Quality Status Statement: This year in 8th grade, I felt like I had learned a lot and matured. I think that my way of thinking has changed and become more high-school-like. Every class has helped become good at the things that I think I grew in the most; communication and collaboration. I think that collaboration needs effective communication and effective communication needs collaboration. At STEM, collaboration and communication are of the five qualities which they encourage us to use during class. I think that I grew in these areas because we had to use them so much. We had to collaborate and communicate in every single project. If my partners didn’t want to work, I would just let them sit and not talk to them. But now, I would try to talk to them and open up a conversation with them. This applied to me in the Plate Tectonics Project because my partner was new to this school, so they weren't really very communicative. But over time, we started to talk and our collaboration got better. Our final product was also improved when we communicated. I think that the most important quality that I need to develop the most to be successful in high school would be persistence. I think this because nothing is high school is going to be easy. I am bound to get something wrong, so I just have to try hard and get it right, which is basically what persistence is.