Kimberly Branham's Digital Portfolio
Quality reflection essay
Over the course of 11th grade, I feel I have grown the most in inquiry. There have been multiple projects and assignments we have done this year that have required me to think hard and ask many questions, especially regarding college and my future career. Some I will focus on are the career exploration report, college essay, and the budgeting project.
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The first assignment I completed was the career exploration report. This was an assignment we had in Technical Reading and Writing. First, we chose a career path we were interested in pursuing. We then created essential questions we wanted to research about that career field and from there we did extensive research to create the report. The purpose of the questions was so we could learn the basics of our career field, such as the average salary and the job outlook, and also things such as what math requirements will you have while getting your degree. After we completed the questions, we then researched possible places for an internship relating to that career field.
This assignment was very research based which means many questions were being asked throughout the process. The first question was what two careers do I want to focus on? I thought about choosing two separate paths, such as social work and criminal justice, but I have been more focused on social work so I decided to choose two different paths within social work. Next, was making the essential questions. I chose questions I thought I should know going into the field, such as what is the job outlook? What is the average salary? These are questions I believed to be important as they suggest how difficult it will be for me to find a job in the field and how much money I will be making. This assignment had me asking and answering my own questions for weeks and I feel it really helped me to ask deeper and more meaningful questions.
The next assignment was the common app college essay we completed for our portfolios. The common app essay is a personal essay focused on answering one prompt from a list. This essay is what you then send to colleges so they can see why you should be accepted to their college. We started by looking at essays that worked from John Hopkins. This gave us many examples and formats to take inspiration from. This was especially helpful since there was a word limit of 650 words. I got my inspiration from “And the Secret Ingredient is…” by Mathias. This essay was written in steps like a recipe would be. I decided to go more for a timeline type format, which was still similar in going beyond the typical essay format.
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Before I could begin my essay, I had to choose a prompt to respond to. Writing and essays are not my strong suit so I struggled with just this. I had no ideas for anything; I did not know what story to tell. I then decided to choose prompt 5: discuss an accomplishment, event, or realization that sparked a period of personal growth and a new understanding of yourself or others.
I knew this was the perfect prompt to talk about my link between Gracie and social work. I knew I would start it with the day she was born, but that was all I had. I did not know what date to go to next. This essay was difficult from start to finish as it was a sensitive topic, I did not know what I wanted to share, and I did not know how to convey the message and what I was trying to say with so little words. I had to question everything about Gracie and ask myself what would be the most effective in 650 words. This was hard because I did not want to overshare, but it also needed to be personal, which is hard for me. This assignment had be asking many questions about everything and brought me out of my comfort zone with those questions.
The final assignment I feel helped me grow in inquiry was the personal budget project we completed in Economics. We started project by first learning the basics of economics and how choices you make have an influence on your life. Then, we started the budgeting spreadsheet while continuing to learn new things that would affect our decisions. The goal for this assignment was for us to see how expensive things are and to give a rough estimate of what life will be like for us the year after college in the career we chose. It helped us to explore our career even more and really see what is in store for us as adults.
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The first question we were presented with was what do we want our career to be? We needed this in order to choose the major and college we would use for this assignment. Some more questions we had to think about were will we rent an apartment or buy a house? What car will we buy? How much will we spend on food? This assignment was similar to the first artifact I talked about as it really helped me to think about the future. It required me to really question the
things I think I need and what I can do without as an adult. I believe I grew in inquiry the most with this assignment. One day this will be my life and I will be asking myself these same questions about what can do without. This was a very eye-opening assignment that prepared a little bit more for the future.
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Overall, I feel my skills in inquiry have grown immensely. I have been pushed all year to ask meaningful questions that will help me to prepare for the future. I will be able to use the answers to these questions to guide me as an adult and also as examples of questions I will ask later.