Throughout my Taekwondo journey, I learned a lot. I would like to thank my masters, friends, and parents. I learned about long term commitment to the sport, where I had to practice twice a week for years. I learned to respect my masters, parents, and others in class. I learned about dedication, and overcoming challenges. I worked as hard as I could every day, like kicking as high as I could, practicing my form, trying my best, and exercising as much as I could. I tried my best to improve my split. When I just started Taekwondo, my split was horrible. Now, after countless hours of hard work, I can almost do a full split.
I am very excited to receive my black belt. I am excited to learn new kicks, techniques, and a new form. I feel accomplished, as my years of hard work finally paid off. My commitment, my pain, my time, my work, and my improvement finally led to me getting my black belt. I feel confident. I am mentally stronger, and my hard work shaped my mind. I am confident that I will be able to defend myself in danger. I am confident that I can succeed in my future career in Taekwondo. I am also nervous about what will come next in my Taekwondo career. I am eager to learn about my new form, difficult kicks, and leading the teen group when I need to. I am looking forward to being able to practice with other black belts and sharing advanced techniques. I am proud of myself that I had come so far. From a nervous white belt who knew nothing to a confident black belt who is able to do advanced kicking. Lastly, I feel the pressure of new responsibilities. As a black belt, I will have to be a leader in my class, a good role model for the lower belts in my class, and a mentor to those who need my help.
My next goals in my Taekwondo career is to improve at sparring, improve basic kicking, and finally do a full split. I want to do a full split because I have been working on it since I started Taekwondo and I am very close to finally completing this goal. I want to get better at sparring, as I believe it will be very useful at competitions, and I will be able to stay safe. I want to work on my basic kicking, as I have not mastered them yet. They will help me learn advanced techniques and spinning kicks quickly and I will be able to excel at them. I will work on my speed. I want to kick faster, move around faster, and react faster. This will help me during sparring. I will work on my strength. Delivering a hard hit is crucial during sparring, as my opponent will find it more difficult to defeat me. I will work hard to achieve my goal of getting to second degree. I will be able to learn even more kicks and improve my skill, confidence, bravery, and strength along the way. My last goal is to work on my stamina. It will help me outlast an opponent, practice Taekwondo for longer, and it will help me improve faster.
I would like to say that Taekwondo is now a crucial part of my life and that it will always have a special place in my heart. It means joy to me, and helped me learn important life lessons. I made many new friends during my Taekwondo lessons, and it made me a stronger person, both physically and mentally. Taekwondo helped me to mature as a person. It taught me to endure pain, respect others even though I might not know them well, and be eager to learn something new.
Taekwondo helped me connect to others. Many kids at my school also do Taekwondo. It makes it easier to make friends and bond over something we have in common. I learned to say “thank you” politely and sincerely after someone does me a favor. Taekwondo made me learn to listen to other’s advice. It made me realize that others were trying to help me and make me better.
I would like to say that I really enjoyed my Taekwondo journey, and my time spent on the sport was worth it. Without Taekwondo, I would be completely different. I wouldn’t have any discipline. I would not be able to fight, and I would not have as many friends.
I would like to specially thank Master Dan and Master April. You taught me so much, and helped guide me through my journey. You helped me improve and gave me so much confidence. I would like to thank my parents, who gave me the opportunity to learn Taekwondo. Lastly, I would like to thank all of my friends, ones who are still here and ones who don’t practice Taekwondo anymore. They helped me learn different techniques, forms, and kicks. No matter how hard the training was, they were always with me. They always cared for me, and together, they made Taekwondo much more enjoyable.
Taekwondo taught me so much, and thank you for everyone whom I met along my journey.
Have you ever wondered if YOUR city is under risk of desertification? Well, this is the perfect chance to find out! This tool is simple and quick, and provides a rough estimate of desertification risk! You can also compare the data of two different cities of your choice!
You might be asking, “what is desertification anyways, and why is it so important?” Well, desertification is the process in which semi-arid and arid areas become increasingly arid, with soil degrading so that agriculture becomes a challenge. This eventually results in the area becoming a desert. Keep in mind that it is NOT the expansion of existing deserts, but the loss of biological productivity in a given area. To learn more about desertification, you can simply find the article named “all about climate change and desertification.”
Provides a quick summary of desertification in the chosen city. It tells you how high the desertification risk is in the city, and aims to inform the user about desertification. ATTENTION: DESERTIFICATION SCORES ARE PURELY FOR EDUCATIONAL PURPOSES ONLY! THE SCORES MAY NOT BE COMPLETELY ACCURATE.
This was only a test, and compares the live weather conditions of two different cities. It provides a very short summary of the comparison.
Trend Arrows:
Analyzes temperature trends and provides a simple and clear summary of temperature and precipitation in the last 50 years. (Reminder: increase in temperature and decrease in rainfall is a big desertification indicator.)
Desertification Risk Score: (important)
Calculates the data from other sections in the Climate Risk Dashboard and provides a simple risk score of the two different cities of your choice. Gives a rating out of 6 points and has the following factors: warming trend, strong warming, drying trend, strong drying, extreme years, and rainfall volatility. (How stable the rainfall trends are)
1-2 points/6 points = Low Risk
3-4 points/6 points = Medium Risk
5-6 points/6 points = High Risk
DISCLAIMER: Risk score is not official; it is purely for educational and informational purposes. Data may not be accurate. (E.g. New York should not be at medium risk; it is supposed to be low risk.)
Hot and Dry Alert:
Analyzes data from the Top 5 Years section below to provide an alert: if at least 3 out of 5 hottest years AND at least 3 of 5 driest years occurred after the year 2000, there will be an alert. It is also counted into the Desertification Risk Score.
Top 5 Years:
Picks out the top 5 driest and hottest years for both cities and puts them in rows. This section is very important, as it can show whether a city’s weather is becoming warmer and drier when the top 5 years are mostly past the year 2000.
Historical Temperature and Precipitation Graphs:
The temperature graph shows the average temperature for every year for two cities of your choice. It helps compare and visualize the difference between two different climates in two different places. If the line is clearly going up throughout the graph, this means that the city depending on the color of the line is experiencing a strong warming trend. If it is going down, it means that the city is cooling down and is probably not at risk of desertification.
The rainfall graph shows the yearly rainfall totals for the same two cities. It helps you to see the rainfall trends since 1981.
Last year, (2025) I took a trip to the city Wuhai in northern China with a group of my friends. I saw with my own eyes the desert that encircled the small city, and how hard volunteers had to work to treat the desertification. Scientists developed a grass called Juncao that was very easy to plant and could survive in the harsh desert conditions. The roots of the grass would help stabilize the sand/soil, and helped it retain moisture better. It also helped defend the sand against erosion and increased biodiversity. A volunteer worker explained to us that after they planted a large patch of the Juncao grass, they observed that many species moved back into the area. These species included various birds, insects, and even foxes. We helped them plant grass for three days in the blazing heat. It was a difficult experience, as some of my friends suffered from heat exhaustion in just a few hours of working. Over the course of three days, we helped them plant grass, collect data, and they taught us many things as well. This was one of the most interesting trips I’ve ever went on, and it gave me the inspiration to start this project. It made me realize how big of a problem desertification is, and that it is still possible to reverse it. If you want to learn more about my trip to Wuhai, you can read the story I wrote in the journal called “trip to Wuhai and planting grass” and search up Juncao to learn more about the technology!
I came across many challenges while making this tool. One of the most challenging things was the testing phase. After I had added several basic features like Extreme Years, Two City Historical Data Comparison, and the search bar, my old data source broke down. There was a limit to how many API requests I could use per minute, hour, and day. This became annoying since I hit the limit every one or two tests. I ended up removing all of the extra features, including the search bar. I could only test a few preset cities to limit API requests. Still, I frequently hit the limit. After a while, I was forced to switch from Open Meteo to NASA Power. This was a frustrating and time consuming process. First, I switched, and had to make a new account. Next, I slowly added back my Risk Score, Extreme Years, and Two City Comparison. It took me a long, time, but I was eventually able to solve the problem. I hope you enjoy this tool, as I worked so hard on it!
In conclusion, this project is something that I am very proud of, and I hope you enjoy using the tool. I spent hours coding it, refining it, and debugging it. I learned a lot about desertification in the process of doing this as well. I hope you will learn as much a I did while using this tool, and big thanks to the volunteers at Wuhai for the tour and inspiration.
I am currently starting a project and researching about desertification and climate change. In this essay, I will be presenting things that I found during my research and explain some basics of climate change.
Climate change is the shift in long term weather patterns, such as temperature, precipitation, and storm intensity. It can be caused by a variety of factors, but it has mostly been driven by human activity since the 1800. It is caused by greenhouse gasses such as Carbon Dioxide being released from factories. This traps heat in the Earth’s atmosphere, causing the planet to warm. Climate change does not only refer to a warming planet. It can also represent a cooling climate, such as the last ice age.Though climate change has happened long before humans existed, it was much slower compared to now and caused by natural factors.
Global warming refers to the overall pattern of warming temperatures across the planet. Climate change on the other hand refers to global warming and the different effects of it, such as rising sea levels caused by melting ice sheets, more intense storms, and changes in precipitation.
The definition of Desertification is an area of land that becomes increasingly arid, losing its water and wildlife. It is the degradation of fertile land in semi-arid areas, often caused by human activities and climate change.
Deforestation and Removal of Vegetation:
The removal of vegetation causes desertification as soil is no longer bonded tight together by trees and roots. The loose soil becomes vulnerable to erosion. The soil will also be prone to infertility and loss of moisture. When the top layer of the loose soil gets washed away, many vital nutrients get washed away as well. This causes the area to not be able to sustain most plants. The loss of plants also causes decreased water absorption. With rain falling straight onto the soil, it compacts the soil and causes the water to just flow away rather than getting absorbed into the soil. Without plants, the soil will be exposed to the searing hot sun. Ground temperatures quickly rise, causing the soil to quickly dry out.
Unsustainable Agricultural Practices:
Overgrazing is a huge factor, as the plants cannot grow back fast enough to keep up with the grazing. Planting the same crops repeatedly in the same area can also cause desertification. It strips the soil of vital nutrients, causing the soil to lose nutrients necessary for sustaining crops. Water mismanagement is also a large factor. Extracting too much water from aquifers can cause it to dry up quickly. Excessive irrigation in arid areas leaves behind salt that slowly poisons the soil and makes it almost impossible for plants to grow.
Climate Change and Drought:
Higher temperatures cause water to evaporate quicker. The soil therefore can quickly dry out, making plants die out. After many of the plants die out, droughts can sweep through killing off any remaining plants. This is a repeating cycle, as droughts often bring even higher temperatures. This makes it harder and harder for an ecosystem to recover, making it almost impossible to treat and revive the fragile ecosystem.
Urbanization and Mining:
Urbanization and mining can completely destroy an area’s top soil. This causes soil to lose nutrients, and makes it harder for plants to grow. The less plants, the quicker soil dries out. This usually can cause the surrounding climate to change, becoming more and more dry and excruciatingly hot. It is one of the leading causes of desertification.
Overall, conserving water is one of the most crucial steps to slowing down or stopping desertification. Sustainable agriculture and replanting trees also helps stop desertification. In China, there is a technology called Juncao which fights against desertification. (You can go see my experience with Juncao) Scientists in China genetically engineered grass into a special type that is extremely easy to plant, harvest, and resistant to droughts. The large leaves are fed to cattle to prevent them from overgrazing. The roots of the plant stabilizes the sand and soil underneath it, and lets the soil absorb more moisture. In just a few years after planting Juncao near the city Wuhai, scientists noticed a large increase in the diversity of different animals in the area. Juncao revives dead ecosystems where it is planted, and slowly changes the nearby climate.
- 2024 set many records for the hottest year in different regions.
- about 1.2 trillion tons of ice are lost every year due to global warming
- sea levels have risen 9 inches since 1880
- arctic sea ice melts about 9% every decade
- 10 hottest years on record all occurred within the last 10 years
- 75% of world’s land affected by desertification
- up to 90% by 2050
- up to 500 million people affected
My project starts with measuring the current temperature, humidity, and conditions of a given city and compares it to another. The project warns people about the risk of It also includes graphs showing the average yearly temperature of a given city since 1950, and the yearly precipitation since 1950.
My project’s purpose is to help people understand desertification and climate change. It helps people acknowledge these risks and learn why it happens. It is also aiming to help people learn how to prevent desertification.
I believe that failure is an extremely important part of success.
Failing makes you find a way that doesn’t work, and it can point you onto the right track. This will help you understand that the way that you used wasn’t the right way, and it will decrease the amount of choices in the “pool” to pick. This narrows down the possible choices, and it makes it a lot easier to make a correct decision. For example, if you are trying to solve a puzzle, and you do it the wrong way and fail miserably, it will tell you that you should think about it differently, and you can remember how what you did was wrong. However, if you are not willing to take in the failure, then it will take you much longer to solve the puzzle because your thinking will still be on that one possibility for a long time.
Failure can also help you out, because it will strengthen your mind. It will help you to cope with mistakes and things that don’t go your way.
Kids should be given a lot more freedom to make their own choices.
First, I think children should make their own choices since they should have a chance to express their own opinion, and do what they want to do, and pursue their dreams. Their chances of having their dream job when they grow up is greatly limited by parents when they tell the children what to do and sign them up for random activities that they think their children like without the kid’s own opinion. This causes a lot of children to be unhappy, or not realize their true potential.
Second, many parents tend to think alike, and that means the next generation of people will have less diversity in jobs, and a lot of people will have the same jobs. The kids will also remember childhood as a time when they were being continuously restricted by their parents, and they couldn’t tell their parents what they really like. For example, is one child wants to be an engineer when he grows up, he might ask his parents if he could join a club on engineering, but his parents would just not listen and book a club on something else instead, just because they think he will be the best at it. Maybe another parent would also think about a cool job for their child, and it might be the same job.
Third, this can also cause children to have less friends. A lot of parents tell their kids who they should be friends with and who they shouldn’t be friends with. Children would be much happier and lively if they could have complete freedom over who they want to be friends with. This way, the friend groups would be much more diverse. Some people at my school told me that their parents forced them to play with people they don’t like or they don’t even know. This causes them to feel uncomfortable while playing with the other person, and this prevents them from making a real connection with that friend.
Last but not least, the children should also be able to have some responsibilities and be able to have their opinion to influence the decisions of the family, so that it can make them smarter and help them make more wise decisions. This would also bring the kid joy because he has a chance to tell the family what he or she wants to do, and it would feel good if some things go their way.
There can also be some downsides to kids having more freedom, because they can make wrong choices, because they don’t have as much experience. If they choose the wrong things, they can end up wasting a lot of time and effort, and they won’t learn much. This can be solved by making the parents to consider the child’s decisions, and only accept them if it is logical and reasonable. The child should only be more free after she or he gains more experience, so that they don’t get overwhelmed by their responsibilities.
This is why I believe that kids should be given a lot more freedom to make their own choices.
If I were to be the principal of Middle school, I would want to replace every Health and Wellness class with an extra recess.
First of all, this would make school a more interesting place and it would give the students a period to rest and have fun. This would be a treat for the students, and it would make the students happy for the rest of the day. They would feel more refreshed and it would make it easier for them to pay attention to class and absorb more knowledge. This would also give the students a better experience of school, and they would remember school as a fun and lively place, where you can learn and have a lot of time to play and exercise, and it would also help the students make more friends.
Second of all, Gym is very low efficiency, so it would mean that you spend most of your time in line or watching other people do the drill instead of doing it yourself. This makes a lot of people bored and they just stand and don’t even engage. Even I find it hard to engage, even thought I love sports. If we were to do a unit on volleyball, the only activity that we can do is volleyball, and if you don’t like it then too bad, because you are forced to participate even if you don’t want to. This results in a lot of people looking depressed and standing around not doing anything. If we replace it with recess, we will have many options to choose from, and we can do whatever we want. Even though recess is only 15 minutes usually, it is a lot more fun and tiring than Gym, and the class is 55 minutes! At recess, you can see many people running around, playing soccer, chatting, chasing each other, and playing football. It is a much more lively scene than gym class. This shows that everyone enjoys it, and they are having a great time.
Third of all, the equipment in recess is a lot higher quality than the equipment from Health and Wellness. The soccer balls in Gym hurt your foot when you kick them, the volleyballs are either flat or filled with too much air, and the basketballs aren’t bouncy enough. In contrast, the equipment in recess is old, but at least they function properly, and their quality is at the standard. One example of the quality of the soccer balls at Health and Wellness was when we were in our soccer unit, one of the kids who played soccer called Cole kicked the soccer ball, and he started jumping around on one leg howling, because the ball hurt his foot. During our volleyball unit, the ball that we were using was extremely hard, and each time it hit my wrist, I thought it would break my wrist. In recess, the soccer balls look ancient, but when I kick them, they don’t hurt my feet at all.
Overall, gym is a lot less efficient and fun than recess, and it has worse equipment than recess as well. This is why I think Health and Wellness should be replaced by extra recess.