During the first day of school I was really excited and nervous at the same time because I was looking forward to the school year. For my English class I thought it was going to be the same thing as the previous year, straightforward and easy as long as you did all your work and turned it on time. When I got to class for my fifth period I was very anxious because I didn't see any of the people I talked to. What I saw was a teacher, some students I knew but never really talked to that much and many more that I've never seen nor talked to at all. Since I came in kind of late because couldn't find the classroom I noticed that most of the seats were filled and so I decided to go all the way to the back and sit. After a few moments the class got quite and the teacher, Dr. Preston, introduced himself and started talking about who he is, some of his experiences and how he became a teacher. As he continued he started telling the whole class about open source learning and when he finished he told us that we had a choice to make as a class. The choice he gave us was to choose between open source learning or the regular traditional learning method we have been doing since we started school. He told that he was going to go outside and let us decide what we wanted to do and that he would only come in once we have made our choice. I was very surprised with this because he didn't even know us and he was trusting that we would behave while he was waiting outside.
Since open source learning was new to me I found it very hard to do my blogs because I didn't really know how to use technology to do my work . I was used to doing book work and answering questions after reading a play, book, or story. In this class I had to do most of my work individually and that too was very difficult for me because I was not used to that. After a week or so when we had to memorize and record a video of us reciting a poem and then posting it on our blogs. I decided to push it off to the side because I was busy with work from my other classes and we didn't really have due date for our blogs. As the days passed I found myself procrastinating a lot and I just stopped doing my work completely for a couple of days. One blog post that I did and really liked was the story about "Young Goodman Brown" because it was a story that I could relate to. In the story "Young Goodman Brown" he represented young men who were being tempted and it reminded me that no matter how tempted you are you should always stay true to yourself and do what's right. The only thing I found very interesting and nice was doing our journals because the questions that were being asked were super interesting to me and I really enjoyed writing most of my answers to the journal questions. I wrote my favorite journal topics when the question that was being asked were fun and made me think the most. After thinking about the question for a while i would write down what I was thinking about and that's how I would write my favorite journal topics.The point when I felt the most tension was when we had to get our portfolio for our interview completed. I was stressed at the moment because I didn't have anything ready for the interview and as I was home alone, I was thinking about why I choose AP English and came to a realization that I choose that class because I wanted a bigger challenge and in that same day I started doing work. The next day I felt great and I was doing my work and was no longer procrastinating, I actually felt excited and was looking forward to doing my interview. In my interview I felt that I did pretty good and it was a great experience because I now know what to expect for future interviews.
My routine now is that when I get home I work on my classwork that I need to finish and then try to do all my homework. While I am doing my homework, I like to take ten minute breaks 2 times because I believe that it helps me not get bored and tired of doing homework for so long. At the beginning of the year I did not have a routine and I did not set goals for myself to accomplish and once I did that it motivated me a lot to try to get most of my work done and now i feel good and ready to tackle anything that I need to do to accomplish my goals. An experience that that made me smile is being in Dr. Preston's class because I learned that you need to be responsible for yourself and that you don't need to depend on anyone but yourself. When I entered the class I was confident on getting a good grade because I thought that we were going to receive instructions and all I had to do was to do my work. I know that when I am determined and have a goal or accomplishment I want to achieve I could do almost anything as long as I don't lose my concentration and focus. I am not the same person as I was when I walked in Dr. Preston's room in august because while being in Dr. Preston's class I have learned many lessons from my failures. In the beginning of the year I was procrastinating a lot and now I feel very motivated to do my work because I have goals that I want to accomplish.
