My Twenty-Third Week as a Senior

We had a strike on Thursday, so this was a 4-day week. The weeks are becoming monotonous. I have a presentation due on Monday and I dreaded doing it all week. Math isn’t getting any easier. English has been presentations all week, so I haven’t done much.

On Monday, we started the third chapter in Calculus. It’s all about applying our skills of derivatives from the second chapter to real life. We did velocity and acceleration questions. Velocity is the first derivative of distance and acceleration is the first derivative of velocity; therefore, it’s the second derivative of distance. My group was supposed to present our essay, Brain Candy, in English, but our teacher was absent. So, I finished my Calculus homework. In Writer’s Craft, we did timed writing, with the prompt, “You know what I think?” Then we did a review of this week’s vocabulary. It was matching the 20 words we learnt in our vocab sheets from this week to their definition. Then, we talked about themes and central ideas. We read a short story and brainstormed its themes. Our teacher’s definition of a theme is a little more fluid than my English teacher’s. While my English teacher likes for us to state the thesis verbatim, our Writer’s Craft teacher says it should be in our words and an idea that explains something about human nature. Lastly, we made groups and each group presented a short story of their own, with a common proverb as the central theme.

My group wrote a story based on the proverb ‘a stitch in time saves nine.’ Our story was about a woman who bakes a cake and drops her ring into the batter. She realizes this when the cake is in the oven, and, instead of removing the cake and fishing the ring out, she decides to pull it out once the cake is baked. She forgets about the ring until it’s already iced and then thinks she’ll pull it out after the cake is cut. She procrastinates and in the end someone at her dinner party ends up choking on the ring and dies. So, had the woman been proactive, she wouldn’t be the reason someone died.

On Tuesday, we found maximums and minimums of intervals of graphs and functions using derivatives. There is a simple algorithm to follow. Find the derivative of a given function, with intervals, and then solve for the x in the derivative function, or basically find its zeroes. Then plug in the zeroes and the endpoints of the interval (ex: 1<x<5, 1 and 5 are the endpoints) into the original function. The highest and lowest values are the maximums and minimums of the given function. In my spare, I finished my Calculus homework. Then I applied to some scholarships. In Writer’s Craft, we got the period to work on our partnered presentation. We got some work done and then I worked on my Vocab paragraph for this week. It’s objective is to write a paragraph using 8 of the 20 words we learnt from the vocab sheets. I managed to finish it before the bell. In English, my group went second to present our essay. Because there was no time limit, our presentation ran over 30 minutes. After that, our teacher imposed a time limit of 15 minutes, maximum. We got the last 15 minutes to ourselves.

On Wednesday, we studied optimization problems in Calculus. It’s mostly just about finding ways to maximize area with the least amount of perimeter or to maximize volume with the least amount of surface area. At lunch, we had a SAC meeting. We discussed the spirit week; the good and the bad. We discussed our upcoming events and how they can be enhanced. We talked about getting sweaters with our name and position on it. I’m looking forward to that. In English, we just watched the next three presentations. In Writer’s Craft, we did timed writing, with the prompt ‘the guy at the corner store.’ I continued the story I’ve been writing during timed writing about a girl visiting an abandoned hospital. Then we did a few worksheets on adjectives. Lastly, we wrote about something that happened in our that was worth writing about in detail.

On Thursday, the OSSTF went on another strike so it was a day off for us.

On Friday, we took up a little bit of homework in Calculus, before moving to word problems from Science and Economics. At lunch, we had a UCC meeting and then I went to the library to print out posters for the luncheon. In English, there was another round of presentations. In Writer’s Craft, we had our first set of presentations. My turn is on Monday and I’m actually nervous about it. Wish me luck!

This week was a lot more productive than any other week this semester. I have been studying for my HOSA competition on the side. I spent about 7 hours this week studying Medical Terminology. I should also get started on studying for the Brain Bee. I’ll keep you updated about my progress in that. See you next week! - Aarushi