In seminar 3, I must admit that I did fairly rubbish. I found myself still hesitating occasionally, thinking too much before speaking, which is unnecessary in a seminar, especially considering the little time we had to make a point on any of the topics and questions. Talking about the cramped schedule of Seminar 3, the tightness of the time management might result the participants of the seminar to not have enough time to share their perspectives and opinions. This kind of situation is common in academical or conversational seminars, because participants usually wish to make points and share stories of their own, also letting others know about their research process on any of the topics, which were often limited by the tight schedule. We only had a single period holding the seminar because clearly it wasn’t Monday, plus any of the time wasted to calm some of the students down, the actual seminar only length up to a bit more than thirty minutes, definitely not enough to for a seminar about middle school journey when people got loads to share with their classmates.

       Another thing that I must mention is hosting the seminar, this might be the other part of it that could have been improved. Since we already had the topic of middle school journey assigned to the seminar, which refers to growth and experiences, and the questions the hosts came up with are relevantly affective, what we might have to improve is how to get more people participated into the conversation and how to take care of more students needs, desires, wishes and anticipations.

       Since people volunteered to become the seminar leader, or host, they’re people who should be the most responsible for the seminar. When bunch of people raises their hands, you should make sure that every one of them gets to share something, that is vital! People’s score on the seminar literally depends on their participation, so is somebody raises their hand and gets skipped it would be a pain in the butt for them. I’m not saying that the hosts aren’t doing their job well enough, it’s that one period of class time doesn’t back up the seminar well enough, people indeed were rushed. However, when any of the students’ been going on forever with one topic, hosts need to cut them off. The hosts themselves should also be more engage into the conversations, like how Toby did in the last seminar, Seminar 2, when he shared bunch of sites that’s considered dark tourism sites. It’s when the host themselves are engaged in the talking when other students would be willing to enter the chat despite they care about their score or not. As hosts you shouldn’t simply come up with questions and off from them on the whiteboard, and asks whoever raises their hand to share, because that is plain.

       There also this trend going on when people have their laptop opened right in front of them throughout the whole seminar. That is completely pointless. We could tell if you’re reading straightly off from ChatGPT or other AI or something that’s already written and posted online. Even if you are reading things you wrote down that is completely original to you, the language you use while writing is completely differs from speaking straight out of your mouth. When you see a bunch of people reading something that is so stiff and written longtime ago, it makes everything boring. It might have been better if you wrote your words down in forms of a speech.

       When time is really limited and people are feeling rushed, we can try different ways of interaction such as workshops. They tend to come with a more flexible schedule and gets more people to increase participation.

       Well, Since I didn’t really manage to share much about my middle school journey during the seminar, that is what I’m going to do right here right now.

       I joined OCAC last fall, and this is my first year being here. There is no chance that I’ve collected more rumors about our classmates and teachers than people that’ve been in this school for over five years, and there is no way I know more about this school than how much they do.

       Looking back at the photos of me taken in grade six, I realized how much I have grown over all these years. I remember being this big loner back then that didn’t have many friends, look way nerdier than I do right now. I didn’t know what it takes to win a game and didn’t know what it means to stay in the present. I joined the school band and received my solo piece; Participated in track and field and squash meets and ended up getting not bad scores; Skied off from courses that’s so intense that I wouldn’t even dare looking at when I was young. But all of this, is not the most important. I knew that I missed something, something that would take me further to the next stage. This is when I experienced an epiphany: Instead of competing with other people, that we are going to say good say goodbye to eventually someday, why not challenge myself into a tryhard? From that point on, a new opponent started accompanying me, who is not stronger but more affective than any of the others.

       As I watched people come and go while being in so many different schools, I knew that departure is inevitable. Though middle school is the place lots of my great memories ever sprouted, some parts of it can also be the lingering shadow that I never want to return. I mean, either ways, we’re moving on, right?

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