Term 3 Blog Post 4: Termly Reflection

Introduction:

In this blog post I will reflect on my personal growth in science and on my performance in the science assessment test for this term(term 3).

How has my knowledge and understanding for Science improved and grown?

This term I have definitely improved! Looks like studying hard and having better time management did pay off after all. This term most of SLC's responsibilities have ended for me, and I took it upon myself to ensure that I had to improve my results. After all since time was the main factor that affected my results during term 1 and term 2, this term I should score much better as I would have had much more time to study and do more practice. Last term I was devastated at my Science marks(actually at most of my marks), and after a lot of hard work this term I managed to bring back some confidence.

So the topics that were focused on this term were mostly Ecology and Nutrient Cycles, I found this less boring as compared to Physics, but then again I realised that there was a lot of memory work to be done. Therefore once again most of the studying was done by ourselves, while class time was mostly used for going through worksheets and assignments etc.

I think I would have enjoyed Science a little more than last term because what we were learning was part of Biology; always more interesting to me. It was nice learning what the different relationships between organisms with one another in the environment, as well as other simple concepts of population, community and ecosystem. We also revisit what decomposers were and their role to play in order for the Nutrient Cycle to exist. I think many of us would have already found all these concepts and content familiar as we had already learnt some of it during Primary School. This made things easier for everyone when we wanted to self-study at home. I also did a ACE project with another group of fellow classmates regarding Ecology so as to allow us to gain a deeper understanding of the subject, and we presented it to our class to share what we had found and learnt.

There was also another group that did the same, and that allowed us to learn from one another! So in this way my understanding in Science has grown in that I realised the importance of hard work, and even with high intelligence or talent in Science, one must be willing to put in a certain amount of effort before seeing tangible results. After all, the joy in learning is when you put in effort; be it a certain project or assignment, and see yourself improving and getting what you deserved. Such is the case of 'No pain, no gain'.

For my knowledge in Science, I definitely managed to learn much more regarding Ecology as compared to when I was learning the same subject in Primary School. This time we went into much more detail, and learning many new terms such as "Mutualism, Commensalism, Parasitism etc." There's a Chinese idiom, '温故知新', and I think it really fits in my current situation.

With that, I know that I should not rest on my laurels, and that should I choose to go into a 'Slack Mode' now then I would surely fail my EOYs. If I just think about it, EOYs would be testing on Biology, Chemistry and Physics. Should I choose not to study hard and start early, I fear the worst has yet to come!

My performance in the Science Assessment Test:

For this term's test, I scored a total of 33.5/40, which is actually 83.75/100. This means that I got an A1! A huge improvement from last term!

I think firstly I was very lucky during this test. I actually was busy trying to study for all my other subjects, and was struggling to try to put Science into one of my top priorities. I tried my best to study over the term, but things don't always turn out the way we want too. Therefore for this particular term, I confess that I did quite a lot of 'last minute' studying.

I still remember the night just before the test where I studied from 9pm - 5am. Went to sleep for 1.5hrs and went to school the next day, all confident that I should be able to score well. I think this is very bad, and I will at all cost try to avoid such situations in the future. I finished 3 cups of coffee in on night, but I told myself that I had to score well this term, and I would not allow anything to stop me from getting an A1 this term. Therefore I wanted to make sure that I had memorised every single content from my notes. Surprisingly, I did not feel sleepy in school at all!

The test paper this term was considered easy as compared to the other terms. I do not know if it is because I studied, or simply because the teachers wanted to set a easier paper such as to allow us to score better. I did the best I could, and I got an A1. Despite that, I am actually not very happy with my score as I felt that I could do even better. Thinking about it, I really need to continue to improve my time management skills, so that I can juggle all the many things that I had put so much effort in. All my passions; CCAs, Council and the like. If I want to do well for my EOYs, to get into CSE or at least IPSP, I would surely need to work doubly hard. This year is a very important year for me as a Secondary 2 student in Hwa Chong Institution, and I am not planning to let slip my chance of becoming an outstanding student. Whether a not I will emerge as another one of those 'legendary' students that are all-rounders, or end up as a wannabe, whatever I do now will decide.