So close, yet so far...

Can you believe it? First semester is almost done... and it feels like it just started yesterday! Meeting all our teachers, meeting new friends, getting back to the school routine... it all seems so recent.
Next week is our exams, and everyone is pretty hyper right now with all the studying that needs to be done, and all the confidence that needs to be used for exams. I'm sitting everyday with all my books studying for 3 hours (which is actually me studying one subject and revising everything I learnt... three times) and it's actually not too bad. I know I'm confident in most of my answers, which I feel is progress so far. I hope I'm able to understand all the concepts for all four subjects by Sunday night.

Today in ICS we continued working on our culminating activities and were able to get a couple more little things done with our partners / groups. I felt that this wasn't too bad of a project because Zahra and I were both able to write some pros and cons of Facebook at the top of our heads. We also consulted some sites (and cited them in our site) to know exactly how we should explain our ideas in detail.

Anyways, I'm going to go sleep now.
Goodnight everyone!

*please don't mind the late posting... unreliable internet connections*

Exams are near!

Oh my... our exams are next week, and there's so much to study! This is going to be one wild week. I'm really worried.

I'm well aware of the fact that this semester hasn't been going on too well, and I'm very disappointed that I couldn't do anything to get it to be better. I am quite capable of doing many things, but I don't know why this semester seemed very hard on me. Probably because I got all the harder subjects first... but then again, I can't use the excuse according to my science teacher. I can't say I didn't try, because all I've been doing from the beginning is trying. Unfortunately, I wasn't able to get my marks higher from my mid-term. I hope that if I spend this week in complete study mode, I'll be able to get atleast 25% marks added to my previous low marks. It's not that I want to drop out of IB, it's just that the subjects this semester made it very hard to cope up with each other. I hope next semester won't be like this; I'm quite confident in making next semester better. By knowing I haven't done well, it gives me more confident in taking care of myself and my work more better. I also hope that summer school could significantly bring up my marks. I've got it all planned and I hope I do much better for the rest of the year.

Anyways, those were my thoughts that were bothering me for the last couple of days. Hopefully I can improve on many of my habits, and take care of my health so that this problem doesn't occur again.

I'm going to go study now, and you should too!

Bye!

Almost finished!

Even though Mr. Arkin wasn't here today, many groups were able to be very productive today. Maybe because it's Friday and everyone wants to get over with their culminating activities so that they can start studying freely. That's actually my goal for this weekend: finishing up my culminatings, then studying everyday for the rest of the week. Hopefully that works out.

Zahra and I have gotten most of our things done, and we're on the part of creating our final copies of all our work. I got the layout for our Facebook Security site set, so now we just need to put in our acutual information we wrote and work on it from there. I'm sure we can finish by Sunday.

Finally it's Friday, and even though I'm starting to get a little sick (recent flu shot), I feel somewhat energized and confident to work really hard for the next couple of days! I hope I can stick to my plan up there and get those extra 30% marks by the end of this semester.

Anyways, hope everyone has a happy weekend!
Byee!

Lalalala (no creativity in sight!)

Oh my... what a tiring day! It's Thursday and I feel like I've been going to school non-stop for a whole month.

Culminating activities are taking up everyone's lives for the next few days because we all know we could use the extra marks. I'm trying my best to work harder on these projects so that I can show my teachers that I actually learned something. I hope I succeed.

At this point, I'm going to take some rest so that I can be wide awake for my science quiz tomorrow and be ready to finish off at least one more project.

Hopefully, I'll write more tomorrow...
Goodnightt!

Oh! I totally forgot! I don't know exactly why I found this joke funny, but I want to share it:
Bill Gates is building a new massive mansion, most of it underground. I guess he is doing this because he doesn't want to spend another dime on Windows!

Culminating work!

Unfortunately I haven't been able to keep up with my blogging due to internet acting up, but thankfully my dad was able to fix it (finally)! I'm back!

Today was quite productive because Zahra and I were able to begin on our webpage work. Our topic for the culminating activity is "Facebook Security". For this, we're going to be researching how safe Facebook is considering how many people make accounts for it everyday around the world. We have our brainstorm ideas all figured out, and now we need to write proper paragraphs and mini facts. We even how our 'blueprint' on how our webpage is going to look like. After we're done the webpage with the information, we'll be starting on our little advertisment.

Hopefully we'll be able to do more tomorrow!
I'm going to finish my other assignments for now... byee!

Work Period

Today was our last work period on our mosaic project, and one of the 14 days left to work on our culminating activities with our partners!

I was able to organize all my information about the hacker, Jonathan James, and now all I have left to do is fix up that webpage a little more and then I'm ready to put it up live on the world wide web. I felt this was an easy project, and I had interest in learning about how curiosity could take you far (in a negative or positive way).

Tomorrow will be the day Zahra and I start working on our culminating activity on the pros and cons of Facebook security. We already have a list of what we could talk about in one sentance per fact, now all we need to do is sort it out as an advertisment on a radio or t.v. channel.

Anyways, I'm going to go back to finishing up my mosaic project, and then I have a lot more to do for other classes. Ouch, I feel this month is going to be really harsh on us... oh well, good luck to everyone out there!

More to come tomorrow!
Byee!

Back to work

After the wonderful and peaceful holidays, VP welcomed their students back with culminating activities... oh how fun!
Thankfully these projects will refresh our minds about our previous knowledge on the subject. I think this a good way to prepare us for the exams that follow after we're done the culminating activities.
Yesterday we were introduced to a mini-project to do before we start on our actual culminating activity. Personally, both these projects seem a little confusing, but I'm asking people about it so that I have a clear undrstanding when I do it.
I have a lot of work to be done right now, so I guess I'll write more tomorrow!

Good luck to everyone during this month! Back to work!

Oh no to Horray

Oh no, being sick prevented me from being at school for the past three days and oh my, the work i missed is crazy! I have a lot to do these holidays. I will need to contact my classmates to ask about the notes I don't have.

On the other hand... oh my god! It's finally the holidays! Winter breaks is the time you can use to spend with your family. I'm going to use these days off so that I can just sit back and relax before the new year begins. I have many new year resolutions and I hope I will succeed in completing them.

Horray for holidays!
Hope everyone has a great winter break!

Hurray!

My computer is finally working properly with the internet connection again! Thanks to my dad and uncle who took the time to fix it just for my purposes.

Any who, yesterday was a simple day where we had our second programming test. I felt I did very good on the front side because I was familiar with what the questions were asking me to explain. But unfortunately I didn't do so well on the back side because I couldn't understand what to do! Bad news aside, I'm sure that I did much better on this test than our first one.

After our test, Mr. Arkin showed us a program he created for our graphics unit. I feel this is going to be an exciting unit because we'll be learning how to create different shapes, colours in shapes, actions and music in our programs. I'm very excited!

Work It!

Extremely tiring day today!
Mr. Arkin introduced us to some programmer-defined functions. We learnt how to write algorithms in this cool code called the pseudocode with the keywords function and result. I'm sure tomorrow I'll be able to show that I completely understand this topic. I'm really trying better this term! It's in me; I know I can do it!

Anyways, today is my free night. I'm going to use it with the most beautiful thing to do: sleep

Good night everyone!

Mr. Arkin is back!

Even though today's class was only 45 minutes long, it felt like the full class because we still learned a lot! Mr. Arkin was able to come to class today to go over our substrings, and started talking about counted loops. We also found out about the two new keywords: for and decreasing.

Anything else to say? Nope, I don't think so!

Hopefully tomorrow Mr. Arkin will go over some more substrings just so we have a little better understanding of it before our quiz/test!

Anyways, off to bed! Good night!

Supply Teacher [Day 2]

Again not much to say:

Today we continued working on our assignments (finishing up repititions, beggining substrings... which I'm having a little trouble in).

I HAVE A FRENCH UNIT TEST TO STUDY FOR! It's 6:50 right now and I'm already procrasinating because I'm very tired, I want to sleep, but I can't because of the homework and studying I need to start on! Sad, sad, sad...

Anyways, BYE!

Supply Teacher [Day 1]

Sorry I don't have much time to write what exactly what we did... but here it is in a nutshell:

We had a supply and were told to catch up on work and begin the Substrings unit. It was literally a free period for working and I made good use of it.

Anyways, not much more to say... so I'll write tomorrow!

Goodnight!

BUSY weekend!

Oh my goodness. There is so much work to do!
Yesterday was the Girls About Girls sleepover for girls in grade 9 hosted by grade 10 and 11 girls. It was a huge success and all the girls there became close because of it. There were a lot of activities that help us build confidence and get a little open with our group(s). I really enjoyed it!

Right after I came home this morning from school, I had a dentist appointment. Then, because it was my cousin's birthday, our other cousins and I thought it would be nice to take her out to the mall and buy her a really nice present. After that we got pizza and went to one of their houses to just relax and watch a movie. Truly a very fun evening!

I was pretty much out all day yesterday and today, so tomorrow will be my homework procrasinating day. Hopefully I'll succeed in that as well.

Goodnight !

It's important to know what's expected from you...

For each subject, the teacher had their own expectations from their students. It's our job to help them and show them that we're understanding their hard work in teaching us these things.

Today Mr. Arkin kindly went over the three skills of being a successful programmer. It was helpful to me because now before I finish my work, I will be able to double check and make sure it fits well for those three steps. We also thought about alternatives for assignment 8. After that, the typical routine: individual work.

Oh my god! Next week I have a test for ICS, a unit test for french, and then a quiz for science... this is going to be a headache of a weekend.

On a personal note, I feel that I'm doing much better than before in all my classes because I'm actually trying to pay attention and ask questions whenever I'm confused. I also take help from my classmates and other students in different classes who also have that subject this semester. I hope I do much better in my classes now. I'm confident I will succeed!

Bye for now!

Learning a new thing everyday

Today we were taught about array. It's a keyword in the Turing program and is an index type and is used for when you are "getting" more than one information of a certain thing (for example price). Now we had to use that information that we learnt about array and modify repitition assignment 12 for homework.

I need to fix up my assignments! I have everything, but I just need to know if they are correct. So right now, I'm consulting with people from my class and other classes that have grade 9 ICS.

I'm almost done my homework right now!

BYE!

No idea what creative title I should put for today...

So once I reached home, I feel asleep for about half an hour. I am completely washed out!

This morning I had to wake up early to go to school and write a missed unit test for science. Once I came into ICS class, I sat on my computer and worked on my repitition assignments... tried fixing them up properly. After a little while, Mr. Arkin called us back to our desks to write notes on his final assesment of the printer comparison project. He reviewed what we were told to do, what most of us did (or didn't), and generously made a webpage for it himself so that we can see what a model answer should have been for this project.

The rest of my day went busy. After ICS class, I had english and I was told that me and four three other people were to do a make-up test today. I was freaking out, until Stephanie kindly told me that Ms. Fisher (my english teacher) won't be giving the test today; I will be doing the test on Friday due to presentations that need to be done tomorrow and Thursday. I breathed a sigh of relief and just like the rest of my class, worked on the project that is due tomorrow.

For science class, I had to do a presentation with my group about our deforestation project. It went alright... could've been way better if we actually practiced together and tried memorizing more of what we wrote in our powerpoint. In my opinion, other groups did a much better job in presenting their human impacts on environments.

French class... well French is French, nothing out of the ordinary today. To be honest, I'm starting to actually understand whatever we're learning much better than before. I'm able to ask proper questions and finish my homework without complaining.

Now I've wrote a lot, and I'd like to finish my homework so...
BYE FOR NOW!

Too much to do

Today we started class off with a small assessment on our opinions on ICS. We were to write what should continue happening in class, what should be stopped or shouldn't happen often, and what improvements should there be.

Then we worked individually on our repetition assignments and were assigned the Printer Comparison HTML project to do over this long weekend.

I have so much homework this weekend. It's sad because I expected this long weekend to be peacefully... boy, was I wrong!

Anyways, I'm going to take some rest now and start on my homework tomorrow.

Good night everyone <3

Patience is a good virtue...

Today was a little hard for me for some unknown reason. I wasn't feeling too good all day and the weather was just too gloomy! I had to go home early from ICS class, but before I left we were doing desk-checking and peer-editing of our assignment 6 with a partner. I found a few mistakes in mine, but once I reached home, I was able to fix them up.

IB is some hard stuff... no, I didn't JUST notice (if that's what some of you are thinking). I'm trying so hard to be patient and work harder for all my classes, but once I start doing better in one subject, the other subject falls behind! Time management is a big thing. I've signed up for peer tutoring and I hope that can somewhat help me do better and get more support in my work. So far I'm sure no one is going to be happy with my marks on my mid-term. I myself am quite disappointed.

Let's see how this goes...

Missed Blogs!

Oh no, I don't like when I can't write in my blog for my days. Sorry for the inconvenience, readers. My Internet had been going on and off for the past couple days and it's really annoying! I'll try my best to write in the blogs from a different computer.

Today I was at home because of Eid and right now I'm at a party!

Hopefully I can write more tomorrow.

BYE!