2021 October 3 – FH – Female Age 14 – Class Notes

Today was my first class after a long time. For a while I was debating whether I wanted to go back or not, and then I remembered that even though the teacher made it hard for me sometimes it was always beneficial as his class helped me improve my public speaking skills, (I still need to improve and work on becoming a better leader though). This morning I was so happy to see everybody again and to see that there are many new students. I then went to the musallah to meditate. It was really nice as it felt peaceful, even though I was having trouble focusing on my meditation because every couple of seconds my school homework or my upcoming tests, or just a random thought distracts me. It didn’t last long till the teacher told me to lead the class and tell the new students what needs to be done, I was struggling because I myself needed a reminder, I still tried my best though. Honestly I was upset at the fact that I forgot the stuff I memorized, but when I looked over my paper I remembered everything.
After an hour or so we finally got to eat pizza. I was starving. After our 5 minute break we got started on the lecture. Before that the teacher asked the new students to introduce themselves, I kinda felt bad as I was in their shoes when I first joined the class, I watched them struggle as the teacher made it really hard for them but couldn’t help but laugh (it was funny), at least until it was my turn, I introduced myself and talked about how the first time he made me do it I froze and cried, I also talked about my interest for cybersecurity, and of course he was going to make hard for me but it wasn’t as bad as my first introduction. Some of the advice he gave the people who presented were to face everybody and use body language, which is when you use unconscious gestures or movements. Another thing that stood out to me was that as a leader you need to know everybody who is around you, it made sense to me because if you want to lead those people you need to know who they are and some facts about them. One of the teachers then showed us a picture and I noticed that there was so much wasted food, then he showed a picture of people who were begging for food. I felt bad as I remembered that this morning I didn’t finish my breakfast and threw it away. LG then took over and asked us about what’s going on in the world. I was clueless as I barely read or watched the news. One of the teachers then commented a comment that really grabbed my attention she noticed that the girls tend to just accept the position that they are in, and just accept that the boys are at a higher position, so they just don’t share their ideas and back off just because the boys are louder, or more confident. I agree as I see this everyday at school, there are a lot of muslims girls in my classes or just girls in general, and when the teacher asks someone to volunteer it’s always the boys. Then LG drew a circles on the board and asked where we would shoot if we had five tries, most of us in fact all of us picked bull’s eye except for LG of course, I didn’t think of it the way he did (happens all the time) he said that he would have a higher chance of winning than everybody who picked bull’s eye because he would get a point every time he hits the easier targets which makes sense, but again if you’re a really good shooter than you have a higher chance of winning than LG. I tried to connect this concept to real life and it made more sense because sometimes we shoot for the higher position when we can shoot for a lower position and still achieve our goal, but if you know what you’re doing and you’re confident then shoot for the higher position and never give up. We then talked about how other religions like hindu, judaism, chrisitinaty, all tend to believe in one god but for example in chrisianity they believe that Jesus is Allah’s son so the religions connect but in Islam we believe that god is the one and only and that allah has no children nor is he anyone’s child. So think of it as a tree trunk and the branches are the faiths. We then switched back to talking about leadership. LG told us about 3m, a company that made money just by creating sticky notes which I thought was really interesting. He also mentioned that company owners and leaders in general actually hire people who are smarter than them. This topic leads to the next perspective, for example this year I am taking geometry and sometimes the answer is obvious but only if you look at it from different angles (vertically, horizontally, Diagonally..ect). Another example would be if you and your friend look at a picture and you see two different things that’s because you’re looking at it from two different perspectives or angles, so you basically have to always look at things from different perspectives. LG then told us that we have to control the shaytan in us which didn’t really make sense, but I think he meant like really it’s like the shaytan is watering the shaytan in us and would go worry about someone who is harder to distract. For example if you’re a highschool student it’s easier for the shaytan to distract you than distracting an imam, or a sheikh. I also learned a new word today and it’s QAZA which means make up prayer. We also talked about situational awareness which is being aware of your surroundings. After that we started rapping up, we wrote our homework down, and cleaned up. For next week Inshallah I will have the end of surah yasin in arabic.