Charrette 1

Morgan Charrete

Mrs. Wold

ERWC

3 May 2019

Reflection Essay

The assignment from my portfolio that I feel most proud of is a timed essay I had done

last year. The prompt asked that we choose a novel or a play where a character deceives others

and explain that character’s motives and how the deception contributes to the overall meaning of

the work. For me, I had chosen ​The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald. After rereading it, I am

surprised at how well I did considering I only had 40 minutes to write it. I received a perfect

score on it (9) and it was one of the major essays that I had written that had boosted my

confidence before having to take the AP English Literature exam. I felt that it was successful for

me personally because it felt as though I had finally grasped the right approach when it came to

writing literary analysis essays. My word choice and vocabulary was great and the analysis was

clear and without summarization--which is something I usually struggle with.

I always tend to start off strong in the first semester and by the second semester I lose my

motivation and begin to struggle a little bit more. This is evident at the beginning of my high

school career during freshman year. Freshman year is already a difficult thing unto itself because

it is the first year of high school, but it also was difficult to come to terms with the idea that your

grades officially count unlike middle school grades did. However, starting from freshman year

and moving onward it is interesting to see my own personal growth in each of my subjects and

classes taken with just a glance at my transcript. Generally, I always strive for A’s and B’s. All
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throughout high school my grade in math has fluctuated between the two, with first semester

usually being the better grade. My science classes are also like this: bouncing between A and B

throughout all four years. I tend to be better at the more biological sciences like Human

Anatomy, Psychology, and Marine Biology rather than other classes like Chemistry. English is a

subject I enjoy and for the most part through all four years, I have managed to maintain my A in

that class. As for Spanish, which I’ve done every year of high school, I have always had an A in

it and for my electives such as Cheer P.E. or Journalism or Art, I push myself to do well in those

classes as well. While, objectively speaking, I haven’t shown much difference or massive growth

on my transcripts, I think it is more important to recognize the personal growth I have had as I

challenged myself with all the classes I’ve taken and strived to do what I can to maintain my own

personal standard. Recognizing my own strengths and weaknesses between all of the classes I

have taken is the most important growth of all because it could be applied to other problems I

will face later on.

As for potential growth, there is always room to do better and improve. I believe that it is

a very important thing to at least attempt to be a better person than you were the day before (as

cliche as it sounds). There will always be room for growth in all my classes because you can

only get better as you continue to experience and challenge yourself. Even the classes that I find

the easiest for me personally, such as English or Art, still have immense room for fine-tuning.

The class I could improve in the most is still Math. Even currently, I am struggling to raise my

grade to keep a B in it. The complex and abstract concepts can be difficult for me to grasp and I

often feel like I have to try twice as hard to succeed in this category. By the time I get closer to

the end of the year, I get so exhausted from attempting time and time again to do well and at
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times being only met with more frustration, that I get burned out and begin to lag. The best thing

I can do to continue to better myself, not only in this class but any class for that matter, is to

remember to keep trying. To take a deep breath and step back, but to always come back and keep

trying. More exposure to a problem will only make it more familiar.

You don’t really believe it when you’re first starting high school and people tell you that

it goes by in the blink of an eye. It doesn’t feel quite real yet that graduation is just around the

corner. And yet it’s rewarding to think that all the hard work I’ve put in over the course of four

whole years finally feels like it’s truly counted for something. Great Oak, for me, was a huge

change. I had come from a small charter school where we were forced to wear uniforms and my

eighth grade class was made up of about 60 people. Even if high school hadn’t been as I had

expected and it was full of ups and downs, I cannot deny the fact that I did grow and change

while here. It has helped expose me to a bigger setting and around more people and pushed me

outside of my comfort zone, even if I am still working on that a little. I have made lifelong

friends and learned more about myself and who I want to be in life and where I want to go. I am

a different person than I was when I first began high school, but I am continuously learning how

to be more sure of myself and comfortable with my own decisions--enough to defend them and

stick up for myself. I have always been a very passive person, to the point of it being a fault. I

would avoid conflict even if it meant putting someone else’s wants before my own needs. I’ve

now come to realize that is not a healthy mindset. Not only have I grown academically at Great

Oak, but I’ve also learned that it’s okay to fail sometimes--that is how we do the best learning. I

had always been a perfectionist and overly uptight, I could never manage to relax and I was

always so exhausted with how much I would stress myself out. I now know that sometimes it’s
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best to let things go, that you cannot always control everything and that it is unrealistic to believe

so. All you can ever do is your best, and your version of “best” within one moment may be

completely different than what it was yesterday or what it will be tomorrow.