This semester, I have learned a lot about myself and the way I am comfortable with learning. In the beginning, my chemistry teacher informed me of the different ways I can earn points and at that time I thought I would do only project work from then on out. I've always considered myself a project based learner and thought I would learn best that way. At first, I did do a lot of independent projects and labs, but I soon grew tired of it. I realized although I was finishing everything quickly, I wasn't really having fun while doing it. There's a quote I remembered that goes, "If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together." I thought about this quote a lot towards the end of the second section. While doing labs on my own was easier because I only had to rely on myself, I realized doing labs and projects with other people in my class was how I could learn more about the concepts and myself. During labs, I would get different perspectives from my peers, and I could learn who I work well with during group work. Although I loved doing labs, I found that I was more interested in the traditional way of learning through worksheets. I was surprised to complete as many worksheets as I did because in the beginning I thought I wouldn't do any at all.
I think during the class labs was when I was motivated by curiosity the most. Before each lab, we would be taught a chemistry lesson to give us more knowledge about what we were about to do, and during these lectures I would be really interested and write down as much as I could about what my chemistry teacher was learning. During the lectures, I would really focus on the information we would be taught and I really liked learning about it. Then during the labs, I loved to apply the new concepts I learned to the labs. I think I wanted to understand what was happening on a deeper level. And when I wasn't sure how the concepts we learned connected, this pushed me even more to try to understand what was going on. I would talk to my group and ask what they were thinking, or even ask the student teachers for clarification. I was so curious and determine to understand the lab on a deeper level.
Overall, this was a great semester. I think my biggest take away from this class will be how I learn. Since I came to High Tech, I've grown accustomed to the project-based learning and loved demonstrating it in this class. In this class, I learned that I do better with a traditional way of learning. I'm more focused with structure and the freedom of scheduling sometimes gave me too much room and I would get distracted from time to time. But this taught me a great skill: because we needed to earn points for ourselves, I learned a great deal of responsibility and time-management. I think thanks to this structure of the classroom, I will be able to use these skills and continue to develop these skills later on in life.