Tag: school
Week in Review (4)
The Sunday Post is a weekly meme by The Caffeinated Book Reviewer in which bloggers are able to share news and happenings in their lives from the past week on their blog.
My past week has been super relaxing, and nothing much has happened. I borrowed a new book from the library called Think Like a Freak by Stephen J. Dubner and Steven Levitt and the following is the summary of it from Goodreads:
The New York Times bestselling Freakonomics changed the way we see the world, exposing the hidden side of just about everything. Then came SuperFreakonomics, a documentary film, an award-winning podcast, and more.
Now, with Think Like a Freak, Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner have written their most revolutionary book yet. With their trademark blend of captivating storytelling and unconventional analysis, they take us inside their thought process and teach us all to think a bit more productively, more creatively, more rationally—to think, that is, like a Freak.
Levitt and Dubner offer a blueprint for an entirely new way to solve problems, whether your interest lies in minor lifehacks or major global reforms. As always, no topic is off-limits. They range from business to philanthropy to sports to politics, all with the goal of retraining your brain. Along the way, you’ll learn the secrets of a Japanese hot-dog-eating champion, the reason an Australian doctor swallowed a batch of dangerous bacteria, and why Nigerian e-mail scammers make a point of saying they’re from Nigeria.
Some of the steps toward thinking like a Freak:
First, put away your moral compass—because it’s hard to see a problem clearly if you’ve already decided what to do about it.
Learn to say “I don’t know”—for until you can admit what you don’t yet know, it’s virtually impossible to learn what you need to.
Think like a child—because you’ll come up with better ideas and ask better questions.
Take a master class in incentives—because for better or worse, incentives rule our world.
Learn to persuade people who don’t want to be persuaded—because being right is rarely enough to carry the day.
Learn to appreciate the upside of quitting—because you can’t solve tomorrow’s problem if you aren’t willing to abandon today’s dud.
Levitt and Dubner plainly see the world like no one else. Now you can too. Never before have such iconoclastic thinkers been so revealing—and so much fun to read.
It seems like a super eye-opening book, so I thought that I’d give it a try. Stay tuned for a review that will be uploaded on my blog soon.
Other than that, I’ve been looking for a new job for the summer, and the search is going quite well. I just had a phone interview this week, and I thought it went well, so now I’ll be waiting for an email about the next steps that I need to take in this job journey.
On the other hand, I’ve been kind of sick this week and I just cannot wait until I feel better so I can enjoy my break. I went to Nandos for lunch with my family this week (they have some pretty decent food), as well as watched Hereditary.
To be honest, I’d give this movie a 7/10 as I found the ending rather confusing and henceforth frustrating. Overall, quite suspenseful with a TON of jump scares! 😂 What movie have you watched recently?
Thank you for reading my post, and please feel free to leave a link to your Sunday Post below!
Stacking it up
Stacking the Shelves is hosted by Tynga’s Reviews where bloggers discuss the books that they have borrowed from the library or bought to add to their shelves. I personally think it’s a fabulous idea as you are able to learn about books that may not even have been of interest to you!
I have added a few books to my shelf this week, mostly from the library, but nonetheless I plan on reading these books very soon! The following three books are the ones I’ll be reading.
Please leave your ‘Stacking the Shelves’ post link below. ⬇️
High School Semester In Review
It’s been a while, but I’m back! I’ve been busying myself with school. Specifically, my finals and final tasks (summatives).
I’ve officially finished my first semester of grade 11. My courses were physics, data management, French, and accounting. I live in Canada, so my school is semestered. One semester I have four courses everyday and four different courses the next semester. At first, I thought I may be overwhelmed with the heavy focus on math-oriented subjects, but it was manageable.
I’ll go through each of my courses and explain the good and bad parts of each one.
Physics was pretty rough, not going to lie. Some units were fairly easy, and some were challenging. It was mostly lab experiments and tests. We had one project where we had to fashion an instrument to play “Mary Had a Little Lamb”. That was the only fun part of the class. My performance in the class overall was SO much better than I expected, but still not as good as I wanted it to be before I started the semester: 91%. I definitely will not be taking physics again because I know this is not for me. It’s far too logical.
Data management wasn’t the best either. The topics covered were sometimes confusing, like permutations. I had to do a lot of problem-solving questions involving them, and boy are they weird but fun at the same time. Many of the topics were straight-forward too, like analyzing graphs and finding the relationship between two variables. Unfortunately, my bad tests outweighed the good ones. Before my exam, I had a 91%. The exam was brutal and I just barely scraped up a 79%. My mark dropped one percent as a result, so I finished with a 90%. Again, it exceeded my expectations (as they’d been drastically lowered as I made my way through the course).
I love French. This year, it was different. No more memorizing and regurgitating. “Plug and chug”, that’s what my physics teacher calls it. Now, I had to analyze books and movies but in French. It was new, but I liked it. I was actually using my brain for once. This all came at a cost of course. My mark dropped this year to a 90% from a 94%. But I will definitely take French again for Grade 12, because if I’ve taken it for seven years so far, I think I can do one last hurrah.
Accounting turned out to be barely math-related at all, mostly just understanding. Once you get the primary concepts, you can pretty much teach yourself the rest of the course. I put in minimal effort, as did many of my classmates, and they too were successful. I passed this course with flying colours, a 97% to be exact. I will be taking accounting again next year because I now know it’s something I’m good at.
This semester, I have anthro/psych/socio, law, international business, and English. A very heavy focus on humanities this semester, so we’ll see how this goes. I’ll be sure to keep you updated.
Thank you for reading 🙂
Exclusory Style 