Sydney's Fieldwork Blog

          So for swim team, my mom originally signed me up and I wasn't too excited about it. My first two practices were really hard and I wanted to quit. I've never really trained, swimming-wise, before, and it was a lot harder than I expected to be. I was the only new girl, and I was the only one who hadn't been doing swim team since I was a toddler. I didn't feel left out necessarily, but I felt really slow.           My times from the time trials don't show that I'm slow, but I felt slow. After the first couples practices, the practices got slightly easier, but it was still really hard. I went to practice 3 times a week for 4 weeks, and then there were the hours for going to meets. I competed in 2 meets, and each lasted around 4 hours. I had never been to a swim meet before and it was really interesting, and long. I swam in 5 heats and because I'm in one of the older age groups we were waiting around a lot. The first meet I got good placements, and the

         For one of my 10 hour "projects", I went to mathnasium 2-3 times a week all summer and each session is 1 hour. Mathnasium is an organization for all ages that creates a math curriculum based on the child's level. You can show up whenever you want and they will assign you to a teacher for that day. The teacher can help you with anything you don't understand and it's actually been really helpful. The only weeks I didn't go was while I was at sleep away camp and when my family went on vacation. But the weeks I have gone have been great. The teachers are really helpful and they are really helping me understand the packets they're giving me. I actually enjoy going, and I'm going to continue going during the school year. I even feel like I'm improving a lot. Maybe.        

          So for deciding what my summer homework was going to be, I talked to my college counselor Beth. I've met with her a couple times this summer and she helps me set goals, and make decisions about extra curriculars and things like that. I was telling her about the things I was going to do this summer and when I mentioned that I was going to mathnasium all summer she was all for blogging about it. I also mentioned that I was joining swim team this summer and she thought that I could also blog about that because it's something I haven't done before and she thought it could count as summer homework and something I learned. My mathnasium counts as 10 hours for math and my swim team counts as 10 hours for PF. She had the idea of me writing about my sleep away camp experience because it was a leadership program, but there was no school subject that I could get graded on for writing about that. So I decided to stick to the math and swim team.