Blogs.

Jumping into the world of psychology. 8/30/21

Accomplishment, a word to define one's success. Personally I believe growth in any area should be perceived as an accomplishment. One accomplishment I am pleased with is my perseverance through my AP courses last year. Specifically my AP psychology class. Many nights I stayed up reading the text like a zombie, repeating the scientist names, again, again, and again. I could recite a whole lab experiment in my sleep. Challenging was an understatement of the work, time, and dedication put into the class. Yet the outcome benefited my academics and perception of my life. Passing the class with outstanding grades alongside understanding the material enough to apply to my life is a simple accomplishment I take pride in. I've learned that not all accomplishments need to be as magnificent such as a Nobel peace prize although they can be. The most important accomplishments I've experienced are the ones you grow personally. I wonder how other people describe the word accomplishment and what it means too oneself. Often throughout the studying process I felt, overwhelmed, unhappy, and exhausted. Quickly I grasped the concept of time management. Eventually this lead to the results in grades I was searching for, not only in psychology but every class. Time management is such a crucial part in a student's life, from being on time to class, work, and meetings helping me to this day with being successful in academics. In the future I plan work on my scheduling. Spacing out my day so I'm not so overwhelmed from class to class. Lastly on the topic of psychology I hope to gain more of an understanding on specific types, such as metal disorders, or special needs children which. That topic closed out the first blog on my web page of pediatric psychology.

Hyper excited about psychology-ADHD. 9/6/21

Throughout my research this week in the world of psychology I focused on the specific disorder, ADHD. Although ADHD is the number one disorder that young children are diagnosed with. I had little to none, true and factual knowledge about the disorder. I learned a lot of shocking things, such as ADHD has different strands, treatment does not involve just taking medication but also therapy, there's other side effects than hyperactivity, failing grades and having a hard time focusing. I learned ADHD can also have effects such as anxiety and depression which is huge in this generation. I am proud to say that I understand more than just a surface level knowledge of the disorder now. With my new understanding of the disorder I wonder how people came to discover attention-deficit/hyperactivity? I'm also curious about the studies done within the field of ADHD. How often everyday is a child diagnosed with the disorder? Although almost 25 years of research and studies have gone into the disorder there are still multiple unknowns. Today scientists and researchers are still studying the best multi treatment method to best treat ADHD. Personally I found it challenging not knowing all the answers for treatment on the disorder. But I found there are still treatments that benefit children who struggle with symptoms.This includes taking a drug called Adderal, combined with therapy and tutoring. Jumping into the world of pediatric psychology I'm still very unsure about which specific field I would like to specialize in. It excites me that I found a lot of interest in the disorder of ADHD and hope to continue finding specific disorders and mental challenges children face and learning more about them. Next week I plan to dive into mental challenges such as depression, anxiety, bipolar, multiple personality disorder, and anything that has to do with mental health. This week I'm pushing to be more on time with my assignments and getting my research in on time so I have more time to understand the material. Disorders and mental challenges are so fascinating to me because it affects each person in such a unique and different way. But with research and studies we can find ways to improve so many individuals as a whole. In my next blog I hope to dive into the world of mental disorders.

Correlation of depression. 9/13/21

This week in ISM I focused on correlation between depression and relationships at young ages. Having basic knowledge of depression and its symptoms I asked myself the question of what causes depression. Is it an offset in chemicals in the brain that is genetic? Or is it caused by a factor such as, relationships, how a child grows up, traumatic events? I learned that there is no clear answer. Research supports all of the above. I specifically studied the relationship with a child and adult figure and how that effects a child's cognitive growth. I struggled to understand specific details just because there could be so many. There are so many effects that could cause depression. I found that it is hard to give one specific answer when there is no one cause. So I dealt with this problem with focusing on one affect. I felt by doing this I learned more about the importance of a relationship of a child and their caretaker. It's crucial for an adult to be available to the child when dealing with emotional support. Without a strong loving support system a child is very likely to have depression in later development. The next upcoming week I want to stay on the topic of mental disorders, but lean towards others such as, bipolar, eating disorders, and maybe even less popular studies like dissociative identity disorder. I felt as if I accomplished my goal from last week, this week I want to continue to stay on top of my work. Later down in my ISM path I hope to come back to the topic of depression and learn more about the genetic effects of depression.

Chewing down on eating disorders. 9/20/21

Through my assessment this week in ISM I focused on the coming of eating disorders. Surprisingly I had very little knowledge on eating disorders so I wanted to learn more on how a child comes to develop one. My research revolved around three questions I had, how does a child gain an eating disorder? Is an eating disorder cognitive offset/ genes like depression? Does the influence of peers in a negative way expose a child to eating disorders? I learned like depression there can be more than one cause to develop an eating disorder. I faced the challenge of not developing a clear understanding on how a doctor treats an eating disorder. Although I focused on the three main questions I listed above I still found basic level answers for treatment. Treatment can rang from therapy to hospital treatment and medications. I found success this week in yet other mental disorder I now understand better than a surface level. I want to pursue more research into disorders, specifically special needs. Next week I want to grow in my interviews and ask more questions, really get to know more about the professional's personal self to connect. After I research all the common mental disorders I would like to go into psychology study's. Such as the Stanford jail study. So then I would understand other parts of psychology to better my knowledge in the field.

Meeting the professionals. 9/27/21

Changing ideas this week, rather than researching a paper I had my second ISM interview. I focused on making good question to ask the professional that would help me gain more knowledge in the filed. Since this was not my first interview I felt more confident that the first interview. I changed my questions along with added more I did not have in the first interview. After my interview I was left with the question on the difference of personal practice therapy and clinical in hospitals? Although I was very nervous for my interview I felt very proud and accomplished when I walked out of the building. I felt I had improved in my knowledge and personality and as a student. This week completing my seconded interview I'm almost done with the interviews. This means professionals had reached back to me, and agreed to help with my process. Next week I home to really focus on my original work with play therapy. I hope to come up with a play therapy product that will one day be produced. I've been very focused with play therapy recently that I wish to keep looking into other practices. I hope to learn more about hospital studies in child psychology in the future.

Ideas from the heart. 9/27/21

Focusing this week on my original work for my assessment. I found many things I still need to learn and grown in before I make a successful original product for ISM. I believe my original work will be less stressful to the fact I don't have to produce the product. But I still have to be knowledgeable about the information. I still have many many questions that I addressed in my assessment, such as what is the best kind of Oobleck or fake snow to use inside of the play pillow? How many times will I fail before I become successful? Will I change my original work idea? The final product can seem intimidating and I found myself scared and struggling with this. I overcame this by taking it step by step. I focused on the steps to perfect the original work before the production of the final product. I'm very proud that I found an original work and final product that is realistic to make. This helps my passion for play therapy grown when I find moments like this that I accomplished. Next week I hope to complete my third and final interview and start the process of getting a mentor. I hope to grown in my confidence in these interviews and others next week. While also keeping the flow of the conversation in the interview good as well. I hope to learn more of the rules of play therapy and see a session in person next in my ISM journey.

Yet another interview. 10/11/21

This week I have yet another interview which I am looking forward to. So far in my past interview i have gained far more knowledge than I have within any of my research.This excites me when looking for a mentor in the future because I will be surrounded by first hand experience. I do tend to question how will I know which mentor will be the best fit for me? Or when, will this professional want to be my mentor? I faced this when going through my interviews and finding interesting benefits to each individual. Currently I find myself more interested in hospital psychology were I can shadow. I found this again through my interviews. Currently I am facing a hard time trying to shadow in a hospital setting just because I am still in high school and not looking for a job. I'm reaching out to as many professionals as possible right now to hopefully find one willing to take me in. This week I was successful with gaining contacts with new professionals, I have many interviews upcoming and hope for more to come. This upcoming week I hope to focus on my original work and maybe in start the process of making the poster. I feel that this week I struggled with keeping up with my homework and assessments so I wish to stay on top of it better this week.Going back to the start of the school year, I wish to learn more about the basics maybe special needs or substance abuse.

Learning and hard work 10/18/21

This week will consist of a lot of hard work and research. At the start of the year I focused more on research rather than interviews but recently thats all I've been consumed with. This week I would like to learn more on my own time about topics of interest. This week I have been asking questions to benefit my research and knowledge. This includes questions such as, how do you reach out to hospitals when applying for a psychology job out of collage? What is teen group therapy? Is there children group therapy or is it more teens and older children? I want to look more into types of therapy rather than disorders this week. I faced this hard idea, when going through interviews and not being too sure if I wanted to shadow in private practice or in hospital. Now that I am on the fence on which to shadow in this year I would like to learn about the differences. As stated in my other blogs I am having a hard time getting in contact with hospitals, due to the fact of them being so busy. To overcome this I continue to reach out to professionals in that setting and gain connections to people in that field through other interviews. I found success this week in starting my projects before hand, this allows me to put my best work forward and focus on my other work in ISM.This upcoming week I am really praying to hear back from one of the hospital I reached out to. I also hope to gain more knowledge of group therapy. I hope to complete one interview assessment and research assessment so not only did I get real world information from a professional but also learn about more subjects the professional might not go over.

Medical psychology. 10/24/21

This week took an adventure in twist when I had an interview with the head child play psychologist at children’s Dallas campus. I don’t even know where to begin with the information that I am out of obtain. I came into this interview were so many questions and I still have so many more. I asked questions such as how do you deal with grief and loss in the hospital? Do you form a real emotional connection with the possible fatal patients? What is the difference in your eyes in private practice and hospital setting practice? I felt successful this week by gaining new opportunities and connections with professionals. I felt having an interview with the head play psychologist at children’s opened a bunch of doors for new programs and mentors. Although in the past I have struggled with gaining connections in the hospital I felt this interview really shine the light on the situation. There’s so many new terminology words that I didn’t know that I now know. And that not mentally I’ ll kids need play therapy others such as chronically ill like cancer enjoy play therapy as well. This week I hope and plan to reach out to more professionals in the hospital setting along with apply for this new volunteering program at Scottish Rite. Some future goals I have is to start applying for scholarship for college that will benefit my résumé and my career and ISM. This week I will continue to have good grades and be on time with my time and work management. I also hope to stay more organized this week with my schedule and space out all my interviews and essays on time so I’m not stressed out. this research helped me understand how I want to major in college and psychology. I am going up to A&M this weekend to view their campus and their psychology program. I’m hoping that this will be a good fit for my career path and my future education as my sister is already up there loving it.

Staying in contact. 11/1/21

This week in ISM I plan to focus on my journey with my soon to be mentor. This week I reached out to the child play therapist at children's again to gain more information I did not have time to talk about in the interview. Mrs. Loftin makes me feel good about my questions and often responds with positive answers such as, this is a great question even some of my older adults that shadow ask. I ask questions such as," when you feel stress about a child and feel like it is a bigger problem out of your power how do you handle it. I got the understanding that most of the time it is out of the therapist power to change the events in a child's life. It takes more than one to see change. She finds it helps talking to the child's parents and her co workers to find the best change for the child. I felt successful this week while planing my work for ism. I started to find websites that can help produce my book. I'm also planning my poster bored right now and fun ideas to show my book that will be my final product. In the past I was set on making a stress toy, I felt stressed because I didn't know how I could be able to make it, I feel like my final product now is more realistic. I plan to focus really hard this week on email my teachers and important people back. I get stressed out about emails sometimes because I don't feel like I always have the answers for everything and then never get back to them so I plan on working hard to keep up to date on those. Along with my school work since I will be seeing Texas A&M this weekend.

Failing is not always failing. 11/8/21

This week started off on a sad note, my first fail in ISM. Due to Covid-19 the hospital I dreamed of shadowing in is not allowing high school students to watch or even volunteer. This means Mrs. Loftin could not be my mentor for my ISM one class. Although I am very sad about this I did gain a ton of great information about play therapy and pediatric psychology. I did learn from this that no professional is too big to reach out to. Mrs. Loftin has a big name in the psychology world yet the took the time out of her day to help me learn. I plan on looking for a new mentor and reaching out with some of my past professionals I have interviewed. I wonder if this will open another door for my path in play therapy? Maybe I will find I like other parts of psychology than play therapy. I hope to stay in touch with Mrs. Loftin for my 2022-2023 school year as a possible mentor. I was found this week if you do not try you will never know what you are capable of doing. I find myself trying to catch up from last week, due to the fact I was gone on a collage tour. I'm struggling trying to keep up while getting good grades, but I'm doing it for my future. I hope on going to school at Texas A&M for psychology, but in the meantime i'm going to work hard for the grades to get in. I learned this weekend Texas A&M ranks third best psychology program in Texas. First is UT, then followed by Rice. Texas A&M seems to be the best fitting for me score wise and I enjoy the history and people down there as well.

How to make with the hard. 11/15/21

This week in ism I learned the hard lesson of eating breakfast before a speech. Sadly during my speech I was prepared for I started to not feel so good and could not finish my speech. Although this is not related to play therapy for pediatric psychology it was a huge lesson that probably saved me in the future. I found success in finishing my presentation on time though along with staying in touch with my mentors. I hope to work on staying on time, being really stressed out with thanksgiving break coming and trying to get all my work in on time. I have learned this week to stay strong and push through the hard times, such as my whole junior year. While volleyball season is over I still feel like i'm trying to catch up from work from back in august. Hopefully Thanksgiving break will give me time to regroup. I hope during the break I can finish reading my play therapy and psychology books. And continue to learn about therapy to be ready for shadowing at Thrive play therapy. I am wanting to impress my mentors when I come and watch over the skills they present at Thrive. I am also excited to see the therapy dogs, and do some research over how play therapy animals help humans and how we can incorporate this into more places besides therapy. Lastly I want to set goals for next semester to finish out December with high grades, along with sticking to my act practice. I wish to finish with all A’s and get a 30 on my ACT because that is really stressing me out, along with collages. My goal is to get into A&M with these grades and I feel like ISM is helping me with my experiences, and gets me ready for interviews I might have to write or go in for in college. Overall I am very grateful for ism as an experience I get to be a part of.

Getting back into it. 11/29/21

Coming back from Thanksgiving week the drive to do any type of academics has been a struggle. But one thing I can say probably is that I did keep up with my research in psychology over the break. Recently I checked out books at the Frisco library Of different types of psychology not specifically pediatric psychology. I specifically checked out a book for play therapy and criminal psychology. I plan to do this more in the future to not only learn more about pediatric psychology but other types of psychology including just how humans work. I'm also looking forward to after winter break to be enrolled in the class of sociology I think not only will this benefit my knowledge but also my ISM process. Specifically some thing I hope to work on this week is to be more in contact with my mentors. I hope to fill out the registration forms needed to start seeing my mentor. This includes the background checks for both of my mentors and then partially doing a background check. So far I've started off the week with success by completely cleaning my room and becoming organized for the week to follow. I hope to stay ahead of my assessments this week which I actually do not think we have one so this will help me a lot in my other courses. I plan to continue going to tutorials to not just benefit ISN but also my other academic grades. I'm looking forward to start my original work poster outside of the research and actually make the poster come to life and think of original and creative ways to show my thought process and work that has been done in this class. I'm also still thinking of peopleI would like to attend to the ceremony. I'm also really excited to get to learn more about my best buddy and write my book over her and how amazing she is.

psychology psychology psychology 12/6/21

Coming back from Thanksgiving week the drive to do any type of academics has been a struggle. But one thing I can say probably is that I did keep up with my research in psychology over the break. Recently I checked out books at the Frisco library Of different types of psychology, not specifically pediatric psychology. I specifically checked out a book for play therapy and criminal psychology. I plan to do this more in the future to not only learn more about pediatric psychology but other types of psychology including just how humans work. I'm also looking forward to after winter break being enrolled in the class of sociology. I think not only will this benefit my knowledge but also my ISM process. Specifically, some thing I hope to work on this week is to be more in contact with my mentors. I hope to fill out the registration forms needed to start seeing my mentor. This includes the background checks for both of my mentors and then partially doing a background check. So far I've started off the week with success by completely cleaning my room and becoming organized for the week to follow. I hope to stay ahead of my assessments this week, which I actually do not think we have one so this will help me a lot in my other courses. I plan to continue going to tutorials to not just benefit ISM but also my other academic grades. I'm looking forward to starting my original work poster outside of the research and actually making the poster come to life and think of original and creative ways to show my thought process and work that has been done in this class. I'm also still thinking of peopleI would like to attend the ceremony. I'm also really excited to get to learn more about my best buddy and write my book over her and how amazing she is.

Better late than never 12/13/21

This weeks ISM blog is more on the mellow side. After winter Break I have a lot of fun upcoming stuff for ISM including mentor visits for the first time and hopefully seeing some patients in play therapy rooms along with better understanding how to play therapy works and being a counselor in General. Last week I submitted all my research for my original work and I'm excited to present it on original work night but that will be in a couple months after we get back from winter break. I put a lot of thought and research into my original work and I feel my final product is really going to benefit off of this. Although at times it to get hard because I had mixed emotions and ideas on what I want my original work and final product to be in the end it turned out to be even better than what I could imagine. Right now I'm actually struggling with what I want to do next year and ISM two I know this is in a while and I definitely have time to think about it, but the idea of being an elementary educator has crossed my mind a couple times. I think this topic also goes well with my psychology interest just in a different aspect. I would totally love to be a kindergarten teacher if it made more money I definitely have a love for the younger kiddos and seem to have more patience with them than actual adults. This is some thing I know I need to involve in my career path in the future. Right now I am very Lucky to a found play therapy and therapy in general for children. Not only do I think it's a growing need in this world but I also can feel accomplished helping others while making my life wealth off of that. This week I hope to keep trying hard and pushing through this final week before break.

The break is over. 1/4/22

Winter break is officially over and it's time to get back into the grind of ISM. Over break I decided to keep in touch with my mentors and send them emails. We are currently setting up a time for the first meeting and I could not be more happy to get started. I'm scared to see what the industry is like but at the same time couldn't wait more. My goals to accomplish this week is to stay ahead in school this week, with ism, math, english, etc. And keep this habit through 2022. The only thing I have to stress over now is my act grade. Once I get one I'm satisfied with then I can work on my applications. Which is a goal I've had since last year, which is to apply early to all my schools. I'm looking forward to my senior year for ISM because I will be able to really focus on my work rather than having to deal with the stress of all my other classes. Lastly I wish to be more consistent with my sleep schedule which will benefit my academics. My sleep got very messed over the break and needs to be fixed for the last semester.

1/10/22 business behind therapy.

In today's blog I wanted to talk about my first mentor visit with my mentors. I have to say I would have never been able to even imagine the amount of knowledge I have come to know from my intelligent mentors. Mrs.Katie was with me last Wednesday to help me understand the business behind working and owning your own business. Not only do Mrs.Katie and Ms. Kelsey both created and thrive but they also work for thrive. I am very grateful I found them for my mentors because I never thought of the business view of therapy. And how much plays a role in starting and working for a business, such as taxes, insurance, time. They are both very powerful and smart women, which is why they were able to overcome the parts that were not as fun, such as paying thousands of dollars to create Thrive before they were making any income for it. The information they teach me is very useful because I hope to start a side business someday and maybe even for a full time job start my own business. I was also taught about how important it is to market your business. Places such as facebook and google help spread the word more than I ever realized, making your website clean and organized is also important for the company to look good. Overall I'm even more excited to go on my next visit and have so many questions!

Mentors and more! 01/17/2022

The week has already started off positive. Today (Monday) I met with Mrs.Katie, who helped me look into colleges and my children's book idea i've been itching to get into. Ive been super stressed out about getting into my dream college and still am, but Mrs.Katie has helped me find a major that will suit what I wish to get out of college. We looked into child development, psychology, and many more majors that relate to these ideas. Mrs.Katie helps me feel more calm about getting into A&M telling me that even if that plan falls through, there are so many other great colleges that will get me to the profession that I wish to gain. Sadly I did not get to see Mrs. Kelsey today since it is MLK day, but I plan on coming up to set up a meeting to discuss the social media aspect of owning your own business. And how to reach the right audience. Im trying to keep a positive balance in my life currently between being a teenager and having a social life, and also achieving my goals and dreams I set for myself. This is why I plan to get my work done early and study for my upcoming test and quizzes.

Speech time. 1/24/2022

This week we have a major speech and I’m waiting to do better than I did last time. Sadly the first time I tried to have my speech I felt very sick from a mix of multiple things. Then the next class I felt better. I had so much to talk about I ran way over time. This speech my goal is to master what I want my audience to know and hear. Another exciting event that I have this week is another mentor visit. I want to complete before this a challenging list of topics to discuss so I get the most out of my time with my mentors. I really enjoy going to my mentor visits and being with them, I really feel that fate leads me to Thrive. I'm so thankful for their willingness to give back to the younger generation. This week I need to reset so I can also focus on my act testing so I can make my dreams come true. To do this I need to clean, keep my good grades up, make a list of all my to do's, and save my money for items I really need. I tend to struggle with that last one.

How to get over hardship. 1/31/22

This past week was hard for me in terms of school and social life, although I wish every week could go perfectly planned out and stay to that plan this is not possible. I struggled last week with staying updated and prepared for school which affected my social / schedule. I was not getting enough sleep at night which pushed me to have a poor performance in school with work and tests. I want to slowly get back onto my schedule this week. Over the weekend I took some time for myself reading books that talk about the importance of staying on schedule. I’m excited to speak to my mentor this week about relationships and how they deal with them at Thrive. This whole time we have been focusing on the younger kids and play therapy but they see teens as well. I'm excited about this topic because it's not something I thought about this much but can even benefit my learning for personal reasons outside of psychology or school. My goals this week is to pass all my tests and get on a better track with my act testing reading and math. I want to continue to push to have the best grades and resume for my school I want to attend.

Snow in Texas! 2/7/22

This week and Ism I am very excited to learn about others projects and poster boards. What I mean by this is I'm excited to see all the hard work my classmates have put into presenting their topic in a professional and knowledgeable presentation. I am also really personally excited to show everybody my poster board and what I have learned from this semester in ISM. The past week we had a snowstorm because of crazy Texas weather, I'm dying to know how this affected thrive and their business. I recall Mrs.Katie telling me about the horror stories from last year snow storm. Luckily this year was not as intense and I thought we were a lot more prepared to deal with the icy roads. She just got to me as last year being a hard year to run a business with Covid 19th and unpredictable weather. I'm really interested in looking into how external factors affected businesses and how to overcome and adapt to those hard factors. I feel like this is why drive counseling is so successful because of their ability to adapt overcome and create something even better at the end of a challenge. I hope someday I can accomplish something like this in my personal business.

How to make yourself better in 4 days. 2/14/22

Reading the tittle this week is a four day weekend, this is great for my sleep but this also means I have less time to get my school work done. I have found while the weekends are fun the four day weeks for school are stressful and packed. This being said my focus is to work really hard on staying on top of work. I also want to start sending my mentors emails with questions I think of over the week rather than saving them all for out visits and forgetting. This week I have also found love for another school for the future, while my family is a huge Aggie family I have found love in OSU and I am thinking about going their soon to look into their psychology program. With the help of my dad I have been able to make a lot of progress on my final product. Mostly with the artwork and getting it up on my computer. This seemed scary when I was looking at it weeks ago but now that i'm taking it on it seems to being working great by taking little steps at a time to make sure it is perfect. This week I strive to do good in staying put together!

2/21/22

Exciting week!

This weekend ISM I'm super excited to be presenting my original work. I hope to go into flex tomorrow to add my final touches to my display board which have to do with making my name bigger and putting a couple of papers into a folder explaining my original work. I'm excited to get feedback not only from my peers but from my mentors along with adults. Although this week is very exciting it is also super stressful because I will be missing other courses so I really have to stay on top of my classwork. I also have a mentor visit tomorrow which I'm excited to ask about The artwork I have been working on for my final product. I'm starting to worry that I'm not going to be able to finish my product in time so I'm going to continue to work harder and harder to get the exact product that I am hoping for. Lastly I hope lastly I hope to be able to present a topic that I'm hoping to study in college. I wish my sister could be at my final presentation night but because of her final exams she will not be able to make it. Hopefully I will be able to either FaceTime her or take pictures of my poster board so she can see it!

Spring break! 3/14/22

This week and last week has been what I would call the final push of my school year. I'm working very hard to stay on top on my school work while keeping good grades. This includes my final product for ISM, which I did work on over break at Texas A&M. This was one of the coolest moments I have gotten to feel this year. Not only was I on campus with my best friend, (My sister) but I also got to act like a student who actually goes there. It was super calm and peaceful because it was finals week down there. But this gave me a nice taste of what the campus is really like, because before I have only gone when huge football games, such has Bama was going on. I know I keep saying I want to visit OUS soon I get so caught up school It's hard to balance time to really do it all. Besides from that I'm really proud of how my grades ended up being this nine weeks. To add this random comment I am hoping on watching a yoga therapy session soon which is something very new for me and I look forward to hopefully seeing this soon.

Crunch time. 3/21/22

As many people know the 2021-2022 school year is coming to an end, with this being said I feel like teachers are throwing projects at us, students left and right. For me, my main focus is my final product but its so hard to stay focused with all the other major grades from classes like AP lang, History, etc while also keeping a job. This is why I am making it a goal to finish my product by this weekend so i'm not only less stressed, have more tome for other classwork, but also am able to make it perfect before producing it. Some other things i'm looking forward to coming up, is my meeting with Scottish rite, and other service hours coming up. I sure these last couple weeks will fly by like they always do, but in the moment I feel so stressed with the heavy amounts of work that is on my plate. One thing I can do to make this better is focusing on what I can control, my time, my plans, and my work ethic. This summer I do plan to keep working and helping out in places that involve learning about psychology, not only to grow my love, but to help out for ISM 2.

4/4/2022- How to make healthy habits.

I plan for this week to be productive with school and myself, while not overdoing myself to a breaking point. Last week I really pushed myself to make progress in my final product which I did, but I still did not complete everything I hoped to. This week I plan to keep pushing but in a healthy way. I need to really focus to my work while still making time for me, stuff such as playing volleyball, working out, skincare, reading, working etc. I really want to finish my final product this weekend and get in onto the website so they can start to make it and get it back to me. I also have a very important interview with Scottish rite the week which Im scared yet looking forward to, if I get into the program I will be able to go up to Dallas this summer for about two weeks to help out at Scottish rite, I think this will really give my resume a leg up if I choose not to summit my scores from my sat or act. Which I also just took this past weekend at Frisco high school. I hope I can pull through with all my goals this week.

Presentation time. 4/18/22.

For me it's crazy to think about how this school year has gone by so fast. I remember the first day of junior year dreading my schedule and dreaming about how difficult it is going to be. ISM has been one of the most difficult yet rewarding classes that I have taken. I have learned a lot of time management skills and I've also learned a lot of hard lessons that include rejection and the stress of needing certain documents and essays written and submitted at a very precise time. Hopefully I take all of these lessons and to my next year in this class. I am still very eager to learn about the subject that I went into this year but I do feel like I set my expectations too high then what I was capable of performing. I think this will help me next year set realistic yet challenging expectations. My final product is about to be presented and I'm very pleased with how I formatted my book. One thing that I found extremely challenging with the illustrations and I'm still not exactly excited about how the illustrations turned out since I did have to do them myself. But I still put a lot of hard work and time into my book and I hope in the future I can actually publish it and hire an illustrator to fulfill everything that I want.