Building It Up

²⁹ Do not let any unwholesome talk come out of your mouths, but only what is helpful for building others up according to their needs, that it may benefit those who listen. - Ephesians 4:29

I can remember times that my parents, friends, family, teachers, and coaches have built me up. I feel like I am being built up all the time, even if it is with criticism. My favorite example of this was during a basketball game last year. Lets just say we hadn't won a game in a while. We were tied and had to go into overtime. We ended up winning the game. I had been so discouraged before, but I still had knew that we could win. Everyone was congratulating me and I felt like I was on top of the world. I know that I make bring people down sometimes and I don't mean too. That is something that I want to work on throughout this year. I want to be nice to everyone and not because I have too because I want too. 

Summer Reading Presentation Recap

Now that we have finished up our summer reading unit, I can kind of wrap up what we had to do. Our group was assigned to do the conflict in The Outsiders using Google Presentation. Google Presentation is just like making a Microsoft powerpoint. The reason I think it is better is that Google Presentation allows multiple editors on different computers to all be working on it at the same time. After finishing up the summer reading unit, I feel like I learned how to annotate. Before this annotating was sort of confusing and hard to do. Now that I am done with it, it is much easier. Another thing I learned was how to pick out symbols. Symbols can be a character, object, or place that has another meaning behind its physical/literal meaning.

Goals for a Freshman

  

Freshmen year is a year where we all must grow up and start to learn how to become more independent. My first goal for this year would be to make different friends. All these years (since K-5), I have pretty much had the same group of friends. It's not a bad thing though. Every once in while a new friend is nice, especially since we are all in such a small grade/school. Now that I am in high school, there are more opportunities to hang out with different people. A second goal for my freshman year would be to try and become more comfortable with public speaking. I have never really been all that comfortable public speaking. It is a very necessary skill to have not just throughout school but for life. I would be comfortable doing so much more stuff if i didn't struggle with it. A third goal would be to actually learn Chinese. This year instead of taking a Spanish or Latin or French, I decided to take Chinese. It will be difficult, but by the end of the year maybe I can actually have a conversation with what I have learned. My fourth goal would be to come closer to the Lord. I think that this year will be the biggest change ever (in a good way). I don't want to just sit there and listen, but actually absorb the information that is being said. I want to actually take it to heart and think about it. If all three of these things can happen in the same year, it would have the makings to be one of the bests yet.

Photo by Lauren Manning