Quarter 3

The activity that I will be doing this reflection on is the DEMS Around the World project that our class, 8Z, organized. Each year, DEMS (Dhahran Elementary Middle School), conducts a walk-a-thon. Kids and teachers would walk around a mile long track as many times as possible while counting the number of laps that they did. For DEMS Around the World, we transfer the number of laps that everyone made into miles and kilometers. Then we would measure the total on a map and we would see how far we went from Al-Khobar, Saudi Arabia. The reason it is called DEMS Around the World is because the goal is to travel all the way around the world and back to Al-Khobar.

The purpose of the DEMS Around the World is to get all the way around the world as I have said above, but not only that, I think, that it is also there for everyone in school to look forward to as they come. Instead of simply coming to school and having nothing to look forward to except for our studies, we can now look forward to finding out whether we made it to China or not. This helps enhance our learning experience and we can therefore have much more fun. In high school and then in college, there will be very little time for any play because we will be so busy with our studies and our future. When we are having fun in middle school and in elementary school, we won't be wasting our time, on the contrary, we will be making the most of our precious time.

As part of the class that was organizing the DEMS Around the World project, I have learned many things. The most important thing that I have learned, however, is synergy. Synergy means team work or cooperation. This was one of the biggest aspects in organizing this project because we had to work together as a team to put everything together including the Chinese dances, the making of the Chinese dragon, the making of the Chinese backboard. This list is only from the actual assembly, behind the scenes we did even more things including: gathering all the data from all the students and teachers, creating the certificates and awards, taking videos during the walk-a-thon, taking pictures during the walk-a-thon, interviewing people during the walk-a-thon and so much more. Each and every one of these parts of this project required the utmost synergy. The four guys in our class did a Kung Fu dance which required each of us to give ideas and listen to others' ideas about what moves we should do, this was needed because we wanted it to be in harmony and together, not everyone on a different moves at different times. The same thing went for all the girls' dances.

I honestly don't think that we could have changed anything because, from my perspective, the DEMS Around the World that we did this year was utterly and nothing falling below pure awesome. The only thing that did harm the project slightly was the weather. On one Wednesday, we decided to do the walk-a-thon but then it started to rain and we were intending to do it outside on the mile track. The next Wednesday it also rained so we weren't able to do it outside, instead of postponing once again, the principal was flexible enough to say that we should do it inside the large gym. So instead of making laps outdoors, we made them indoors. This presented us with a slight setback because it was hard to keep track of the number of laps that each person did. Sometimes kids would do less than they would have done normally and sometimes kids would do more than they would have done normally. Also, we weren't allowed to run or jog, we could only walk which made it that much harder to make it farther than China.

My goal this year in science is to enhance my understanding of anything science. This project may seem like it does not relate to academic goal but I know it does. The main thing that I have learned helping organizing this project is synergy. Synergy is a huge aspect of one of the branches of science which is psychology. Psychology is the study of the humand mind and its behavior, including when around others. Some people are not good synergizers because they do not listen to others' thoughts and opinions. Others are very good synergizers because they know how to work well with others by listening to others' thoughts and opinions.