During my 11th grade year at the Dayton Regional STEM School (DRSS) out of all of the five qualities, I have used persistence the most on most of my projects. However, the project I used persistence on the most was the Career Exploration Report in Ms. McDaniel’s Technical Reading and Writing class. Our schools definition of persistence is “Ideal graduates of DRSS have the endurance and motivation to overcome countless challenges, and are undeterred by failure, remaining dedicated and enthusiastic. They have the discipline and resourcefulness to be dependable to those around them, and reliably complete the task at hand.” (Class of 2020.)

The Career Exploration Report was about a 2-week project. This project was a solo project, as in I did not work with anyone else for it. For this project, I had to research possible future careers or careers that interested me. Then I had to write a 3-4 paragraph essay about what interested me in that career, possible places nearby I could work at for this career, and incomes and demand for the jobs. After I wrote two 3-4 paragraph essays about my potential careers, I was supposed to find an internship relating to one of those careers. However, I had already finished my internship so I researched two colleges that had programs relating to my potential careers. The research I conducted on the colleges included Cost, Distance, programs relating to my careers I chose, and requirements to be accepted.

During this project, I was very confused during most of it, because I personally did not fully know what I wanted to do for a career or what college I wanted to go too. Through persistence, I was able to research and discover some things that I wanted to do. I made a choice myself not to give up and that gave me the motivation to conduct research on multiple websites, sources, and talk to multiple people to help me discover what careers to write about. I also had the same problem with the college part of the essay, I had to be persistent and ask myself what my personal requirements for a college were and if it was affordable.

My first artifact for this project that shows I had persistence is my final exploration report. I chose my final draft so that I could explain all the persistence I had to use to get there. At first, I had about two paragraph for each section of the report. However, towards the end when I got all my feedback from multiple people and teachers, I worked hard to apply all that feedback to make sure I had a good final draft. I applied feedback multiple times and got peer critique multiple times. Without persistence, I would not have been able to effectively apply my feedback and in the end come up with a good grade on the overall project.

My second artifact would have to be the exploration report template. Without having the exploration report template I think I would have definitely given up. When I got stuck and did not know what to do and already wanted to give up, I would look at the exploration report template. The template would help get me back on track and I could understand what needed to be answered and what I needed to do. After I was back on track, I had the confidence and motivation to keep going and not to give up. This was very important because without it I might have gotten behind other students and then given up, or I would have completed the report wrong and gotten a bad grade.