asked Ms. Ryan to speak to the boy for them. Afterwards, Sam showed us his new hobby, oragami! His class started this, and every crane he makes is $2 for the disaster in Japan. (I was wondering why the high school doesn't do something like this. I'll get more information on this soon.) Around 2:15, Ms. Ryan and I made our way to the cafeteria for our Girls' Group. Ms. Ryan planned a "Circle of Friends" activity, but it got cut short when Mr. Strong came for a visit. He was taking pictures for a bulletin that he sends to all of the teachers. This bulletin lets them know what's going on around the middle school and gives them ideas on new things to start. The girls also did their skits for him. They were both about PEER PRESSURE and FITTING IN. I made this a huge connection to my research paper. The skits showed a girl wanting to be a part of the cooler group of girls, so when the group told her to do different things, like steal lunch money and punch someone in the face, she listened in order for them to accept her. In the end, the group completely neglected anything she did and didn't let her be a part of the group. All in all, I think this was one of the more interesting sponsor visits.