February 3, 2023

Dear Ms. Vander Helm and Mr. Weiss, 

Hi! My name is Sharon Shi, and my legal name is Yufei Shi. My preferred name Sharon Shi is
pronounced as “Sha-rn Shee”, and the pronunciation of Yufei sounds like “Yoo-fay”.
Pronunciation is the biggest reason to make me have a preferred name. In fact, Shi doesn’t
sound like “Shee”, and Yufei doesn’t sound like “Yoo-fay”, these are just the most similar
pronunciation of them because there doesn’t exist same pronunciation in English. I do not
remember who gave me this name Sharon, but I prefer to be called in this way. My pronouns go
by she/her. In my family, I have a brother who is seven and a half years younger than me. When
I was in China, I played a Chinese instrument called Guzheng. However, I have stopped playing
it after coming to Canada since it is too big to carry with me. My family members and my close
friends in all stages of my life are the most important people to me. Outside of school, I either
prefer to stay at home and draw or read books when I’m alone, or go for a walk with friends. I
have my phone and my laptop to bring to school. 

I like my teacher to be talkative, easy-going, and nice to every student, because students may
be concerned to ask for help, even talk to the teacher, if they look disappointed every day. I
would feel my school life meaningful if my teachers are not hard-markers, giving reasonable
scores to every student based on their assignments and projects, and not giving many big
projects that have to be done by groups. 

I prefer to receive percentage grades and written comments. At the same time, self-assessment
is also supportive for grades, because we make a reflection of ourselves based on how we
performed in class and on assignments. In my opinion, self assessment is important for this
subject, but peer assessment sometimes can be unreliable because if the student sits alone,
peers don’t know this student very well, so they would probably give inappropriate results. 

When working with other students, my strongest skill for corporations is coming up with ideas,
making decisions and organizing them. I usually feel nervous when presenting in front of peers,
so I need to improve my presentation skill. I believe my individual working ability is strong
enough to meet deadlines. But if I struggle to meet deadlines very often, I must be
procrastinating a lot or being too lazy to work hard. In this case, I will try my best to catch up
with everything and have to work harder to save the situation. 

This year I’m mostly expecting to graduate from high school and enter a university. Because it
somewhat means that I would become mature enough to start a life at a new place where I’m
mostly surrounded by peers. And the biggest anxiety for me is surviving English 12. Since
English is not my first language, writing has been a small problem for me for a long time. 

Sincerely, 

Sharon Shi