This week was Options week, and the highlights of the week were definitely doing both my Action Project and Options Trail in the one week. On Tuesday during lunch we went over to an ‘Age Care Facility’, and performed songs from musicals, and I also performed my Love Letters Monologue, which I also performed on camp.We got a very warm reception, and it was clear that they enjoyed the show, because there was one lady that burst into tears whenever Andre sang.

Our second trail was our Options Trail, and we had organized an interview with the executive producer of St Martins, which is a theater company which lets kids from 5-18 to work in theater and have a chance to perform in front of a large audience. she gave us lots of useful information about how to make it in theater and was able to answer most of our options trail questions. We also were able to take pictures of some Melbourne theaters so we could compare them to international theaters. We also planned to survey people around Federation Square, but we only had five minuets until we had to return to the loft, so we were only able to survey three of four people before we had to leave.

Besides the fact that we didn’t have any time to survey, I would say that both our Action Project and Options Trail went off smoothly, and I don’t think I would change anything if I could do it again, because we answered all of our Options trail questions without needing to do the survey.

This week was camp week, and I had more fun in those three days of camp than I had had in my whole Galileo experience. It was hard for me to focus in the first two days before camp, but we were mainly working on things related to camp, so I was able to pay attention for the most part.

When we left for the Brisbane Ranges I was felling confident that I would be able to complete the walks and have a comfortable, enjoyable camp. Unfortunately, for the 2km walk on Wednesday I didn’t put my pack on correctly, so the weight was on my shoulders instead of my waist, so I found the first walk difficult.

On the second day I made sure to fasten my pack correctly, and I found the 12km walk easier than the 2km because of that. There were some times when I couldn’t find any motivation to keep walking, but I pushed through, and was able to finish strong.

After I recovered from the second walk, I realized what makes this camp so special. It’s not learning how to put up a tent, or cook on a fire, or walking long distances carrying heavy things, but the sense of achievement that comes with doing all of that. If someone came up to me and said “Hey Oscar, do you want to walk 12km carrying a heavy pack on a hilly dirt track in the middle of the bush?” I would have said “No”, because I wouldn’t think I’d be able to do it. But being pushed on by my peers and my own pride, I was able to achieve something that I never thought I could do.

If you could have left one item from camp – what would it have been? The two torches I brought and the head-torch I brought. Why? Because I didn’t use them at any point and they were really bulky and space-consuming.

This week was Mindfulness/Philosophy/Science week, and also the last week before camp. I’m really looking forward to the camping aspect of camp, because I went around Australia for three years with my family and lived in a tent, and I’m in a tent group with Sam, another hard-core camper, and Jia, who I like hanging out with. I also find the idea pf carrying everything you need on your back awesome, because I think it will add an extra challenge for me when I’m hiking.

I chose the science trail, so on Wednesday I went over to Melbourne Uni and listened to Leia, who is working on the HIV/AIDS virus, and I learned that 1% of the population is immune, which I found really interesting. Afterwards we went to visit Chris’s identical older brother, who worked on predicting the percentage of the population that will become infected if a disease starts to spread. When he was talking about his job, it made me realize that science relates to other subjects, because his team was made up of a computer scientist who programs the simulations, a biologist who gives information about how humans will infect and become infected, and a mathematician who calculates the equations to do with infectivity and human interactions.

Another interesting thing that happened this week was the courageous conversations class, where we learned about how to have difficult conversations. I found it interesting because some of the topics we talked about were very relate-able, and I learnt some techniques about how to make having difficult conversations easier.

On Friday my team project group and I pretty much finalized our action project plans, which is great, because now we can move onto the finer details and continue work on our options trail as well. Also in the last two sections of Friday we went out to Royal Park and Played Homegroup vs Homegroup  vs Homegroup, and we all tried our best, we were all winners, winning isn’t everything… etc.

All-in-all, this week was really good, and it says a lot that this week wasn’t tedious and overshadowed by next weeks camp.

Do school science classes actually prepare you for real scientific work?

It’s an obvious fact that School and University sciences have massive differences between each other, but do they really? Isn’t all science related to each other?  For the purpose  of this essay, the term ‘School Science’ will mean the sciences one learns in both primary and secondary school, and ‘Real Scientific Work’ will mean the sciences one learns while at and after University.

In the first few years of learning Science in High School, you cover most areas of science, but you only learn the basics, and once you  get further in your education you can choose which areas you would like to focus your learning on. on Wednesday we met Leia, who worked at Melbourne University, who worked in Immunology and Microbiology said that her favorite subject in school was Biology, and that by following biology as a core subject, she was able to find subjects like microbiology and immunology, which she hadn’t even heard of before. If an individual can find an area of science she’s interested in that she had never even heard of just be following her favorite school subject, that’s a strong indication that school science does prepare you for science in later years.

When we went to see Chris’s identical older brother at his workplace, we asked him and his colleagues whether they thought school science prepared them for their jobs, and they all answered yes. One of them replied with an amazing metaphor, ‘Your later science and education is like a house, and you can build your house as sturdy and as tall as you want, but if it doesn’t have a good base (School Science), it’s going to fall’. To pout that into literal terms, you can’t solve the math problem: x + x = 2x if you didn’t learn how to use addition in primary school, and you can’t do much at all if you never learnt to read and write in Prep and Grade 1. If someone who has been through both high school and university science, and now has a job researching how diseases will spread using a computer simulation think that school science prepares you for real scientific work, there’s some strong evidence that it’s true.

When an individual thinks of science, they might think of a lab with people researching elements and cutting up animals. While this is a factor in science, there are many more fields in which science is interrelated. Maths and science are very tightly nit, because while E=MC2 is a purely scientific statement, the 2 occurs in mathematics much more than in science. When one is learning about gravity, the fact that 1G is the gravity we feel on Earth might be as clear as day, but without any mathematical skills, the fact that Mercury’s gravity is 38% of Earths will leave you absolutely clueless. The point is that throughout primary school and high school, you are learning about subjects which might be completely different to science, but when you get to university, they all become interrelated and without all of your past education, you would have nothing to go on, and nowhere to start.

In conclusion, while school science doesn’t warn you of what’s coming in and beyond university, it does set you up with the best opportunities of understanding everything and having the skills necessary to be able to learn in whichever classes you take.

So, Term 4 is now half-way over, and I’m feeling good about Galileo, I think I’ve adjusted to the different style of work and learning fairly well, and that I have participated in everything very efficiently and successfully.

I think the very regular and consistent homework and workload has really helped me with working on my time management, which was one of my big goals. I think I could have really used health week and could have tried to get a lot of information on first aid, because that was also one of my goals, but I don’t feel that I investigated that as much as I could have.

I think the rest of my goals can be further worked on in the next five weeks without help, and by the time the year ends I will have accomplished all of my goals for this term.

I think I’ll know when I’ve accomplished all my goals when I can sit down and work for an hour without losing concentration, look at things from a completely unbiased  view, and have he humility to know when another idea is better than mine.

On Wednesday I went to the North Melbourne Huddle, and afterwards was told to make a timeline of my life, so here it is.

My (Oscar’s) Life

When we were at the Huddle, we looked at some qualities that are important to being a good human being. I think the one that I would like to work on personally would be humility, because I struggle with showing this quality sometimes, and I would like to improve on it.

The main highlight of my life so far has been my three-year trip across Australia, because I lived in two Aboriginal communities and learned about things from my own perspective, and had primary-sourced cultural information all around me. I think I made a lot of headway with exercising humility living in an aboriginal community, because I didn’t know anything about their way of life a social hierarchies, so I had to show humility, and I did, for a year and a half, so I think I’m much better at it than before going around Australia.

Making this mind map made me realize I had very few plans for the future, I don’t know what I want to be, and I’m not even sure if I want to go to uni or not, but that doesn’t worry me to much, because I’m only 13.

On Friday we (Andre, Vikram, my exchange partner, Tore and I) went to the state library to research theatre. I sent Tore to Experimedia so he could play games, then used newspaper articles to research issues. I took me a while to actually get going on some work, but once I did it was easy and simple to find the information I was after from a variety of sources. I think it was fairly difficult for everyone in my group to find things at the start, but it became simpler and easier to find what we were looking for as the day went on.

Evaluation:

Organization and Time management: 7.5/10  

Because India, one of our group members, was away in Sydney competing in a cheerleading comp, we had to be a bit more organized and manage our time a bit more. We had time to spare after finding all our info on the Mini-Trail, although I wasn’t able to contact the others during the weekend, and later I found out Vikram’s computer had broken down over the weekend.

Sharing the Workload: 6/10

Again, because India was away, we had more work to do per person, although it was mainly Andre who assigned himself with most of India’s workload. Both me and Vikram only did one area of the Mini-Trail each, while Andre had to do two.

Communication: 6.5/10

As I said, I wasn’t able to keep in touch with the rest of my team, but it was fairly obvious that Andre and Vikram had communicated over the weekend, because they both came to school on Monday with a plan of attack on how to prepare ourselves for the presentations.

When we presented first on Monday, I had dot-points prepared, Andre had cue cards, and Vikram’s speech was still warm from the printer. Our Glogster was up, and we all presented well, even though I kept cracking up a bit because a certain individual (Antonio) was putting me off. I think what I can take from the Mini-Trail is that I need to put more effort and reserve time for writing my presentation so I can speak more fluently next time.

This week was health week, and, after electives on Monday, we talked about what health means and all the different kinds of health, mental physical and social.

On Tuesday I went to Sovereign Hill with my exchange partner, Tore, which was pretty much the same as the other three times I’d gone there, but it was nice to see Tore enjoyed it.

On Wednesday I went on a 31Km bike ride on the capital city trail. I was at the front with Deylan and Emma, and I was able to keep going the whole day, which I was happy with. After getting back to school, Eric, our exchange partners and I went to laser tag, because you have to be 16 and over to do it in Germany.

On Thursday I learnt about CPR from Tamar and safety procedures and techniques from Carly. On Friday I went to the state library with my team project group, and researched issues in theatre. I used a newspaper reel to research the deaths of Rob Guest, an actor who died in 2008 after suffering a stroke, and Suzie Howie, the publicist for A Funny Thing Happened on The Way to the Forum, Starring Geoffrey Rush.

Three good things that happened to me today;

1) I had grilled for lunch at Melbourne Central, and it was really good.

2) Researched issues in theater and found a lead, followed it, used newspapers and ended up with a story.

3) Managed to change my German exchange student’s mind about the Galileo program, he though it was boring, but when we went on the trail he said he changed his mind.

Three good things that happened to me today:

1) I participated a lot more in the First-Aid course than I did in team skills last week.

2) I went bowling with the Australian and German exchange students, AND LOST BOTH TIMES! YES!

3) I ate heaps of pizza at bowling and didn’t need more food when I got home.