My Long Composition for MCAS 2014

    I have finished with the long comp essay that is part of the Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment System. I did not write the essay in connection with the school system. The prompt for this year is "There are times when someone sacrifices or gives up something important for a good reason. Describe a time when you decided to give something up for a good reason. Explain what happened, why you made your decision, and how you felt afterwords." I am not totally happy with my essay because I feel like I am twisting the prompt. Anyway, here it is:

Two years ago, I was unhappy. I was enrolled in the local Public School System, and hated going to school every day. I had had friends in my class, but every single one of them had left, either for a different school or for a different class. They had been my only academic peers as well. I was without friends and not being challenged. Also, it was my teacher’s first year teaching, and she was assigned to a class (mine) in the second year of a class loop. This meant that all of the kids, having been together previously, knew each other from the previous year.Unfortunately, much of the class had very little respect for our new teacher. So my parents, knowing that I went into a class everyday, where the teacher could not control the students and I was learning very little, took me out of school.

Legally, I was homeschooled. What “homeschooled” meant was that I went every day to a school-like facility that the staff there called CSCL. At CSCL, or the Center for Semi-Conducted Learning, I could do whatever I wanted. It was run by 5 adults in their late twenties, and there were about fifteen students enrolled. The “teachers” taught a few classes every day, and you could go to them or not. At CSCL, I could learn whatever I wanted as fast as I wanted to whatever extent I wanted. Over the course of my time there, I learned computer programming, a good amount of math, and wrote a bunch at home. Even though I really liked CSCL, last summer I made the decision to give up this experience and went back to the public school for seventh grade.

This decision was not made quickly or easily. When my parents suggested that I go back to the public school, I was unsure. I had been much more happy at CSCL than I had been at the public school, and did not want that to change. After some thought, I decided that seventh grade would likely be very different from sixth. One of the reasons for this decision was that I would be in a class with different kids and would not be stuck all day with a teacher I didn’t like. Also, I felt that middle school was an important experience too, one that I didn’t want to miss. Moving around between classes and having more than one teacher would help to prepare me for high school. The worst case scenario, I thought, was that I didn’t like the public school and could just go back to CSCL. So, by the time school started up again, I was signed back up for the public school.

Before and after school started, I had missed feelings. Before the first day, I was unsure that I had made the right choice, but also excited about this new experience. I was unhappy that I would not see my friends from CSCL as much, and I would have less freedom to pursue and learn about whatever I wanted then I had had the previous year. But my lack of experience with middle school made me interested and curious about this new experience and how it would be. Once school had started, I was pretty content. I made new friends, liked most of my teachers, but was not quite as happy as I had been at CSCL. Even so, I was sure that middle school was an important experience to have had and that this decision was a good one.

In sixth grade, I was not happy at all, nor was I learning. The shift to CSCL let me learn whatever I wanted as fast as I wanted, but it also gave me more chances to do nothing, and less chances to interact with people that are less like me. When I went back to the public school for seventh grade, I made new friends, learned more than I did at the public school in sixth grade, and was sufficiently happy. From this experience, I learned something important; that giving something good up can result in something else good.

3/25/14 Biology

Yesterday in biology class we analyzed the data that we got from the lab two weeks ago. We made some graphs and talked about what they meant. I didn't really learn anything.

MIT Spark Program

  Two weekends ago, I went to MIT for their Spark program. Spark is a series of classes taught over the weekend for middle school students. The classes cover all sorts of topics, form cupcake-making to computer programming. Most of the classes were well-taught and interesting, but none of them inspired me in any way. Here are the classes I took, along with any comments I had about them.

• Saturday:
• The Physics, Chemistry, and Biology of Food
• This class was okay. The teacher wandered of topic for 60% of the class, but the parts where I got to learn what the class was supposed to be about were compelling.
• Math, Games, and Puzzles
• This class was pretty good. The teacher talked about the prisoner's dilemma and how the most rational decision can be the wrong one. I enjoyed this class.
• #winning
• This class was not as good as I expected it to be, but it was still fun. The teacher had us play and think about one game, which I forget the name of. I had hoped it would have been more about analyzation of many things rather than just this one game.
• Sunday:
• Gender and Health
• This class talked about how the different genders of people are more likely to get different ailments.
• Circuits in Cells? An Intro to Synthetic Biology
• This was probably my least favorite class. The teacher was not really prepared, she talked too quietly and too fast, and she assumed that the class knew things the at least some of us (me included) didn't.
• Lunch
• The food was good. I had a burrito, a water, and a cookie.
• Dynamic Programming
• This class was the most challenging and thought-provoking. The teacher talked about how to create algorithms that worked for all sorts of related situations.
• The Psychology of Shopping
• This class was amusing. I learned about phycology traps that companies use, like getting you to buy a $30 cell phone case, and how to not be fooled. We didn't get as far as the teacher wanted to, though, because she asked for question a lot.

3/18/14 Modeling the World

     Yesterday, I opted for the modelling the world class using programming. In class, we started to create a simulation of Conway's game of life. The class used Scratch.

3/18/14 Kitchen Science

     During yesterday’s kitchen science class, we made devilled eggs (or as I like to call them, demonic eggs). Oddly enough, only two people attended, unlike the eight or so that were there for the cookie-making last week. I would have thought that people liked eggs for the cookies. Anyway, we made the mayo out of oil, egg yolk, vinegar, mustard, lemon, and other less important ingredients. We extracted  the yolk, mixed it with mayo and some more vinegar and mustard, then put them back in the egg. I learned a little bit about how emulsions work, but it was mostly cooking and less science. Anyway, the demonic eggs ended up being delicious.

3/18/14 Algebra

     During yesterday's algebra class, we continued to review basic algebra. The class was mainly focused on the two types of linear equations and the how you solve them. I didn't really learn much, but it was good to recap.

3/13/14 Geography

     As we have been for the past few geography classes, yesterday, we looked at the map of Africa and collectively attempted to fill in the country names. Once we had finished the map (we had done 2/3 of it last class), we explored google street view throughout Africa.

3/12/14 Chemistry

     Yesterday in chemistry, I learned of some chemists in history and their accomplishments. I might drop chemistry.

3//11//14 Programming

     Due to that my programming class was not a class but just a one-on-one lesson, it was shorter. The staff member who was teaching gave me a challenge (draw a checkerboard) and I accomplished it.

3/11/14 Mythology

     Yesterday in mythology we talked about the deities of Greek mythology. The plan was to cover all twelve of the Olympians, but we did not have time to do more than five. Over all, learning about the more obscure myths was fascinating and enjoyable.

3/11/14 Kitchen Science

Yesterday in kitchen science, we made jewish cookies called hamentashen. They are triangular and filled with jelly, and are usually made to celebrate Purim. We made cookies with cherry, apricot, and fig jelly. Unfortunately, there was not much science involved, but the cookies were delicious.

3/11/14 Algebra

     Yesterday, I participated in CSCL's new algebra class. The rest of the class was made up of four of my friends. It being the first class, we did the basics of algebra. This of course was review, but it was done to see where people are.

3/10/14 Biology

     Yesterday in biology, we did a somewhat silly lab modeling natural selection. Two mats (habitats) were laid out on the ground, one black and one yellow. Twenty black pom-poms and twenty yellow pom-poms (prey) were scattered across each mat. Each person (predator) doing the lab were given a plastic test tube (their stomach) and either a fork or a spoon (their mouth). Then, all participants (again, predators) of the biology class were divided into two groups, one situated on each mat (habitat). For fifteen seconds, each person attempted to pick up (eat) as many pom-poms (prey) as the could using only their fork or spoon (mouth). Then, the pom-poms were tallied and more pom-poms where added (breeding). At the fourth generation, it was shown that the pom-poms that where the color of their mat propered more than the obvious ones did.

New Blogging Situation

     My father has asked that instead/in addition to the way I blog now, I must do lots of little blogs. He wants me to do a short (3-4 sentence) description of each class I do at CSCL everyday after I do that class. I am aware that a majority of people who read my blog do not want to be spammed with 1-4 3-sentence blogs each day, and probably don't care about the details of each of my days. If this is the case, please contact me or my dad, and I can start a second blog.

Max

Description of My CS50 Scratch Program

     As part of CS50, I had to submit a description of my Scratch program. Here is that description:

My project mainly works by creating many clones of one sprite, and having them interact with each other. When the flag is clicked, only the start screen's and the speaker's scripts start running. Both do basic setup steps, like going to the correct position and and changing to the correct costume. The code in SoundToggle just tells the sprite that when it is clicked, first it must switch to the next costume, then either broadcast soundOff or soundOn. The Start Screen waits to be clicked; and when it is it switches to the background costume and tells Tiles to start. First, Tiles set all variables to zero and clear all the lists. Then, it hide and makes 16 clones. The blocks under "when I start as a clone" trigger each time a clone is created. The scripts give each clone an ID based on how many clones have been made so far. Then, they run my "findSpot" block, which gives each clone a random position and adds that position to the list of ta ken spots. Finally, they run a forever loop that tells them to disappear when a pair is made (more on this later). The findSpot block runs by picking x and y coordinates until it finds two that are not taken, the going to that position and adding the x-pos * 10 + the y-pos to the taken spots list. The reason that I am multiplying by 10 is that this is the only way that I am aware of to save two numbers in one spot on a list.

The rest of the code is basically in under the "when this sprite clicked" block. When one of the clones is clicked, first the program checks to make sure that there are either 0 or 1 flipped tile already and that the clicked clone wasn't already flipped. To find which costume that clone should switch to, the program checks if the tile's ID is odd or even, then calculates the corresponding costume. From there it adds the number now visible to a list of visible numbers, then checks to see how many tiles have already been flipped. If there are two already flipped, the program checks to see if they are a pair. If the are, They hide, if not, it broadcasts "FlipDown!" telling all clones to turn to turn back to their blank side.