Sunah, Junior Boarder from Seoul, Korea
I was so nervous to begin my junior year in September 2011 as I heard so many scary things happening to juniors such as having to take SATs and ACTs, starting to plan for colleges, and much more work to do for some AP courses.
However, as a current junior, I am loving this year so far. I, of course, have more difficult assignments. Yet, the challenging classes inspire me to fully understand the lessons.
For example, AP Calculus BC, a course taught by Mrs. Ann Pollina, is one of my favorite classes. Although I have been receiving fairly good grades in math, I have never enjoyed learning math because I thought all the difficult and complicated equations and graphs were of no use in real life.
One day, I was just starting to learn about Derivatives. But instead of doing board work, Mrs. Pollina provided each student with a blank notecard and a pair of scissors and said, “Make a box the largest possible because the bigger the box is, the more m&m chocolates you can fill it with and have for yourself.” I first did not know what derivatives had to do with the box, but I continued making a box. Each classmate had different sized boxes, varying by length, width, and depth. After filling the boxes with chocolates, she explained how derivatives can be applied to finding out the maximum size of box. She added that the concept of derivatives is used everywhere in daily life to find the maximum profit by businessmen, gardeners, and box makers.
I was truly amazed by the wide application of math that since then, I was motivated to wholly understand each concepts. Math, a class that was formerly seemed difficult, became so inspiring!
I found similar enlightenments not only in math, but also in other subjects. Although the classes are more in-depth, I certainly believe that they bring more interesting and striking discoveries. Junior year courses, therefore, allows you to adventure more and find hidden interests of you!
