Looking Inward: A Self-Assessment

What I found with the information I acquired from my research reminds me of what I went through. During my research I learned about Depression being a disorder given to someone put in this situation, I am quite sure I suffer from this. I came to a realization of other problems because of what happened but those I am not comfortable disclosing.

 I think one of my biggest weaknesses while trying to find research is procrastination. I would constantly find distractions to get away from doing any work, television was probably my biggest distraction, I would keep watching South Park instead of doing work most of the time. One of my strengths however is when I can really get focused I can complete my work and do a good job.

I liked the assignment because it gave me an opportunity and reason to finally talk about something I had only talked about a few times nearly three years ago. I am happy to finally have that out there, I was extremely nervous before my presentation today but I left that classroom in a good mood because I was relieved to have finally been able to say something about it. I think this is an assignment that needs to continue on in classrooms for many more years to come.

As far as a level goes I don’t feel it should be too high based on the fact I didn’t get my works cited for my product, I didn’t get two other blogs in, and my presentation did not meet the minimum time requirement.

Inquiry Conference: Sharing the Learning

As far as presentations go, I used to get really nervous when I was about to present something. I used to be a weaker presenter I would stutter, I would also lose track of what I was saying and my face would go red. Recently I have made a bit of a breakthrough when it comes to presentations. I feel more confident and I can keep the volume of my voice up. I am able to keep my attention away from my PowerPoint and direct my attention to the audience.

 It wasn’t difficult for me to summarize my findings, I felt that the information I could find was limited. It was simple for me to fit everything in because of how little information I was able to find. The search engines I used thought I meant teens committing suicide instead of how suicide impacts them. I was able to find a minimal amount of information and I wish I had gathered much more.

I didn’t make it to the 4 minute mark, that alone makes my performance not satisfactory. I had quite a struggle when I was presenting this topic as it has affected my life so negatively. I would read my script and get lost on certain parts. I was reading on my phone which I almost dropped a few times because my hand wouldn’t stop shaking since I was so nervous. I could barely speak at certain points and ultimately I was unable to truly complete my presentation. One of my family members can’t even speak about it without crying. I wish to improve my presentation skills for the future as they may come in handy. For the future I will try to maintain a loud and clear voice throughout the presentations and also try to stay focused and not go silent in the middle of a sentence.

Finding a Direction: The Research Question

The question I have decided to work with is, “How a suicide mentally impacts teens”. I created this question for my blog because almost three years ago now, one of my friends committed suicide. I wanted to talk about this because what my friend did to himself has had the biggest impact on my life, negatively. Picking this question was easy in the sense that I knew what has affected me the most during my life, but the hard part was figuring out how to talk about it. I have never before talked about this with anyone besides a therapist for a month. I am almost glad I won’t have to talk about my personal experience too much during this blog but, I am sure this will be quite the challenge trying to talk about the subject in general.

It has been close to three years since he did this and still I have not recovered. During that time, I was sad, angry and confused, none of it seemed real. He had done this October 27, 2016, and yet it didn’t really hit me until the summer of 2017, I don’t know why but during that time I wasn’t myself, it was hard for me to get out of bed, to function properly and to focus on anything. My world was changed, even now I can see I am not the same person, I don’t have the same approach to everything I used to, I don’t think the same anymore.

The question is good for me in the sense that I will have to openly talk about this, as I have already written I have only talked about this with a therapist for a month and that was when it had initially happened, which was 2016. I hope that talking about this with some people will help me out, I am still unsure if I will be able to talk about my problem. I know it won’t be easy, it’s hard for me to even think about a lot of the time, which is hard because I think about what happened to him all the time.