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North Shore Trip
Last Sunday my family and I went to the North Shore. We decided to go all in one day. First, we went north on I-35 to Duluth, which took about 2 hours. We went to Canal park there, and saw lighthouses and stuff. Then, we went another hour north to Two harbors, Minnesota. There, we went to the lighthouse, saw the harbor, and ate our lunch we brought along. Next, we went to the Gooseberrry Falls, further north. We looked at several amazing waterfalls there, and went on a long hike. Finally, we went to Split Rock Lighthouse, and learned more about it. It was created after a legendary storm in 1905. The lighthouse used a Fresnel lens to focus light, which I learned about in geometry! From Gooseberry Falls and Split Rock lighthouse, I got a spoon. Maybe I’ll collect them everywhere I’ll go. Here are some of our pictures.
This Year’s MMTA Honor’s Concert
This year was my fourth time at the MMTA (Minnesota Music Teacher’s Association) Piano Honors Concert. I got in because I passed the Preliminary and Final Contest. It takes place at the U of M Northrup Memorial Auditorium. This year’s was I think the horriblest ever. For the first half of the concert, I think every duet was messed up because they were rushing or not with the tempo. Also, the concert was about 3 hours long, and I had to sit in a very uncomfortable seat. I didn’t like the duet I got either, and I was secondo again. At least I got a flower at the end. I’m sorta too lazy to type more.
UMTYMP is finished!
After a long, hard year of UMTYMP, it’s finally over. It was actually over a few weeks ago. I had the whole month of May UMTYMP-less freedom. Anyway, I just got my grade, and I have an A+!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! A+’s are really hard to get, and I get mostly A’s. To get an A+ you have to have 95% and above. Tests and homework are 40% of your grade, and Quizzes and participation are 10%. My test average was 100/100 flat (There’s 110 possible, but 10 points are bonus points), my homework average was 43.4/45, my Quiz average was 9.3/10, and my participation was 10/10. If you calculate, I got a 97.9 overall percentage. Also, my teacher wrote, “Mitchell has mastered the concepts of Pre-Calc and is well prepared for calculus.” Also, I took a UMTYMP Calculus Entrance Exam recently, and I got 45/50, which is also good. I pass to get into calculus. If you get a lot wrong in a particular subject, they send homework home to be done over the summer in order to get into calculus. I got such a good score, they didn’t have any homework for me! So next year I begin college calculus. I’m also considered a student of the U of M, so I also get an official U of M ID card. It grants me access to all the U of M libraries. My dad was hoping we could get access to recreation facilities, which would be cool.
New Ping Pong Table
Sorry, I only posted 2 times in May. We just got a ping-pong table a few weeks ago, because suddenly we felt like getting one. We spent a pretty long time trying to choose a good one on the web. We were deciding between 3/4 in. thick playing surfaces and what color top to have, and stuff like that. Finally, we got a Butterfly Playback Rollaway 3/4 in. blue top ping-pong table. The day it was shipped to us, our family unpacked it and spent several hours assembling it. When it was finished, it looked pretty cool. Now I’m sorta getting better at ping pong, and me, my dad, my mom, and my grampa can play doubles together. Here’s some pics:
I'm picking out a hex thingy, and dad and grampa are doing the work
- We finished the table, and my mom and dad are facing off in an epic match!
Celebrating over 100 website hits!
Today I checked my hits, and it looks like I’m over 100! Somehow I’ve been getting visitors from around the world like Ukraine, Israel, and Germany. I hope my translating services help. Also, people reach my blog by Googling the weirdest things. I see that people have googled “I think I got a concussion”, “mitchswebsite.com”, and “how do i get into umtymp” to reach my blog. Suprisingly, I’m on the first page when you google these and a lot more. Anyway, it’s pretty amusing when you see pretty diverse people reading your blog.
Testing is Over!
I’ve just finished a long round of testing at school. First there were the MCAs, the Minnesota Comprehensive Assesments that all students in Minnesota take. I had first hour Orchestra, so we had to move to Mrs. Andrew’s art room to test. First came Reading, which I think went fine. Mrs. Johnson, the 7th grade CILA teacher gave everyone candies because they’re supposed to improve your concentration. That went on for 2 hours in 2 days. Then the very next week, we were tested on math. I mostly thought it was pretty easy and felt good. I don’t really like the MCA’s because they’re written and we have to right short essays on some of the questions. Then, I think the next week we started the NWEA testing, or MAP testing. I think they’re much funner because they’re on a computer, they’re multiple choice, and you get your score right away. We did reading first again. The first day, I only got to question 17 out of 42 because a lot of the questions were really hard. One of them had an excerpt from The History of Modern Philosophy. It was really confusing and talked about metaphysical theories and stuff. The second day went a little faster and I felt I kept on getting easier questions. The NWEA testing sorta narrows down your score. If you get a question right, it gives you an harder one, and if you get one wrong it gives you an easier one. Since I kept getting fairly easy ones, I thought I was failing. Finally I answered question 42 and I guessed that I would get 234, which is pretty bad. I pressed “Go On”, and I was shocked to see a 257 as my score! That was pretty cool, and I tied Christian Oswood’s score. The very next Monday was when I started my Math NWEA. That test had 52 questions. Last year, I happened to get 293, which is really good. This year I was aiming for 300 or more, which would be awesome. The first day I moved sluggishly along again, and I think I only got to question twenty something. The next day, I went a little faster again, but managed to still have 4 questions left at the end of the period! I had to finish the test on Thursday since my period dropped on Wednesday. I went through the 4 questions on Thursday, and I guessed I would get a 310 or something. I was pretty disappointed when I got a 293 again!! It wasn’t too bad though, and I had another test that same day. That test was and UMTYMP test which was a full two hours long. I expected it to be long and hard because it was the last test of the year and UMTYMP always makes us fail. They announced that we would be taking the 15 minute calculator portion first. It had 4 really hard questions with many subsections and by the end of 15 minutes nobody was finished. Our Teaching Assistant, who was giving the test, was really nice and gave us an extra 5 minutes to finish. Then we had the non calculator portion for 100 minutes. That packet was monster and had like 8 pages printed back to back. We started on it and moved slowly through it. I had to skip a lot because I forgot how to do some of them. When I got to the end, there was 10 minutes left. I still had a lot of unanswered questions, and I went to show some effort on them to get partial credit. I figured some of them out, but I still had about 8 points out of the 110 possible missing. So I turned it in, and hoped for a good score. Getting over 90 on these tests is really good, and I had a friend who got a 44 once, so I felt fine.