Hi Everyone! It's been a pretty crazy week for me, with school and everything, but that doesn't mean I didn't get more reading and work done. I would like to put it there, that from now on I will only be blogging about my 20 Time project every other week. However this won't be a problem for me, as I will continue doing work, but you will have to wait a little longer for an update on my progress now...sorry!
This week I started writing my speech. For those of you who don't know, at the end of the school year I will be presenting a speech about everything I've learned from this experience. Currently I have about a paragraph and a half written; but I can tell I'm off to a good start. After watching numerous TED talks, I realized that there was an underlying theme throughout most of them; it is the theme of being happy. My 20 Time project showed me something that no person has been able to get through my mind. Being happy comes from more than getting good grades, being happy comes from doing what you love and spending time doing activities that brings yourself joy. I haven't been happy for a while because I pushed myself to always receive A's in school, and although this is just part of my perfectionist personality that I cannot change, I was really overdoing it. I wouldn't do anything that was fun or good for me; I was always focused on school and nothing else. 20 Time has been one of the greatest things that has happened to me as a student. It allowed me to see that I do have time to spend on the things that I love doing; with reading being one of them. This is what my talk is going to be about. I want to show everyone, peers and adults, that being an exceptional student and always putting on a smile doesn't mean that I enjoy my life style. There is more to life than school, and people just assume that we are happy because we are achieving something that they feel is important and self rewarding. Therefore, my talk will begin with the unhappiness I had in my life, to working on my 20 Time project, to how I became happier and everything I have learned from this project. Reading taught me how to find time for the things I love and it brought joy into my life during some of the most stressful times.
Furthermore, I have almost finished reading Tessa & Scott Our Journey from Childhood Dream to Gold. Tessa and Scott are two very inspiring people and I don't think people realize the struggles that they had to overcome in order to be Olympic champions. There are so many ups and downs in a sport that the public can be sometimes be oblivious to. For example, I wonder how many people knew that in 2008, Tessa was diagnosed with chronic exertional compartment syndrome, which is a condition related to muscle overuse. However, the amazing part is that both she and Scott worked around this excruciating pain up and through the 2010 Olympic games. I only have one more chapter left to read and then I write a review, although I can't say when I'll have this done because the chapters are really long in this book. However stayed tuned for further updates.
On a last note, the United We Spy book review is not yet up on my website (http://jackiekbookreviews.weebly.com/ ) but I will try to have this up by my next blog post. Thanks for reading and I'll update everyone in two weeks about what I've been up to!
This week I started writing my speech. For those of you who don't know, at the end of the school year I will be presenting a speech about everything I've learned from this experience. Currently I have about a paragraph and a half written; but I can tell I'm off to a good start. After watching numerous TED talks, I realized that there was an underlying theme throughout most of them; it is the theme of being happy. My 20 Time project showed me something that no person has been able to get through my mind. Being happy comes from more than getting good grades, being happy comes from doing what you love and spending time doing activities that brings yourself joy. I haven't been happy for a while because I pushed myself to always receive A's in school, and although this is just part of my perfectionist personality that I cannot change, I was really overdoing it. I wouldn't do anything that was fun or good for me; I was always focused on school and nothing else. 20 Time has been one of the greatest things that has happened to me as a student. It allowed me to see that I do have time to spend on the things that I love doing; with reading being one of them. This is what my talk is going to be about. I want to show everyone, peers and adults, that being an exceptional student and always putting on a smile doesn't mean that I enjoy my life style. There is more to life than school, and people just assume that we are happy because we are achieving something that they feel is important and self rewarding. Therefore, my talk will begin with the unhappiness I had in my life, to working on my 20 Time project, to how I became happier and everything I have learned from this project. Reading taught me how to find time for the things I love and it brought joy into my life during some of the most stressful times.
Furthermore, I have almost finished reading Tessa & Scott Our Journey from Childhood Dream to Gold. Tessa and Scott are two very inspiring people and I don't think people realize the struggles that they had to overcome in order to be Olympic champions. There are so many ups and downs in a sport that the public can be sometimes be oblivious to. For example, I wonder how many people knew that in 2008, Tessa was diagnosed with chronic exertional compartment syndrome, which is a condition related to muscle overuse. However, the amazing part is that both she and Scott worked around this excruciating pain up and through the 2010 Olympic games. I only have one more chapter left to read and then I write a review, although I can't say when I'll have this done because the chapters are really long in this book. However stayed tuned for further updates.
On a last note, the United We Spy book review is not yet up on my website (http://jackiekbookreviews.weebly.com/ ) but I will try to have this up by my next blog post. Thanks for reading and I'll update everyone in two weeks about what I've been up to!