Isabel's E-Portfolio

    As an eighth grade student, I have the ability to look back at my past four years at this program and realize how each year was different.  Fifth grade was the very start when I didn’t know what I was doing and never even considered what it would be like to be an eighth grader; 8th grade seemed to be a millennium away.  

 

    In sixth grade, I knew what to expect; I knew everyone in my class, yet not as well as I would come to know them two years later.  Seventh grade was a major setback.  We went from being on top of the younger grades to the bottom of the higher grades.  It was as if everything I knew about Adventure and school changed entirely.  By eighth grade, I had become an entirely different person.  I had discovered who my friends were, and I knew I would miss them when I left for high school.  In my last year, I have realized what it really means to be an Adventure student and have learned how to survive eighth grade, mostly successfully.

 

    The Adventure program is based on students collaborating through group projects and technology.  My 8th grade year at Adventure was a constant reminder of that.  This past year, the biggest difference I noticed compared to my previous years is that the group-based projects have been a lot longer and more difficult and were, by far, the most challenging part of this year.  We had several group projects that lasted a month or longer and involved  designing creative solutions and figuring out how to work with our teams in order to be able to complete the assignment in time.  No matter how long you have been at Adventure or how many group projects you have done, there is still a chance that you will end up with an unevenly participating team, one of my least favorite parts of this school program.  Whether I ended up with someone who feels they don’t have as much of a say in the decisions or the opposite, I ended up having to carry the entire team of slackers. I’ve found that group work always varies depending on the type of project.  But no matter what group you are working with, in order to be a reasonable teammate, you must procrastinate as little as possible and be resourceful so that you don’t let your team down.

 

    A tip I would give anyone in eighth grade is to not fall short of your best work.  Because if you do, you will end up disappointing just about everyone.  As eighth graders, especially the last single class at Adventure, we were always held to a really high standard and when we fell short, all of the teachers and often even the principal heard about it.   An example is our first student exhibition night this year where our class did not put in as much effort as they should have, ending with several consequences. Those were the lectures that put on the pressure to be the best eighth graders from the fear of disappointment. If you find yourself in that situation, just remember that if you try your best and actually put effort into your grade and work, you aren’t a disappointment to your classmates or teachers, even if you have a few setbacks.

 

    Something else that I wished I would’ve learned sooner is that when you have to write essay, ignore the scary title that gives you nightmares.  When you hear essay, it makes it seem like a cruel and unfair punishment inflicted upon students by teachers, but in reality it just means to write and share your thoughts about a prompt in a structured form.  By considering it like that, you can add your own personality into your writing, which is a great way to make essays a lot more bearable to write.  In fact, right now I’m not considering this an essay.  It is a guide to help the next generation of eighth graders so that they won’t make the same mistakes we did.

 

    Another tip that you should always remember is that eighth grade won’t last forever, and you’ll begin to realize how different your life will be without your classmates.  Without those people who were always loud and had lots of personality, who disrupted the class on several occasions, also kept it from being too quiet.  I can’t imagine a class without the creative artists, or the writers who always have a story to share, or the gamers who live in different fantasies, fending them from fictional attackers.  And of course, no one fits in just one or possible any category, but are rather their own unique soul who have impacted my life in so many ways.  After being with my class for four years, I consider just about all of them my friends.  We have survived Adventure together as classmates, teammates, and friends and have come one step closer to taking over the world.