Jason Lu

This week, I will talk about my second EQAO experience. Usually, a student takes three EQAO in their school experience. However, our grade skipped the second EQAO because of a strike. During my first EQAO, I didn’t do so well. I think I got around a 70 on both the math and English EQAOs. This year, we weren’t told anything about an English EQAO. This made me believe we wouldn’t get an English EQAO during the same week. This allowed me to focus more on the math EQAO.

During the actual study time, we received four study packages. The first package we got was at the end of our final summative. Each package contained multiple questions from a certain unit. We were supposed to finish the package on the weekend. Next week, we got a supply teacher who gave us the remaining three packages. At the time, we were supposed to finish two packages in class and complete the last one at home. Once completed the packages, our teacher went through all the question. After that, we did a practice EQAO. We were seated in our positions and did a sample of last years EQAO. From that point on, every day was independent study till EQAO day.

EQAO lasted for two days. I was placed in a different room because I was allowed extra time. This also meant I got to skip the third period for two days. Fortunately, we were just doing inquiry box presentations. The first day was quite challenging, but I think I did well. The second day was easy compared to the first and I had the package done quickly with time to check my answers.

In the end, this year EQAO was not as challenging as I anticipated. Compared to my final summative, EQAO was easy. It feels like the effort I put into studying helped me a lot. EQAO will also help me prepare for the final exam. Overall, I’m happy EQAO is finally finishing. Unfortunately, this means exams are just around the corner.

This week, I will talk my plans for the upcoming exam. In the next to weeks exams and final summative will be due. So far, I have managed to complete my English final project, health project, and health summative. Currently, I have been studying for math EQAO, math test, working on my final geography project, and studying for my English exam.

In order to prepare for exams, my math teacher gave us a few practice worksheets. However, this is only for math. In geography, our teacher has recently been away for a week. This resulted in our geography speeding up at a rapid pace to finish our final unit. Meanwhile, our English teacher was more concerned about our final projects. After the final projects, I’m unsure what we will do. We also basically finished gym, and are just counting the days now.

My personal priorities are English, then math, and finally geography. I am prioritizing English over math because of my current mark. Currently, I have 77% English average, while my math has an 85% average. Unlike last semester, I would like all my marks to have an 80% average. To study for my English, I reread all the book that will be covered on the exam. Other than reading there is not much studying to do in English. Since I had extra time, I used it on math. After many adjustments, my new schedule includes primarily math. During my breaks, I also do some English and geography.

Overall, I feel this semester is more stressful than the last. Last semester had more exams but felt less stressed. I think this is because I have math and English in one semester. Next year, I would like to have a more balanced first and second semester.

This week, I will talk about summer school and why I decided to participate. There are two type of people who take summer school. First, are the students who failed a course during school. These students must go to summer school and take a makeup course to get their credit. The second type, are students who what to take a course before school starts again. There are multiple reasons to finish a course before school. My reason is so I can have more time to focus on important classes during school. This year, my english mark was not what I wanted and in grade 10 it’s only going to get harder. By having an extra slot, I can focus more on the important subjects like math and english. Originally, I didn’t want to go to summer school because I wanted to spend my summer doing something fun. However, my parents insisted on it.

I think summer school will go smoothly because summer school takes place at my high school. Previously, my first concern was the summer heat. Now I won’t need to worry about it because my school has air conditioning. The only downside is that none of my friends are coming along.

In the end, this blog was short. I wanted to talk about summer school, but there isn’t much to talk about. I believe summer school is just another way to make my school life easier. However, I don’t think summer school is necessary and I would rather spend my summer doing something else. Overall, I’m not exactly looking forward to summer school but I don’t mind taking it.

This week, I will talk about my first birthday bash experience. Every year, RGSS (Richmond green secondary school) holds a huge party to celebrate the birthday of RGSS.

The first signs of birthday bash appeared a week prior. It began with the announcement of to spirit days leading up to birthday bash. I don’t really remember anything about the spirit days. Spirit days are days when the school asks the students to wear a certain set of clothes. The clothes are to show care about a certain event. For example, on stop-bullying day, the school will ask students to wear pink clothes. However, in my personal experience, people don’t really ever participate.

Three days prior to the birthday bash, SAC or the student activity council set a countdown program in the cafeteria. The program was a counting down the days beforebirthday bash. During lunch, the program would show clips of people preparing for birthday bath and interviews of students being asked what they thought of birthday bash. In my opinion, I thought the countdown was a bit over the top. On the day right before birthday bash, people could see food trucks coming in. Particularly the beavertail, and the ice cream trucks. I didn’t pay attention to these trucks since I had no money to spend.

Once Friday arrived, birthday bash could finally begin. The first change of the day was the shorten classes. Secondly, more food trucks had arrived that morning, one of them was a BBQ food truck. In addition, a multitude of concession stands were set up. Some of these stands gave out free goodies like carabiners while other gave out refreshments like drinks. When 11:30 rolled around, many students were excited to get spend their money. After meeting up with my friends, we seperated to obtain our lunches. Some of us had premade lunches while others had cash. After eating, my friends and I went to all the inflatables. Unfortunately, it was getting a bit hot for me. At 12:55 I went back inside and headed to the geography room. At that point, birthday bash was kind of over for me.

Overall, birthday bash was fun. It was very reminiscent of Redstone’s 10th anniversary. The difference was, there were more food trucks, more inflatables, and there was just overall more stuff. It makes we wonder how RGSS gets the cash to do this every year. Especially when Redstone can only do it every ten years. In the end, I hope next years birthday bash is just as fun.

This week I am going to talk about destiny 2. I have already talked about the game before but that was a long time ago. So this time I will talk about what’s new and what happen since my last blog.

Destiny 2 has had a shaky relationship with its community since I stopped playing. Destiny 2 was constantly having bad updates. Basically, most of the new weapons were re-skins of previous weapons and the new raids weren’t amazing. Slowly Destiny 2 lost a lot of its player base. However, Bungie realizes this and began to release more quality updates.

One of the newer updates that helped revitalize the game is the 1.1.4. It made the pvp aspect more balance, it fixed some open world bugs, expanded loot pools in raids, and other enhancements that made the game better. The DLC also improved the game by adding new content. However, the first piece of DLC that was released got bad reviews and wasn’t that good. From what I heard the storyline was bland and the new equipment was bad. Fortunetly, the new DLC “Warmind” is much better from what I’ve heard. It adds a new storyline and weapons that are actually good.

Overall, this blog is to talk about the apparent death and the hopful revival of Destiny 2. I hope Bungie will continue to release good updates to the game. People had high hope for Destiny 2, but many were disappointed by the lack of care Bungie had for the game. I hope Bungie can turn this around and bring back more players. In the end, I hope Destiny 2 gets a flourishing community just like its predecessor.

This week I will talk about what it’s like without mommy around.
Recently mommy went to Hong Kong. The first realization after she left was I’m now the one responsible for Darcy. After daddy and I return home, I checked Darcy liter box. After checking, I went to finish my blog. Everything felt normal until dinner time. For dinner, we went to the emperor, a Chinese restaurant. Usually, I sit in the back row of the car but this time I sat in the front. After a few days, nothing felt that different. The only effect mommy had when she left was added a few tasks to my morning schedule.

However, the weekdays felt very different compared to the weekends. I had to wake up much earlier than when I usually do. Instead of 7:30 I needed to wake up at 6:45. This is because I had to prepare my lunch, Darcy’s food and water, and my breakfast. The weekday mornings are currently the biggest change in my schedule.

In the end, I find having mommy does not around haven’t changed my schedule that much. However, it would be much different if I had to cook my food. Mommy was nice enough to leave a bunch of frozen food on the freezer. An upside to mommy being in China is more diverse meals. Overall, the experience so far has not been as painful as I thought.

This week, I will talk about Skyrim and it’s DLC. I have already talked about Skyrim in a previous blog. However, those two blogs just talked about the base game.

Since getting the game on PC, I beat the game again and played through 1 of 2 DLC. The DLC I played through was the Dawnguard. This DLC expanded upon the vampire and werewolf concepts. Previously, you could turn into a vampire or werewolf but the features were limited. This DLC added perks trees to each form, weapons, armor, and quests. After playing a vampire I thought it was fun. However, I also found slightly annoying because if your vampire perk tree is not maxed out you’ll get attacked by NPCs. This feature makes it impossible to play. I ended up using cheats to make the game playable. Currently, I’m trying out playing a werewolf. So far the experience has been better than vampire experience.

The next DLC is the Dragonborn DLC. Unfortunately, I haven’t played it yet. What I do know about is that the player travels to an island to experience more items and quests. Instead, I will take about another DLC that doesn’t add much content. The DLC in question is the Hearthfire. This DLC just allows you to build a house, adopt children, and make more food. To be honest, I didn’t think this DLC had much impact on the game. Most of the time I spend in game is kill monsters and completing quests. The only feature I used, was the adopting children for my very empty house. Out of all three DLC, Hearthfire is the blandest.

In the end, these DLCs add a lot to the game. Although, some are better than others. However, each DLC still makes the game more fun add more time spent on each playthrough. By the end of summer, I hope to finish the game a 100%. Overall, I really enjoy these DLC and I hope the next elder scroll game will come out soon.

This week, I will be talking about a tragic attack that happened recently. On April 23, a man drove a van across the western sidewalk of Yonge Street. This attack killed 10 people and injured many more. Five days have passed since the incident, we have learned many things. First, the assailant is a man named Alek Minassian. Second, the police have managed to for a list of all the victims killed. Finally, the police believe to know how the event happened.

The person responsible for all this is Alek Minassian. He is 25 and an anonymous source reports he has no regrets for what he has done. Apart from this, the police have not told the public anything else. I do not know why he would do this. Some people from my school says Alek was mentally unstable. However, I don’t know if this was true. After read multiple articles, I am still unsure of his motive. Even still, I think he has a reason because it would be tragic to learn 10 people died for no reason.

Speaking of the 10 people who died, they have all been identified. 8 of the victims were Canadian. Unfortunately, there were two visitors. One was a Korean college student and the other was a Jordanian citizen. Currently, all of the victim’s families are grieving.

Overall, it is tragic an incident like this had to happen. I wonder if Alek talked about his problems earlier, all of this could have been avoided. In the end, I hope this never happens again so this kind of suffering doesn’t occur.

This week, I will be talking about the new game I got. It’s a very popular MMO (Massively Multiplayer Online) called WOW (World Of Warcraft). Warcraft is the most popular MMO on the planet, and it’s been out since 2004. Since I haven’t played it yet, I will give a very general goal of what I want for my character.

I will be starting the game with two friends, Jason and Edward (hopefully). Jason is a veteran player, and Edward is a novice like me. However, since Edward can play on weekdays, he was given a guest pass. During Wednesday, he tried out the classes and other features. Edward being the person he is, chose the class Death-knight a DPS class. Jason was already an experienced Tank and will be sticking with the role. This left only one slot open.

MMO classes can generally be put into three categories DPS, Tank, and Support. Each category has a role to play, and a party can’t function if one is missing (most of the time). DPS classes are damage dealers. Without DPS there might as well be no party. Tanks are also important this is because they are the shield of the group. Tanks generally have more hp and defense, which are essential survival stats. In exchange, they have low attack and agility. The last role is Support, which are the healers or enhancers of the group. Support classes have some of the worst attack stats in the game but, they can heal, revive, and grant buffs to allies. Unfortunately, they are also the most unnecessary role. Supports can’t solo, can’t contribute to DPS, and in short battles healing is not needed. However, if a party wanted to last in a raid, support is crucial.

After thinking it over, I chose a Support class. The other option I had was DPS. There were several reasons I did not choose this route. One I don’t trust other healers, two communication with the tank would shorten with me being healer, and three I have the option of DPS later. Out of all the Support classes Paladins, Preist, Druid, and Shaman I picked the Druid. Druids have a incredible heal over time, this is what separates them from Priests and Shamans. Paladins have a similar heal to Druids, but they are more combat oriented. Druids also have the potential to DPS later. Each class has three skill trees, and the Druid has a DPS, ranged DPS, and a Support skill trees. Once you select one tree, you can’t spend points between trees until level 30. So, after level 30 I can provide minor DPS after level 30.

Normally, I would not play this game. That is because of subscription. Warcraft has a monthly subscription of $15. However, you also pay with in-game currency. This is yet another reason I chose a Support class. Raids are the only way my friends and I could earn enough currency to pay the subscription. Edward and I could ask Jason, who has the currency. However, supporting three characters off one account is not feasible.

In the end, I hope to have a fun experience with WOW. However, the first few weeks will be filled with grinding. This is all in an attempt to dodge the $15 subscription. Overall, I hope we can pull it off and have fun at the same time.

This week, I will talk about what I did on Tuesday. Normally, I would be going to school. However, that day the grade 10s were doing their OSLTs (an English test) and every other grade got the day off. So, I will talk about what I did that day.

First, I woke up at around 7:30 because I forgot to change my alarm clock. After I woke up and had a glass of water, I went back to bed. I didn’t wake up again until 8:30 and Kalen just got up. Since high school started, I didn’t know when Kalen left for school. Apparently, Kalen left pretty late at around 9am. After daddy, Kalen, and Mommy all left, I was home alone with Darcy. While they were away, I decided to do some studying for my Unit 4 math test. At around 11, I decided to take a break and practice on my instruments.

When mommy came back at around 12:30, we went out for lunch. We ended up eating ramen. After the quick lunch, we went home after some shopping. For the rest of the time, before Kalen came back, I read my book. 30 minutes after Kalen came back, I had to go to my music lessons. After my lessons, I just did my homework. The rest of day was just like any other day.

In the end, I spent most of my day studying and doing school work. During my free breaks, I either read or watch some educational videos on youtube. Overall, I was really glad I got a day off. Unfortunately, this means I will also need to do the OSLT next year.