Freshman End of Grade Summative Reflection

 Throughout the course of my enrollment in the STEM program, there have been times in which I have struggled and overcome; when I have had to adjust to new types of learning as well as greater intensity than the increase in difficulty I'm used to as well as challenges with proper time management amongst other things. Most intense struggles began during the first semester primarily due to the research required for my assignments such as the Literature Review Matrix for my science fair project in which it was difficult to find information meeting the guidelines for what contents/format must be presented and had relevant information for my project in which I had to categorize, using decent logic, unspecified parts of what is in the contents in a format. Additionally, during that time I had troubles with time management of balancing long and short term assignments and documenting assignments in which I was able to progressively start to work out a system for recurring assignments, general long term assignments, and short term assignments in which I would primarily work on short term assignments during the weekdays except for those assigned on Friday and I would work for varying amounts of time on long term/recurring assignments on the weekends, occasionally taking entire days; I also progressively remembered to take steps of documentation such as making time for me to get my binder out, then pay attention, write what I needed to do and then remember to look back at the information I had written as well as put in the time to make copies in case of destruction of the previous. I would also say that I have had other developments, yet none in such a broad sense or in an entire subject. However, I do feel as though these contributions will help prepare me for when I continue in STEM next year. Speaking of which, I am planning on continuing STEM due to the probable support of teachers considering that STEM program has higher grade successful students, meaning they must have adequate support comparative to that of which I might need, and sense they support opportunities in which I may be able to reveal my skills, preferred personality traits, goals, etc. which can include science fair and aid in getting scholarships. Also, the courses usually contain some differing classes than normal academic classes that go into depth of differing biomedical fields, which is an intriguing topic for me considering that I currently would like to have a job that would centralize around that topic. Though, I will have to do Science Fair or the Scholarship Project and ELA class (which is the most difficult subject for me) during the same time period for three more years, resulting in stress. Yet again, it will be less stressful than last semester since I wasn't entirely prepared for the expectations and social functions of my peers and older STEM students considering that not all of them were as like minded as I would have thought. Through out my enrollment in STEM, I would have to say there have been some truly enjoyable moments consisting of the event of the science fair in which I got to present by ideas and hard work that I put into my project as well as be able to learn about other's science fair projects and new ideas, concepts and solutions to problems or questions about the world today. In the future, I would like to encourage freshman to join STEM if they seem like hardworking, intelligent students that want to help improve the conditions of the world today and all those in it.   ​