Week 9 Reflection

The final week of classes were fun and interesting, even though I missed Thursday’s classes. I learnt a lot about health and violence and how to stay safe at parties.

I thought that Galileo was a great experience and I learnt a lot about Melbourne and I got some life experiences such as community service and camp. The skills and knowledge that I have gained along the way will help me in my future. The term has to end at some point though, and I feel as though I enjoyed Galileo while it lasted but I am prepared for mainstream classes. It will be a challenge at first, readjusting to the rhythm of typical school, but I will get used to it.

I am feeling alright about final presentation next week but I have a couple of concerns. Alex is not going to be here on Tuesday and he needs to record himself and send it to our email. If not, then we will be missing one quarter of the work. But I have faith in him and in the rest of our group to do a great job!

A highlight from health week for me was the sport session. It was a lot of fun and I have missed being able to play sport in class time at school this term. The girls beat the guys again at keepings off, no matter what they say! I also enjoyed the last community service because I was in a room with interactive kids with whom I got to play dress ups and make chocolate flavoured sand cake.

Galileo this term has been very fun and has exceeded my expectations!

Week 8 Reflection

A highlight of mine would probably be taking the city circle to St. Vincent’s Hospital. I had never taken the city circle before and I enjoyed that experience, although it did move very slowly and we were almost late to our interview. Another highlight for me was the third interview we did with Dr. David Isaac from St. Vincent’s Hospital. He had some very interesting things to say and he was also very helpful in explaining how hospitals work and how they used to work. Because he is a GP, he also provided us with some vital answers regarding doctors and nurses and their pay.

I think there was only one major challenge throughout the whole day which was after our first interview at St. Vincent’s Hospital. We were meant to have two back to back interviews, one from 11:30-12 and the next one from 12:00-12:30 but our second interview got pushed back half an hour which meant it would be cutting into our lunch break. We didn’t know what to do in the half hour we had to wait because we were all the way out in Fitzroy. In the end, we decided to quickly go to the state library and come back so we wouldn’t have to visit the state library in our lunch break.

Next time, I would allow more time for our interviews. Initially, they were supposed to go for 15 minutes each but they each went on for longer. With our first interview at ANMF, Ms. Fitzpatrick spoke a lot! We only had 9 questions so we thought it would only go for around 15-20 minutes but it went for half an hour and we didn’t even get to ask her all the questions because then we would run late for our interview at St. Vincent’s. We encountered the same problem for all our interviews so next time, I would definitely allocate more time for the interviews.

I think because our group works so well together and we know each other much better, there was more of a casual vibe and it was very relaxed compared to our mini trail. We talked to each other as if we were talking to our friends and I thought that was a really positive thing because it meant we could enjoy it more. The options trail wasn’t very stressful apart from when we were waiting at the tram stops for the trams and we kept on checking the time because all the trams were late and we didn’t want to be late.

Week 7 Task- Melbourne’s Future

I think that Melbourne will be very different in 25 years. Melbourne’s population is said to explode and soon we will be living in a city with over 8 million residents. This is a very high number and in order for Melbourne to house all these people, there will have to be more high-rise buildings. This is already evident in Docklands, Melbourne’s newest suburb. On our trail on Wednesday, we visited Docklands and something I found interesting was the lack of houses. I only saw about 10 houses, the rest of Docklands’ population seemed to live in apartment buildings. Another change that could occur in the near future is less roads closer to the city in order to encourage people to ride or take public transport. Some of these changes have come already with the transformation of Bourke Street into a pedestrian mall, not allowing any cars or buses to go through the area. Another change is the addition of a wider bike lane and wider tram stops, narrowing streets to one lane per direction. I think that there is a lot more of this to come and in the city, there will only be trams and bikes to transport people around. Another change will be making use of every square inch of Melbourne. E-Gate is a new suburb which is going to be built where it had previously been, pretty much, an industrial junkyard. There were old train lines and discarded cranes as well as scrap metal when we visited the outskirts of the new suburb’s area. I think that more old or unused land will be taken over by buildings and this may have an impact on the number of parks and trees in Melbourne. The high rise in the population is good for the economy yet I believe it will have some negative impacts on the liveability of our city. Take New York or London for example. Both these cities have a population of over to 8 million people. Both these cities have fewer parks and neither of them were in the top ten for the ‘World’s Most Liveable City’. Melbourne, however, with a much lower population is the ‘World’s Most Liveable City’ for the fourth consecutive year with very good living conditions. This liveable city of ours has a bright future if we know how to plan.

Week 7 Reflection

I am pretty confident about my immediate future, more specifically my options trail. I was away on Friday when we had a double session to work on team project so I’m not 100% sure where we stand at the moment but as of our team project session before Friday, all we had to do was finalise our interview questions and start working on our survey questions. I believe that we are all pulling our weight and the workload is even.

The biggest a-ha moment this week was resume writing, even though I missed half of the double because of guitar. Resume writing was one of my learning goals and I think that I have definitely improved. Now I have a pretty good understanding of what to include and how to express my information whereas previously, I had no idea where to start. I think that it had the most to do with my own self-awareness and growth as I improved on one of my skills. It could be linked to what is going to happen in the future though because I will apply for jobs in the future and use my resume writing skills to complete my resume.

Week 6 Reflection

I found it quite easy to settle back into the rhythm of school after camp. I like the fact that we have toilets at school; we didn’t have proper toilets for most of camp. I think that I am definitely closer to some people from 9C2, mainly the ones in my cooking group or walking group. I also strengthened my relationships with the people in 9C1 on my walking group, just by talking to them on the bus and the hike. I feel more comfortable around some people, not that I wasn’t comfortable before, but I feel like I know what I can talk to them about and there won’t really be many awkward silences.

The highpoint of my week was Wednesday’s trail when I went to the Japanese Embassy and HSBC. I won a lucky dog at the embassy for being the last one standing in a quiz, as well as a chocolate. At HSBC we also had two quizzes and I was in a team with Lucy, Milly and Patrick. We didn’t win but it was heaps of fun! They also had a really nice assortment of biscuits for us at HSBC. I must have been having a lucky day because at a tram stop, I found an unused $30 gift voucher for food. It would be hard to pick one highpoint of my week so I would say that Wednesday as a whole was my highpoint.

I feel like I have learnt a bit that I didn’t know before but I feel like I could have just as easily accessed them in a classroom. Most of the things I learnt were from quizzes so the information would have been easy to get in a classroom, provided that it was related to the subject. I did, however, listen to a couple of very inspirational speeches which I wouldn’t have heard usually, from one of the men at HSBC. His speeches were mainly about life and waking up and realising your potential.

My hopes for the remainder of the term are that we get to go the State Library more often because we have only been once so far and I happened to be sick on that day. I also would be interested in spending more time in the CBD than around it because one of my areas of knowledge is related to Melbourne’s streets. I would like my knowledge to be more on the CBD than in a suburb which I would hardly ever visit.

I think that a skill I have improved on already is public speaking. At the start of the term, I found it more difficult than I find it now and I frequently find myself in situations where I am talking to a stranger for surveying or on the phone, which has definitely helped. My child skills have improved as well because of my placement at The University of Melbourne’s childcare for community service. A skill that I have not made any progress with is resume writing. We haven’t had any practice and I am hopeful that it will come. My knowledge of Melbourne’s streets is expanding but I would like to continue to work on it for the rest of the term. My knowledge of public transport is also growing but as with my knowledge of Melbourne’s streets, I would to work on it some more. An area of knowledge I think I have achieved is sustainable buildings. I think I achieved this back in sustainability week when sustainable buildings were one of the main focuses. I have developed my self-esteem but as with most of my goals, it still has room to grow. I don’t think that I will be too focused on it though because I am happy with where it’s at. My ability to collaborate was strengthened on camp. I realised that I am happy with the level it is at when we had the quizzes at HSBC and we worked as a team to come up with an answer. Believing in success still needs work because there haven’t really been too many assessments and I haven’t had time to doubt myself because of this. I am still working on many of my learning goals and hope to improve each and every one of them.

Week 5 Reflection

One of my personal quality learning goals is collaboration. I believe that I really improved on my collaboration skills while on camp, especially while setting up the tent. I had to communicate clearly and work with Isy and Anna, who were also in my tent group, to get the tent set up as quickly as possible so we could do other things. A skill I improved on was caving. I had never been caving before so I definitely improved and learnt how to cave properly and safely. An area of knowledge I developed was map reading. I already knew how to read a map and use a compass but I think I improved and now I have a better understanding of how to orient yourself and find yourself on a map. Surprisingly, I only developed one of my learning goals, collaboration. Outdoor skills was not an objective of mine because I had other priorities, but if it would have been, my other more developed areas would be linked to that.

A challenge I overcame was setting up a tent with frozen fingers. That probably won’t come in handy very often but hiking might. The 12km hike was one of my highlights and I enjoyed it very much, apart from getting whipped by ferns in the face. Walking through the mud was hard work because it was hard to know where to step but standing on solid ground looking back at the mud, I felt good because I did it. A challenge I overcame that might come in handy in the future was carrying a heavy pack on my back for hours. My schoolbag is often heavy and I carry a lot of things on my back so by hiking with a heavy pack, I hopefully strengthened my back.

My view of the Yarra previous to camp was brown and narrow. Seeing the Yarra before it reached Melbourne made me realise the city and the people living there are the ones to blame for all the pollution in the river, not just people in general. I think that our relationship with the Yarra is good out in the country but the city-Yarra relationship needs to be improved and we need to look after our water more. The Yarra in Warburton was very blue and crystal clear whereas the Yarra in Melbourne’s CBD is brown and yucky. This is proof that we need to do more in the CBD to help the beautiful river. My message for people to help look after the Yarra more would be put all your rubbish in the bin and try to use vehicles that don’t have oils that can pollute the Yarra and use bikes or trams or trains instead.

Week 4 Reflection

My understanding of the justice system is now more complete and I have a better understanding of how the convictions work. The trip to the court was very educational, and I got to see real people get convicted. One new thing I learnt was that every case goes through the magistrate’s court in one form or another.

Melbourne is not fair for everyone but I don’t believe that much can be done about it. It isn’t fair for the very rich or very poor but is fair for the middle-class people. The way to spread wealth would be to tax the rich people more and give it to the poor but then the rich people won’t have the money that they worked hard for and then people may stop working hard. I believe that finding the right balance is an ongoing battle and will be for a long time.

I am very proud of my group’s mini trail presentation. I am happy with the score we achieved, especially since there were only two people present at the time. I am also happy with the quality of the work I got done while researching for the presentation. Hopefully our group stays consistent and we can do well in the final presentation.

I have learnt that teamwork is very important. I was in charge of the Popplet and it was sometimes difficult to get members of my group to email me their research as they wouldn’t reply to texts and seemed to be ignoring me. I think that I contribute my ideas to my group pretty well and keep everyone on track but our group doesn’t have an uneven workload.

Week 3 Reflection

My standout experience this week would have to be the session on the ethics of sport. I enjoyed the more practical side of it when we went to the park more than the actual presentation. At the park I enjoyed playing keepings-off against the guys even though it started unintentionally as both the guys and the girls wanted the ball. I am proud to admit that the girls won, even though there were only four of us, as we finished with the ball.

I believe that I do have a new insight into the nature of ethics. Before last week, I didn’t really think about the ethical side of things but more about what I thought was best- that was sometimes the ethically right thing to do and sometimes it wasn’t. Although I have a new insight into the nature of ethics, my personal code of conduct is still the same and I wouldn’t change anything. I believe that I am a fair person and take into account the consequences of my actions.

Mini trail was great! After leaving school nearly 15 minutes behind schedule, we left our first location, The Royal Children’s Hospital, on time. We did some surveying which will hopefully provide some answers to the questions that we set out with. It started raining when we were at St. Vincent’s Hospital so we left a little early so we could get out of the rain as soon as possible.

I was happy with the quality of information we collected as we surveyed both medical professionals and members of the general public. I believe that this would have shown the contrasts between the medics’ opinions and people working in other fields’ opinions as we also asked the people what their profession is. Altogether, we surveyed around 20 people, which is a great effort considering we are a group of four.

Our teamwork was very good and the vibe wasn’t all that different from the city-grid trail. I believe that on the city-grid trail, we were a bit more focused than on our mini trail, even though the mini trail had more riding on it. This could be because we are becoming more friendly and learning about each other more so it feels more casual as opposed to feeling awkward.

Week 2 Reflection

I enjoyed my week very much and I think it opened my eyes a bit more and made me realise just how urgently we need to change. I always knew that we had problems with sustaining ourselves but I never would have guessed just by how quickly we are using up the Earth’s resources.

The aspect of sustainability which had the biggest impact on me was how much energy we are using and how much we can save. On Wednesday when we went to Helen’s house, she showed us a demonstration of how many watts different light bulbs use and I was surprised to find out that the difference between the most-efficient bulb (LED) and the least efficient (incandescent) was almost 90 watts!! I know that in our house we have energy saving bulbs (the florescent kind) but maybe we should invest in replacing them with LED bulbs as the difference between the two was about 7 watts. We could also save energy by only turning on the lights if we really need them, which I have already been doing.

Based on the session we had on personal sustainability, I believe that my life is reasonably balanced. As it happens, the order in which I love the things I do is also the order of which ones get the most time. I think that realising what makes me feel happiest, feel healthiest and feel the most connected has actually helped me as I know what I can do to feel my best. Also, realising how I act when I am having an intense week will help me acknowledge my more stressful weeks.

I believe that I am investing enough time and energy into the things that fulfil me. My family is the thing closest to my heart and that definitely gets the most attention out of all the things I do. My fifth most fulfilling activity of doing nothing productive – just sitting on the couch and watching TV – gets the fifth biggest amount of attention but I wish it got more! Not to the extent where that is the activity I spend the most time doing, but I would like more time on it than doing my homework. Sadly, homework and extra-curricular activities are more of a priority than downtime, even though they are not in my top 5. There isn’t much I can do about that though, I can’t just go to school and say I haven’t done my homework because I’ve been watching TV. Overall, I think that I have a balanced life.

I have definitely made progress with learning more about sustainable living. Visiting Helen’s house was a real eye-opener and I realised that just by adding some insulation and by sealing all the gaps in the house, you don’t need to use electricity made by burning coal to heat and cool your house. I also made progress with my knowledge of Melbourne streets, especially during the city grid trail. Previously, I had a vague idea which street was next to which street but now I know where most of the major streets are and how to get there.

I discovered that teamwork does need someone to be the leader, but not in such a way that it feels like the leader is bossing everyone around. Without a leader or a group of leaders, the team can sort of just drift away and not do anything, but, a leader can help encourage people and give them ideas which they can help with.

I was surprised by the roles I adopted during the skills workshop. I think that I am usually a leader but during the skills workshop when we worked as a whole group, I turned into a follower and did what others told me to. I found that strange as when we had to build the newspaper towers, I was back into the leader role again. Maybe I find it easier to be a leader in a smaller group than in a bigger one?

Week 1 Reflection

A standout moment for me was my first home group session. I enjoyed it when we had to choose a picture and describe what it meant in relation to the question. I liked it because we got to find out other people’s opinions of school and what they are expecting from Galileo. I realised that some of my home group was more enthusiastic than others about school and some people only come to school because they know they have to. I think this built up my understanding of the people around me and will help me relate to them in the future.

I was surprised on our mini Melbourne trail when we went to the Melbourne cemetery. I didn’t know that cemeteries had previously been a meeting place and I found it very strange. I usually relate cemeteries to sadness and mourning not a place to hang out and chat. I was also surprised of how big the cemetery was and how long it took us to get to the meeting place. I have never been inside a cemetery before and so I was also surprised by smaller details, like some of the tombstones were made for two people and there was only one name on it. It made me feel like they were waiting for their partner to die!

Galileo has met my expectations and I am already starting to learn more about Melbourne’s public transport system even though we’ve only been on two trails. I think that I will be able to travel around without needing to look up which tram to take by the end of the term, which is great since improving my knowledge of Melbourne’s public transport system is one of my learning goals.

To me, the difference between the two different trails wasn’t that big. For the teacher-lead trail, we were still able to go off on our own and explore what we wanted to as long as we were back by a certain time but we were mainly following the teacher around. For the student-lead trail, it felt a bit freer but we still had to find what the teachers told us to, apart from our own three pictures. And we also had to meet with the teacher at a certain time. I would say without a teacher, our group felt more like we could make our own plans for the day.

I think receiving so much trust from the teachers did motivate us a bit but I think the main drive to complete the task was coming from within the group. Having the trust from the teachers did make us think about being a bit more responsible than usual and that was a source of motivation but as I stated earlier, the main motivation was coming from the people in the group.

My experience of working in our team project team was a good one. I am with two other people from my class which also went to my primary school and that made it a bit easier as we already knew what each other’s strenghts, weaknesses and interests were. Only one person was from 9C2 and I had never met him before so that made it slightly more challenging but my overall experience in my group was fun and productive.

I believe I did embrace a leadership opportunity as I was assigned the role of being the leader even before we left school. I think I did a good job of it as I think that I am a natural leader and that helped a bit. I think I stepped up to the challenge and kept our group on track and working hard.