T2B19

I'm so sad :'( We only made $48.80 today for the NPO.

I think it might be because we didn't have a lot of cookies to sell, and people thought they looked lonely all by themselves so they might have thought that they were leftovers, which might have made people not want to buy.

I DON'T KNOW THIS IS DRIVING ME CRAZY

We had a constant amount of money last week! $70-$80 per day last week, but only $50 today???

Erica thinks we might have a supply and demand problem.

I thought that we could sell bubble tea at the beginning of the project, but it seemed rather unrealistic. We thought that bubble tea might have a higher margin or at least sales amount per cup, so we tried to get the price of bubble tea down to 2.50, but then another guy talked to Erica's mom and the lowest he'd go was 2.75. And then she gave up trying to reason with him.

We could sell bubble tea if we go down to about 2.50 because if it was any more expensive, it'd barely cover gas fees. :( But we'll keep trying with other bubble tea places because I think bubble tea could sell really well.

T2B18

Christmas is almost here, and we're selling gingerbread men and brownies for NPO...

I found this recipe online and I reeeeally wanted to make it, but we don't have the time and ingredients to make these to sell :'(

http://www.getcreativejuice.com/2013/12/gingerbread-cookie-cups-white-chocolate-caramel.html

JUST LOOK AT THIS PHOTO



:O This makes me really hungry now. :P

T2B17

We just came back from a full day of debate.

I'M SO TIRED

We had 3 rounds today, in World Schools Style, and that's so... different than what I'm used to, it's weird. I think I'd do well in one part of one debate, and it would never just "come together" perfectly, it'd be in bits and pieces of perfection. *sighs* I think my debating skills overall improved, just not my World's Style. Because I'm still learning, and trust me... I have a loooong way to go. (which was just a nice way of saying I'm terrible.) I think we did okay, I think I personally did better (comparatively) here than the Regional debate, but then again, there were a lot less people/teams. I think the most important thing is to learn, though. We ended up debating with Tara, Frank, and Charlie because they were Norway (like we each got a country team name) and the last 3 rounds were bracketed which meant we could potentially end up debating one of our own teams. Mr. Hauck watched that last round so he could give us feedback (like all of us at the same time) and from that, we need to really do more signposting. Also, we got a lot of feedback from each of the individual judges, which was really helpful. I think that I learn more from tournaments than anything else, even though I always do so badly on them. :( But debate is something I really want to put a lot of effort into and learn well, especially with things like constructing solid arguments, dealing with POI's, and also structure. I think I'm a better speaker than before, but taking notes and using flowcharts is something that's reeeeeally important, because I'll do these things (actually everyone does :P) where I get up there, and I work up this really important and strong argument and then I'll just have to take a breath and pause--and then all of a sudden I lose what I was talking about. My sheets are messy, I can't read it from the table from where I'm standing, and I face this awkward situation where I'm either searching for the point or just thinking and staring blankly while trying to remember that brilliant argument I had.

The above is what Mr. Hauck would call "verbal diarrhoea" (thanks, autocorrect :P) because it's poorly organized and I bounced around a lot. That's also what he told us to correct. :P

Anyway... I think that I'm a more confident speaker than before. I'm trying to sound more passionate and really get into the heart of the debate, rather than just saying the points I have to say. I really like debate, and I think it's really useful. The other day, the science textbook had like an "Explore an Issue" lesson or something like that, and they had a mini chart of arguments, and they were like, "Expand", and I (almost instinctively) started analyzing it, going, Okay, this is why this is important, it's a moral point, how can we refute this... It was kind of funny, actually, and I "caught" myself doing that for a lot of arguments. I think debate helps me to be more analytical and really get into why an argument is effective and important, which also helps with critical thinking. It also makes me a more effective public speaker. I've seriously gotten so much practice public speaking (debate also adding an extra effect/layer of public speaking) that I'm pretty much no longer nervous at all about public speaking. Talking to a group is... well, to me, no different than talking to a friend, because I've gotten so much practice with it. Here's also a really good instance of where "practice makes perfect".

OHH--the other day in Leadership, we had to prepare 1 minute speeches and I had this reeeeeally good ending, but we skipped a week so I totally forgot the ending. And then afterwards I was flipping through my notes (on my phone) and then I realized THAT I'D FORGOTTEN THE ENDING that I'd literally built my whole speech on. (Literally. The ending was: "But in the end, there's no magic pill but the one called practice. Take every day for best results." I did a speech about public speaking (because it sounds cool :P) just so I could use the "practice" ending! And when I realized I'd forgotten, I was just like :OOOOOOOO.)

ANYway... I'm really tired now and yet I STILL HAVE SO MUCH HOMEWORK >.< Right now, I seriously can't wait for this time in 2 weeks... when I'll be blissfully ignorant and free... there's a reason they say "ignorance is bliss", you know. But I'll still work hard, because the mere thought of being free for 2 weeks is enough to make me work hard. ;P

T2B16

We just had a debate tournament.

It was...

okay...?

The main reason I'm kind of disappointed is because I don't think we performed to our greatest potential, but I guess that's to be expected since this is the first time we've worked together as a team.

It's rather late so I'll post more details tomorrow.

T2B15

People don't like cute things.

Okay, so that's not necessarily true, but here's what I mean: I've noticed that small things don't sell. People buy these giant cookies and regular sized sugar cookies, and these mini cookies that are 3 for a dollar just don't move. We're selling brownies and mini cinnamon buns for 50¢ and we literally sold, like, 3 cinnamon buns yesterday. 3. Like, are you kidding me? We sold 3 on the first day and I bought one of them! Of course, that's because they were like 75¢ each on the first day, but we lowered the price and still nobody buys them. :( I'm going to try out these chocolate cookies, but if they don't sell I'm liquidating them to myself, because, personally, I love them, and I want to save our company some money and have a faster turnover time. :D

T2B14

OMG I'M SO EXCITED

We made about $78 today! That's about $5 more than we made on Monday. But also, it mean's we're selling at a steady pace, which is good. :D We might have sold more if the group beside us weren't also selling cupcakes today... homemade cupcakes... for a dollar cheaper... *sighs, headdesks table* But it's okay, I have 2 cupcakes left and I'm putting them in the fridge tonight, I'll bring them for Friday to continue selling. We're stocking up on our inventory (like the more popular food) so we can keep selling making money :P and we're trying to sell some more of the less popular items.

But that's not what I'm excited about.

So you know my mom's an accountant right? She said she could help me set up Simply Accounting today so we can create like a legit accounting... er, account :P for our NPO! She uses Simply Accounting at work, and she said she could install it on my computer so we could both enter our inventory, how much we sold things for, etc. and that way the computer can calculate it all (like the profit and everything per cookie) and that just makes life soooo much easier, because I'd be doing it by hand anyways. Erica and I are kind of sharing the job of CFO, I did the 1st day sales, but because my WiFi died on me today (I don't even know what happened, but I literally loaded a page for an entire afternoon and it still didn't load! But my dad fixed it for me when he came home and now I'm using a different network, because the old one is still dead. :'( ) I couldn't do Sales Day 2 spreadsheet so Erica and I are going to finish it tomorrow--I have to talk to her about 2 column accounting and we'll do the spreadsheet together. :D

Mr. Hauck wasn't here yesterday and today :( so I'm still kinda confused about the Dossier, but I asked Margo and she clarified some things for me. We have an in class essay on Friday that I'm really nervous about, because it's a new type of essay, but I've brainstormed some topics and things, and I think I should be able to do it. I don't know if it's open-book, because I was going to prepare an outline, but it probably won't be. I also don't know if Mr. Hauck's going to give us a specific topic day of, or just the general compare/contrast one.

OOH--I'm also really excited for the debate unit we have next. Mr. Hauck said we're going to start a little debate unit next week or week after, I think, and I was like OMG <3 because I really like debate and I've been trying to improve.

I kinda thought about the science game a little, and I'm not sure we have time to do a video game. I reeeeeally wanted to, but I realized that we only have 2 weeks to do this thing, and I don't have a lot of time, and I don't want to cram. I think Erica is totally right in that we actually don't have a lot of time, because we have to balance a lot of other work as well.

Anyway, this blog was really scattered and random... I promise I'll be more focused tomorrow.

T2B10, 11, 12, 13

Yeah, I totally forgot to blog for like the last 3 days. I'm sorry. There's just so much on my plate.

I have like 5 bajillion things to say, so instead of trying to separate it into 4 blogs, I'm just going to spew it all out in one big long rant (I'm sorry if you have to try to read this. :( It's going to be long. Like, looooooooong.)

Anyways, I'm so stressed right now.

Okay so on Sunday, I went and bought a whole bunch of stuff for NPO. I met Margo at the Oakridge Safeway rather coincidentally, we just happened to be buying food in the same place at the same time. I bought some cupcakes at the IGA near my house, and I also bought a giant gingerbread man and some mini cookies at Safeway, while Margo bought 2 different types of sugar cookies and another giant gingerbread man. So, that was all well and fine... Margo and I bought less because Erica bought more, so we wanted to even out the amount of food we bought so we could sell them while they were still fresh. (OBTW, I WAS SO HAPPY WHEN WE GOT SNOW ON SATURDAY I WAS JUST LIKE :D :D :D <3 <3 and the only reason I mention this is because we were going to bake on Friday and Margo reminded us all that there might be snow on Friday and to be careful if we were driving/bussing/walking. Something totally unrelated: there wasn't snow on Friday so I didn't think there'd be snow at all, but my mom woke me up with "Snow outside!" on Saturday, and I didn't believe her, because my family has this thing where they take turns trying to get me up by telling me there's snow. :P)

So then, we started selling on Monday, and I'd originally had high expectations, but with the constant "I don't think we're going to make any money" vibe coming off of Margo and Erica, I was starting to get a bit depressed and start thinking that way. (We were talking about stress in Leadership the other day, and we were talking about how other people's stress can affect you. BOOM: perfect example. Also, that day I hadn't been feeling stressed until we started talking about our stresses and how we could deal with them.) Well, GUESS WHAT, we made $73.75 revenue! On the first day! I literally said to Margo afterschool after Debate meeting, "I can't wait to go home and count the money," because we had SOOO much cash and I was like *YES. YES. YES.* So then I was so excited I went home and I pretty much spent the entire afternoon calculating our sales, profits, products sold, and how to reinvest. In total our cash right now is 103.75, which means we made 3.75 profit and 100 to give back to our shareholders. But hey. It's a start.

I'm kinda stressed for NPO now, not because it's hard, but because there's a lot of things to do. My mom's an accountant, so she can help me with some of the accounting stuff, because Erica's kind of scared of accounting. But I feel so tired now, because I feel like I'm running a one-man (one-woman) business. I did the first few meeting minutes, I made the agendas, and I'm keeping track of the money and doing the accounting right now. I bought all of our new inventory for tomorrow's bake sale because Margo and Erica didn't have time. Erica and Margaret and their parents have been really helpful, with driving, making the angel food cake, buying food, and selling with me, but I feel like I'm taking on a lot of responsibility. And I like that, because I'm learning, but sometimes I feel like it's getting to be a little too much, and I have other homework to do too. For example, the science. (Well, and English but I'll get to that later).

For the science game project, Erica and Margaret and I (yes, it's the 3 of us again :P) are doing "The Great Sperm Race Game". (We're studying Life Science in science right now.) I really wanted to do an interactive video game, but really, only Erica knows programming well, I only know a little bit, and Margo doesn't know any at all. I really wanted to take this project farther, because I believe in doing my best and doing more than is required, so I can learn better. Erica pointed out, however, that it's very difficult to program if you don't know how to program (well), and she already had a lot of responsibilities on her hands. I was like, Well, I can learn in a weekend or so if I do just programming, because I'm a fast learner, and I believe I can do it. Erica says it takes years for a programmer to get good, and also to write a decent program, so then we said we should borrow from someone else. We asked Mr. Mo and he said it's fine, as long as it's all open-source and we cite the programmer. I think the science game is a big task, but I'm up to it, and I'm feeling a little bit tired and discouraged, because I want to do a really good job on this, but my group thinks it'll be too difficult. I'm willing to put in the effort, and I'm not asking anyone to do all the work, I'm willing to do my fair share, but my group thinks it's just impossible. I realize that and I'm respecting it, but I really want to put effort into this thing. Just like with NPO, I think we could do a really good job of this if we're only willing to put in extra time and effort. Going back to NPO, I really want to do a good job, learn something, and raise money for the WHO, which is why I'm putting so much effort into it. I want to do likewise for science. But I think the reality might be that we're just out of time--Margo, Erica and I have so many other things on our plate.

*Side note: I remember when Erica told me once, she heard someone in her class asking someone else (let's call them John and Tim) why they created a circle for an electronics class (I think the choice was to carve a circle or a figure). Tim replied, "'Cause it's easy." Then John said to Tim, "Yeah, but when we're in Grade 12, I'll look back on this and say, 'Wow, I did a really good Pokemon,' and you're going to look back on this and say, 'Wow, I did a really good circle.'" I just about died laughing there, because it was #LOLSOTRUE. (at least for me) My philosophy of learning is that you don't take the easy path, the easy way out, the minimum requirements, you do as much as you can and more than the requirements because it helps you learn. There's a reason we're in school, and that reason is to learn. Personally, I learn because I'm hoping to contribute something to the world. To me, giving back is one of the the most important things one can do in life, and I'm hoping to do just that, which is why my learning philosophy is to always do your best.

We have literally 3 projects ongoing for English right now. We have a compare/contrast essay on Friday, and I'm kind of worried for that because I've never written a compare/contrast essay before. The ones I've done are all persuasive. Then again, we have the dossier, due next Tuesday, which I've barely started yet, because I wasn't there for the "debriefing" (I was at a piano competition) and I have a few questions to clear up. We also have the AS/English Crossover story, which I'm working on right  now. I have this really awesome idea about this girl and her computer controlling her future, but no spoilers now! I've been spending so much time on NPO recently because I looove it (I <3 doing this business stuff :D) and I have to start moving on these projects, because I don't have Friday and Saturday.

*sighs* I'm kinda getting really stressed out now, but I'll be okay. (Actually, one of my best ways to work through these "crunch times" is to spend 5 minutes dreaming about how I'll feel like in 2 weeks when it's winter break and there's nothing to do for an entire half a month... Then I snap back to reality and work my butt off so the dream is more than a dream. :D)

SO EXCITED FOR BAKE SALE TOMORROW :D