Jesus Prado

Mrs.Brewer
AVID 11
29 May 2019

My Junior Year Reflection

My first time being an upperclassman at Atwater High School was a bumpy
experience. I felt like the whole year and the classes were going fast and it was difficult
for me to keep up and maintain my grades. I had my ups where my grades were on top
and had all A+ and then sometimes one of my classes dropped down to a C+. I would
say the biggest challenge for me this year was keeping up with all my work and on top
of that was passing my tests.
How I managed to overcome my challenges was that I never gave up and kept
asking for help. I would sometimes ask classmates to help me and if not I was not afraid
to ask my teachers. I wanted to keep up and that's why I had to make time to get that
extra help. I knew that giving up and stressing over things doesn't help my situation,
some stress was good but not doing any action to improve or help solve your problem
wouldn't do anything.
Some life lessons I have learned this year was that it was okay to take on
challenges and okay to fail. I felt that as long that you tried and learned from your
mistakes then you are doing the right thing. People are afraid because they are afraid to
be embarrassed but that's what they think, but as long as I get something out of what
I'm doing then Im fine. I also learned how to take advantage on all the extra
opportunities that are given to you. One thing I struggle with everyday is being lazy and
not being motivated to do my work but I keep reminding myself that I can't just not do it
and fail, I am doing this to help me get to college and learning new things is actually fun.
The people that helped me the most this year was my Avid teacher Mrs.Brewer
and my friends Jessica Arias and Jacob Weiss. They have all helped me in different
ways,but Mrs.Brewer has helped me the most. Everytime my grades slip or I need a
wake up call she was always there for me. Like she has given me so many pointers and
helpful tips on many things like the SATs and ACTs. My friends were people that I
would always ask for help when I'm in the classroom, for example, Jessica is almost in
all my classes and whenever I didn't felt sure about something she was there to clarify
things and gave me hints on what to do first. Last but not least Jacob, he is basically
one of my good friends and I could count on him for anything. Jacob and I don't have a
lot of classes together but he still helps me from not being lazy and always tells me that
I got it.
My achievements that I am most proud of this year is my academic awards like
being an honor student and surpassing the GPA of a 4.0. In addition to that I felt really
accomplished when I was able to take my AP tests and felt confident that I passed. I
was also able to complete my first year of playing varsity football and I could say that it
was an amazing experience and I'm ready for next season.
The Avid lessons that were the most helpful to me this year is how she prepared
us to answer all our PIQs and helped us express yourself. She also brought in many
speakers to the classroom and they have really pointed out that being vulnerable to
colleges is great because you are not afraid of showing your true self and are able to
present what you have to offer for these colleges. This class has taught me many things
and they arent big lessons but they were lessons that I needed to know to prepare
myself for the future.
After my first semester of Junior year I made some SMART goals for the three
hardest classes I have. The classes I chose was my AP US history, Pre-Calc Honors,
and AP English. My main goals for all of them was basically to get A’s in them and
make sure I didn't have any missing assignments. In order to achieve these goals I
needed to do all my assignments and made extra time to do some studying or review
for my work. The goals that I have made are still not fully met and right now I have
straight A’s so to fully accomplish these I need to make sure all my projects are done
and I pass all my finals.