Keeping Up With Juliette

Hello everybody and welcome back to another blog post,  Recently, I watched another one of Steven Bartlett's amazing "The Diary Of A CEO" podcasts where he interviewed the famous British football player, Rio Ferdinand. A couple years ago now, I wrote a blog post on Rio Ferdinand which has now become one of my most popular posts on this blog. It was written in response to the documentary that Rio had released around that time about how he and his family were dealing with bereavement of his wife, who had died of cancer in 2015. If you would like to read about his story in more detail, you can find it here . All in all, I find Rio to be a truly inspirational soul who has overcome much adversity and many challenges to achieve his current level of success. Through listening to this podcast, I realised that Rio is a hard-working,"don't beat around the bush" kind of person and I believe that it was these attributes that allowed him to have the great experiences tha...

Hello everybody and welcome back to another blog post,  About a week ago, I posted on my Instagram story that I got my first Pfizer Covid-19 vaccination. Until this summer, people aged 16 and 17 years old in the UK, were still not yet allowed to have their Covid-19 vaccination. However, after much deliberation, in August the government finally allowed teenagers in this age bracket to get their first vaccination. Personally, I agreed to get vaccinated because I saw how much it could help the people around me. After all the adults had their vaccinations earlier this year, it seemed as though more young people (including my friends and my peers) were getting Covid because they were the only ones in the population who were not vaccinated. For me, it was a choice that I made myself through my own observations so it was a fairly easy decision for me. Whilst I encourage people to get vaccinated, I understand that it is still a personal decision that should be thought over carefully so I w...

Hello everybody and welcome back to another blog post,  There are two very good speeches that are delivered by Sylvester Stallone in his Rocky Balboa movie. The first speech is the one that Rocky delivers to his son where he talks about never giving up despite how difficult life can get. The second speech is the one that Rocky delivers to the medical advisory board where he demands a licence to compete in boxing again. Today, I wanted to talk about the second speech because it shows the type of attitude that in my opinion, you should always have towards life. In the Rocky Balboa movie that was aired in 2006, Rocky is a middle-aged, ex-heavy weight boxing champion who despite his age, goes out and proves to the rest of the world that he is still a champion. In his second speech, the medical advisory board denies Rocky's request for a licence because they think he is too old to compete, and therefore should retire. However, despite the decision that the board makes, Rocky respectfull...

Hello everybody and welcome back to another blog post,  Last week, I helped some of my friends from sixth form, do a litter picking of the school grounds. Some of you might already know this but for those of you who don't, one of my friends started an environmental awareness group as part of a group CAS project that included me and some of my other friends. In this group, we endeavour to look after our planet and our local environment by spreading information on things like climate change and wildlife destruction, as well as the initiatives that different groups of people have created to help the environment, in order to spread the message of change in a positive way. As I've mentioned before, I'm a firm believer in changing your own actions and educating yourself, before preaching activism to others, and what better way to do that than to do a litter picking of the school grounds? The very fact that we had to do litter picking meant that not enough people were choosing to ...

Hello everybody and welcome back to another blog post,  Sorry for not posting on Wednesday. I had a post already written up for that day, but I left it too late during the day to publish it so it might go up on Monday instead. However, today I wanted to talk about challenges and how they can help you to grow in the dance world, as well as in your everyday life. For the past few weeks, as I've mentioned before, I've been practising my lifts in dance and they are very challenging. I'm not the most muscular, well-built dancer anyone has ever seen so when it comes down to executing lifts, I really struggle to do it. I know I have to use my core and lift my partner in a particular way in order to lift them properly, but I find that rock 'n' roll music is quite fast and I can't always keep up. I am having fun and I am enjoying the dancing but I feel like I'm forgetting quite a few of the steps. In the past, I've always been quite good at remembering the steps ...

Hello everybody and welcome back to another blog post,  This year so far has been great on so many levels and has yet also been very sad on so many other levels. It's been great because although life has often feel like I was standing on a pit of quicksand, with the ever changing climate of the pandemic, I also feel as though I've achieved a lot of things that I didn't think I could during these challenging times. I don't often like talking about how much pride I have for the things I've done because I hate to sound big-headed and I prefer to let my hardwork speak for itself. However, I've honestly shocked myself because these past few months I've still gone out their and worked at Project 21, persevered through 2 months of online learning, set up my own online dance classes, taught choreography and just generally showed some sense of resilience despite all the obstacles that were in my way. I think that sometimes we've just got to be our own biggest fan...

Hello everybody and welcome back to another blog post,  Last week, I took two lateral flow Covid-19 tests. I took one on Monday in the school sports hall before I went back to college physically for lessons, and I took the other on Friday whilst I was in college. Before taking the tests, I was quite nervous because I didn't like the idea of putting a cotton swab at the back of my mouth and up my nose. I was worried that I would gag or have some sort of sneezing fit so I even decided to watch a video by Good Morning Britain where a doctor demonstrated how it was done, just so I knew what to expect when I was having my test done. However,  I was pleasantly surprised that it was actually no where near as bad as I thought it would be. On the video, the doctor said that you need to swipe 4 times at the back of your throat and 10 rotations up your nose but for mine I was told to only a few times at the back of the throat and up the nose so it was bearable. The good news as well was ...

Hello everybody and welcome back to another blog post,  Today, I will be talking about the one and only, Sylvester Stallone and his epic film series, Rocky. Why am I going to be talking about him? Well, me and my family have been getting hooked onto the Rocky series. So much so, that we've watched Rocky 1 that aired in the 1970s all the way up to his last film in the epic series called Creed, which aired in 2016, in the space of about a week. In case you're wondering the scale of that, each Rocky film is about 2 hours long and there are 7 films that Sylvester Stallone screen wrote in total. So, yes, we've consumed a lot of ROCKY in the space of nearly 7 days. It means we've watched 1 film every evening which has got to mean that it's good. And it definitely was! When my parents suggested watching Rocky I was nearly disgusted. I thought that it was going to be this tacky, cringey, 1970s film that I was going to fall asleep watching. Yes, it was tacky, I'm not goi...

Hello everybody and welcome back to another blog post, Today, I'm going to be talking about my experiences so far with working as a support worker for Project 21.  Before I get onto this post, if you haven't heard about the story so far regarding the Tanzania project, then I would encourage you to click on the My Trip To Tanzania label at the bottom of this post to get up to speed. However, if you haven't already heard, I will also just briefly explain. Basically, I'm planning on going to Tanzania in the summer of 2022 in order to complete the enrichment part of my IB course and to support vital elephant conservation work that is currently going on in the area so in order to do that, I need to raise money. Part of my plan to raise money was to work as support worker at Project 21, a musical theatre group that supports people with Down's Syndrome. I was going to get paid £8/hour for my work with the group, but my plan was put on hold when the 3rd UK lockdown came abo...

Hello everybody and welcome back to another blog post,  Recently, I rewatched one of my favourite movies called I am Sam. It stars the actors Sean Penn (as Sam Dawson), Dakota Fanning (as Lucy Dawson), and Michelle Pfeiffer (as Rita Harrison). I began watching this when I was quite young, around the age of 7 years old. I realise now that that was probably too young because the film was actually rated a 12 but I can't exactly remember my parent's reasoning for allowing me and my sister to watch the film. However, I did know that the storyline was very moving. The basic synopsis of the film is that Sam Dawson, an autistic man working on a small wage at Starbucks, has a child called Lucy with a homeless woman. After Lucy is born, the mother abandons her daughter and leaves Sam to take care of her. Although this seems to be okay at first, with Lucy growing up fast, Sam with the IQ of a 7 year old, can't help Lucy with her school work in the way other parents can. The school bec...

Hello everybody and welcome back to another blog post, On Wednesday, I had my secondary school awards ceremony online because these are the times that we live in! If you don't know what a secondary school awards ceremony is, it's basically a massive assembly where all the year 12s are expected to return to their schools in order to see if they got an award for any good work that they did during year 11. I was expecting to physically go this year but that had to be cancelled, unfortunately, because of Covid-19. However, what I thought was really quite nice was that the teachers still put together an hour long video in order to still have the awards ceremony. When I was going into college on Wednesday, most of my old friends had already watched the video and one of my friends from secondary, who goes to the same sixth form as me, said I won an award. Consequently, when I got home, I checked the video to see what award I won. It turns out I won the award for business, my least fav...

He llo everybody and welcome back to another blog post,  Today, I'm going to be continuing on with My Trip to Tanzania series by talking to you guys about my progress. Recently, I have created a CV so that I have got something at hand when I apply for jobs. I included my name, contact details, personal profile, education history, extra skills, work experience, and also a hobbies and interests section. The only bit of work experience I did was when I worked at my dance studio in year 10 so I also decided to include some of the things that I enjoy doing as well in order for the employer to find out a bit more about me. Here is what it looks like: "Juliette Page Personal blog: https://jujupage1sblog.blogspot.com/ Contact details: Address:....... Postcode:......... Telephone number: 07592 042989 Email: juliettepage15@gmail.com Personal profile: I am an organised, motivated, and enthusiastic young person. I am able to listen well to instructions given and I always endeavour to work...

Hello everybody and welcome back to another blog post, I feel like I've been making blog posts after blog posts after blog posts about lockdown for a long time now and I know I've probably mentioned the word lockdown quite a few times now but yes, the UK is entering another lockdown as of Thursday.  I feel like every time I say we're in another lockdown, I just have to take a deep breath beforehand to compose my utter frustration at life right now. Honestly, although I'm getting used to this lockdown situation, I'm also getting kind of annoyed by all these quarantines and lockdowns. I just want to be able to move around freely and not have to constantly worry about my proximity to the people around me. I think it's also particularly annoying because 3 weeks ago, I had to enter a 2 week self isolation period because 2 people in my school had tested positive for Covid-19. I also nearly didn't end up going to school for the final week before half term because I...

Hello everybody and welcome back to another blog post, What's it like learning standard level Japanese at sixth form? This is a question that I get asked a lot so I'm going to answer it for you today.  For me at least, when it comes down to this course, I really enjoy the Japanese lessons but I do find the language quite difficult to grasp. If you don't already know, I do actually have a strong Japanese heritage. My dad is half Japanese and although he spent most of his life living in England, he was actually born in Kyoto, Japan. However, he was unfortunately not taught how to speak Japanese so when I was given the opportunity to study the language at a beginner IB level at college, I took the opportunity to do so. I think what I find most difficult about Japanese is learning all the alphabets. I would say I'm beginning to understand more words in Hirigana but I do find myself mixing up a couple of the letters in Katakana and I can barely recognise anything that's ...

Hello everybody and welcome back to another blog post, Is it possible to train yourself to become academically minded? This is a question that I'm sure many of us think about, even if we're not completely aware of it. If you don't know what I'm talking about, then I should probably explain what I mean by this question. The concept that there are some people in the world who are born "naturally smart," to me, is an understable statement. I'm sure we've all seen those students who've seemed to have grasped certain subjects like maths and science, in a way that no one could do on the spot in the beginning stages of learning the subjects. I'm sure we've also seen those students who seldom seem to struggle in comprehending higher ability topics in academically-demanding subjects like maths and science. The truth is, I'm sure we've all seen those "duck to water" students who have the amazing ability to work with any complicated ...