Student Blog: Starting Off Senior Year!

Like every other teenage girl, my notes tab is my most sacred app. It holds the most necessary thing in my life at the moment: my to-do list. As the start of school starts ramping up again, this is the one thing I can count on. It has all of my activities, obligations, up-coming assignments, and so much more. 

Hi, My name is Ella Song, and I’m currently a senior in high school. In this blog post, I will be going through some classes and activities that seem to infiltrate my notes app with assignments.

First, I’d like to talk about my English class, Film as Literature. This is easily my favorite class this year. We’ve been learning about mise-en-scene, editing, montages, and so much more. We’ve watched Ladybird and Parasite so far and have analyzed them immensely through essays and group conversations. It’s great because my teachers seem to be really passionate about film, which really shows through their teaching. It makes me and the rest of the class want to engage and fully participate. An assignment I’m really enjoying are our blog posts. Every few weeks everyone picks a different film and analyzes the mise-en-scene in it. You can take it in any direction you want whether it’s camera angles, color schemes, or perception, it’s really interesting to see everyone’s takes on some of the best films ever made. So far I’ve done 2 posts: Analyzing color is West Side Story(2021) and Analyzing lighting in Titanic. It’s been amazing being able to pick some of my favorite films and truly look at how they’re being portrayed to the audience, it makes me remember why I love them so much.

Another class that I’ve been heavily involved in is Advanced Research. It’s a program my school offers that we applied to junior year. It’s where you work in a lab in a nearby university and conduct research over the summer. You then take a class 1st semester where you write a research paper and create a poster. Over the summer I worked in a psychology lab at The University of Michigan, studying how driving behaviors can show early signs of Alzheimer’s disease. It was really interesting and I loved seeing how research was done, but it made me realize that I don’t necessarily want to go into STEM. I would like to do more research in the future, but possibly in the arts and possibly in something media or theater related.

Finally, the thing that has been in my notes to-do list from Spring of last year to now… College Applications. Whoever said that junior year was the worst it could get was definitely hadn’t experienced first semester senior year yet. Writing what feels to be hundreds of essays, researching colleges, and compiling all extra-curriculars has truly taken a toll on me. Schoolwork is hard enough, but adding college apps on top of that is so crazy. Especially with it being October and the Early Action/Decision deadline coming up, my grade has been more frantic than ever. Regardless of its workload though, I’ve got to be honest, I’ve enjoyed researching colleges and writing essays for them. Being able to see what colleges offer and think about my future really excites me. I want to go into the entertainment industry in some way(probably through business) and I love seeing all the paths that I can take to get there. I’m really looking forward to going to college, learning new things, and being able to pursue my passions! 

Well, that’s all I have for you today! Can’t wait for the next blog post and many more to come!