During this summer I was originally planning to go work at Word of Life Youth Camp in Owen Sound.  This camp offers a week of heart pumping action packed Red Team V.S. Blue Team competition.  Last year when I worked there I was on the maintenance team, and helped keep the camp running.  One morning I was helping the head of maintenance(Tim) to transport a 280 pound CO2 tank from the paint ball shed to the maintenance barn, and as we were taking it out of the truck it slipped out of my hands and all 280 pounds  fell onto my toe.  This instantly made me cry out in pain, as Tim rolled it away, we got in the truck and drove to the nurses office.  While I sat there waiting, he ran off to get the nurse.  While he was on his way to get the nurse I was sitting in the office and recalling everything I had learned from when I was doing lifeguard training.  Afterwards I was taken to the hospital and had the nail removed.  Thankfully my toe wasn't broken, but it was also in very bad shape, for the 3 weeks following I had to have a bandage constantly on it, and I could not get it wet.  I was hired again this summer to go back, but to work in the kitchen this time.  Since there are only a few weeks till I'm going, I am now not sure if I would like to go this summer.  It was a great experience last summer, and there was nothing that happened that has made me think I shouldn't go this year, but I am unsure if I do want to go.

As the end of the year is approaching everyone is worrying about exams and marks.  Whether they failed or not, and if they are prepared for their exams.  At the end of the school year, everyone's stress level is raised farther than it should be.  People are losing sleep because of summatives, and since each class has its own summative, they often conflict with each other.  The summatives that take more work often stop students from working on their other classes summatives, and once it is done, students are often exhausted, and can't function properly for a day or so.  For classes that have exams, the summatives should be started earlier on, and for the classes that have no exam the summative should be started later.  The end of the year is really stressful for everyone and there is no way around it.

When a student hands in an assignment late, there should be a consequence.  Currently it is up to the individual teacher, and school, for what the consequence will be.  In my opinion the current way of taking 10% off once it is late, is good, but the teachers should give the students the full day to hand it in, in case they forgot it at home, or, depending on the assignment, didn't transfer it over to the school computer.  I also think that it is a good idea to have the cut-off date for assignments be a week from when they are due, and if it isn't handed in before then it will be marked a 0.  I do like the current way that late assignments are handled but there should be a standard that the entire school follows.  Instead of some teachers having a shorter cut-off date, which can confuse students, it should all be the same.

During the last few days of exams there was an announcement put out by the school where they said that because of snow during the examination period, exams would extend through to Monday.  This gave many people excitement, because of all the snow.  So on Monday many people went outside to have fun in the snow.  Personally, I took the opportunity, and took the day to go snowboarding.  The day was going well, until one fateful ride down one of the hills.  As I was turning a corner, my board caught and I flew a couple of feet, and landed.  I was in a lot of pain at that time, and couldn't move most of my lower body.  I took off my helmet and found out it was cracked all the way through the helmet, after I found ski patrol, they told me that I couldn't snowboard anymore that day.  Fast forward a couple of weeks and I got a call from the place I was snowboarding, and they said that I got a free day, because I had bought a full day pass, and hadn't gotten the whole day out of it.  The day I was there for free started off normally, and continued to be a good day, until I noticed that my boots were falling apart.  I stayed until it was dangerous for them to be on any longer.  Then on March Break, I went snowboarding for my last time of the season.  It was a good day, I met up with some people I know, and we had a good day, until the fateful moment when my left shoe lost its sole completely.  I would have to say that even after 
all those bad things that happened this year, it still was a good year.

The two books I chose, jumped out at me when I read about them, are Hominids and 13 Reasons Why.  The main reason that I chose these two books is because they seemed like books that would be interesting to me,  a few of the other books that popped out at me, but didn't win me over like these two did, were Half Blood Blues, I, Robot, and Into Thin Air.  The other books either just didn't really cater to my interests, or I had heard bad things about.

In my opinion the greatest skill for student success in high school is initiative.  If you don't know what initiative is, it is the ability to be able to have the mind set to get work done, and sometimes it is even enjoyable to get it done.  To be able to get through high school teens have to have some level of initiative, mostly to get work done, but to also get work done fast.  This is a skill that takes a while to completely master, but once it is picked up it can almost never be lost.  I know you are reading this and asking yourself what about the people who don't master or never pick it up, for them school becomes very hard and some might not even pass.  It is a very important skill for student success and I haven't completely mastered it, but I really need to be able to know how to do it.  The fact that I don't have initiative has made it hard for me to complete some classes.  Initiative is a very important skill for student success.