Monton, Vince Aaron

Advisory

November 13, 2020

Personal Insight questions

Describe the most significant challenge you have faced and the steps you have taken to
overcome this challenge. How has this challenge affected your academic achievement?

Overall I would say I am currently working through the most significant challenge which is
trying to keep my grades above average. For this school year my goal was to be diligent and
hardworking to acquire a passing grade of all A’s throughout my classes. I am a senior and this is
my last year of high school so I genuinely wanted to push myself into completing my goal of
getting all A’s and through previous and past years I’ve never really passed all my classes and
there was always that one course where I had obtained a C. Though as we know through the
outbreak of COVID 19 (coronavirus) many schools are doing virtual learning to decrease the risk
of children receiving or spreading the virus to others and to overall keep students safe. I believe
that virtual learning was a good and conventional choice for the health and safety of students but
most teens and children are struggling in their classes and their grades are being affected
negatively. I am one of those students whose grade dropped and another reason why it was being
affected other than the struggle was the amount of homework I had to complete on a specific
time and day. Each week I was constantly stressed, having to finish all my work on time but I
ended up taking action and finding a method to cope with that stress. That method was
scheduling a specific time and day to complete a particular assignment in which was really
useful and beneficial because not only did I have more free time but I became more mature and
learned how to manage my time. Through this experience I know I schedule a time where I do
things in my everyday life for instance taking showers and the use of my phone.

Think about an academic subject that inspires you. Describe how you have furthered this
interest inside and/or outside of the classroom.

Through all the classes I’ve taken I would say a subject that inspires me the most and has my
interest is math. As a kid I never really liked math because my mom was always there by my side
helping me complete the equations and back then she never really had the patience for me to get
the correct answer so whenever I did the problem incorrectly or had the wrong solution I would
get scolded in which would leave me crying but as time went on and I got to the third grade I
started to learn about the multiplication table (times table). When I was first introduced to it I
didn't know anything about it but my mom ended up making me memorize the multiplication
table up the to the 12 times table and so I eventually did. Each week I was given a test towards
Monton, Vince Aaron

Advisory

November 13, 2020

the multiplication table and I would be the first one to finish and get everything correct. I felt
really proud about myself during those moments when I would be done before everyone else
because I believed that I was the smartest one in the class and that really boosted my confidence
which overall started my good relationship with the subject of math. When middle school came
it was a whole other chapter of my life and math appeared more challenging and so I became
more attentive towards what was being taught and after getting an understanding of what to do it
started to become less complicated. For those three years of high school my love for math started
to grow and I became more interested in it due to the fact that mathematics applies in the real
world and we utilize numbers and equations wherever we go whether it be finding out the price
of an item that is 20% off or just counting.

What would you say is your greatest talent or skill? How have you developed and
demonstrated that talent over time?

Some skills that I would think are great is my ability to draw and my self-discipline. As a child
even though I wasn’t the best artist, I loved to draw things whether it’d be a flower, a guitar, or
even a cartoon character. I started drawing when I was about 7 years old and first began
sketching cars since they were my favorite object as a kid. Through watching the movie “Fast
and the Furious Tokyo Drift” my fascination towards cars started and that caused me to always
draw different cars such as nissan gtr’s or honda civics. Though, the drawing of my cars were not
perfect you would still be able to analyze what type of car I drew. After cars I started to trace
other drawings of animals since I didn’t really have a clue on how to produce the shapes of
different animals. After tracing the drawings of animals for one month I began to sketch the
overall body of the animal just by looking at it and it took me some time to get it somewhat
identical but when I did I was happy. I now know how to draw different things whether they’d be
animals, people, and views over time. My self- discipline was caused from drawing and through
making my own decisions on whether or not my drawing was similar to the reference image. I
also began to understand what my limits and weaknesses were through drawing and that really
affected the way I did things accordingly. I began to rely on others' interpretations towards my
drawings rather than my own as a way to figure out what other things I can include or fix to
make it more appealing. The skill of drawing did not come easily and I had to practice over and
over again to recreate the right image as for self-discipline I would say it developed naturally
through drawing because it generally improves the balance of being a person and drawing.
Monton, Vince Aaron

Advisory

November 13, 2020

Every person has a creative side, and it can be expressed in many ways: problem solving,
original and innovative thinking, and artistically, to name a few. Describe how you express
your creative side.

My creative side would have to be cooking in which there was a time where my friends got into
an argument over who will win the nba championship. It all started when my friend Jake wanted
to annoy our other friend Jason who was a really big fan of the Golden State Warriors in which
they were headed to the nba finals with the Cleveland Cavaliers and at that time Kyrie Irving and
Lebron James were still in that team. So this was the second time both teams were headed to
finals to face each other again and in the first time the Golden State Warriors ended up winning
the championship and that caused Jason to convinced that his favorite basketball team will win
again but Jake starts to say insulting things towards Jason’s favorite team causing Jason to
become infuriated and not only did Jason become mad but his favorite team ended up losing to
the championship game and Jake took the audacity of insulting Jason's favorite team after they
lost which led into both individuals punching one another and that caused the ideas of other
people to think that they will no longer be friends after they are done fighting but I didn’t think
that would be the case. After they fought and were put in separate parts of the house, I started
cooking a dish that I’m known for which are my garlic parmesan wings. When I was done
cooking I asked them to sit together to try out my wings and we had a little chat that consisted of
friendship and how their friendship shouldn’t be broken over an nba basketball game. Overall I
wouldn’t say I have a passion for cooking and I find it to just be a great hobby that can bring
people together.