Thursday, February 14, 2013
Senior Project Log #2
I would like to know where you are in terms of your senior project. How many hours have you currently put toward your project? What progress are you making? What are you learning about yourself? What are you learning specifically about your project? What are you struggling with? Please give as much detail as possible.
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I haven't calculated exactly how many hours. The things I've spent most time on are the actually art pieces for my show and then planning everything out with Mr. Siau. I officially have a space, the date, it is all approved, most of the pieces. I need to take care of little details that will be crucial closer to the art show date, such as making name cards for each piece, getting refreshments, making flyers, etc. I'm learning about myself that I am very aware of the small details. I'm also a perfectionist so I'm trying to work as quickly as possible to get everything done and stressing, even though I still have a little bit of time (the date being April 24 or 25). I am learning about the project that there ARE all of those little details to consider, just in brainstorming to have a show. I had no idea that I would need to contact people about publicizing it in the paper or having a vacuum to clean up afterward in case the refreshments leave crumbs. Mr. Siau has suggested I just make little lists as I go for the pre-show, show, and post-show. There will be a lot of thought and go little by little, but he will be there to guide me since he has done this kind of thing before. I'm excited, but very nervous and anxious about it all.
ReplyDeleteAs of today, I've put toward about 10 hours into this project. Heather and I are making a LOT of progress.
ReplyDeleteLast month we got together and took 3 hours to plan out exactly what games we are going to use at the family fun night, talked to our pastor about more ideas, and drew a floor plan of where we are going to put each game in our church's gym.
Today Heather and I used our day off of school to plan even more for the project. We made a flyer and used the copy machine at our church to make about 50 copies of it to hang around school and at church. We also had the idea of putting the flyers in teacher's mailboxes who have kids. We also looked up ideas for toy prizes on a website called "Fun Express". Heather's mom buys toys from this website to use at the Kid's Corner booth at the Vanderburgh County Fair. She gets a really good discount so buying these items offline will help us with saving money. We ran into a problem of not being able to see the prices of the items we picked out though because we don't have an account for that website and Heather's mom wasn't available to give us her account information. Next time we get together and we have Heather's mom's account inoformation, we'll figure out exactly how much it will cost us to buy those prizes and place the order. All of this took 3 hours.
I've learned that it takes a lot longer to do certain things for this project than I thought it would. I thought making a flyer would be fast and easy, but it ended up taking a little more than 2 hours.
I have spent a total of 37 hours on my senior project so far. I still have a few more events to go, but all in all, I think I am making pretty good process. I have made close to $700 so far. Kendra Gerst donated the extra money from the rave to my senior project which I am extremely thankful for. It brought me closer to my goal which has released some stress. Throughout this project, I have learned that I am pretty organized but get stressed out easily. I want everything to be perfect, but I have realized that I just have to learn to go with the flow when things start to mess up. I have also learned that putting together each event is a lot more work than I thought. It takes a lot of time just to make sure I have advertisements for each event yet along just putting on the event. I have also learned that I can make more money through events involving our classmates. When I am just selling stuff like food at the Taste of North, I did not make as much money as Mr. Pretty Legs or Big Dog on Campus. Therefore, I realized I can make more money off of entertainment and involving students. I still have to sell baseball t-shirts and set up the basketball tournament. I believe the basketball tournament will be a huge success because it seems like I have a bunch of people looking forward to it. A few of the struggles I have run in to include time and pleasing everyone. I realized it is hard to find times and dates to set up activities because it has to coordinate with everything else that is going on. I also found it hard to coordinated with peoples' schedules. For example, I had to reschedule the basketball tournament because there was wrestling and ACT that day. I tried to make sure to pick another date that would not conflict, but I came to the realization that there is always going to be something else going on. I just have to pick a date and stick to it. From the Taste of North, I struggled with finding food that would sell well. I am a bit nervous that I will not meet my goal, but I think so far my senior project has been pretty successful.
ReplyDeleteMy senior project is officially done, which is a huge relief. It was way more work than I had expected. I spent a total of about 35 hours on it. I learned that I stress myself out very easily. I was worried that it was going to be a failure when I had only sold 75 tickets by the day before the event. It turned out that about 200 people attended. I was able to cover all my expenses and even had extra money left over to give to the DJs who volunteered and also some to Riley. It was a huge risk to take. The overall cost was about $700, so I knew I had to sell at least 140 tickets to cover the cost. I hope everyone enjoyed the rave as much as I did. I am very thankful for Mr. Stovall for helping me with all of it. I was surprised Mr. Skinner approved it, but I am glad he did. I am also thankful for those who helped me sell tickets at lunch and also for Mr. Merriwether, Mrs. Gilham, Mrs. Wilhelmus, and Mrs. McDowell for volunteering to help. The rave was originally scheduled to be in the junior high cafeteria. About an hour before it was going to start, we realized the lights would not go off since they were on an automatic timer. Luckily we were able to move everything to the wrestling room and it turned out just fine. I felt like a chicken with my head cut off running around before and during the game. I had to meet with the lighting guy, talk to the DJs, and make sure the painting was going okay. I am so thankful for my friends who helped me paint because there is no way I could have done that with all that was going on. So many people came up to me that night asking to buy a ticket and I couldn't say no. It was kind of frustrating though since I sold them two weeks before that. So I was running back and forth collecting money and writing names down also. I don't think I have ever felt that stressed in my life. I really hope someone carries on the tradition in the years to come. That would be pretty cool. I also think it would be even more of a success next year since everyone will already know what it is. I feel like a lot of people didn't know what to expect, which made them hesitate in buying a ticekt. Overall I am happy with the way it turned out. I am really glad it is done and I don't have to worry about it anymore!
ReplyDeleteRight now I believe I have only logged about 8 hours for my project. For a while I was going to see the trainer every day after school so by the time I would get done I would not have enough time to make it out to Boonville to fly before it got dark. This took a lot of time out of my flying. Another problem that I am running into that I did not expect is weather. Lately every time I schedule to fly something bad comes up and I am unable to do so. I know I will be able to get my 20 hours but I am a little worried that I won't get in my solo flight before the end of the project. I wish I would have realized sooner that weather would be such an issue; especially with Evansville's bipolar weather. I would have worked a lot harder to schedule flight time on weekends. That is my main struggle. However I really am learning a lot. Although I took a long break from it altogehter, I did attend ground school class this past Wednesday where I learned a lot about take off and landing procedures at airports. There is just so much to know about flying it's extremely overwhelming. I really enjoy it but I wish that I had started learning a lot sooner and had a longer amount of time that I could learn in. I feel if I had chosen to do this outside of this project I would be enjoying it more, but I'm still very glad I did choose this and in the end I will be glad that I stuck with it. I'm hoping to get in at least one day of flying per week from now until the end of my project. If I do one or two days a week I am fairly confident that I could get my solo flight done which would be a tremendous accomplishment so we will see what happens! Hopefully we start getting a little bit better weather. That would help me out a lot.
ReplyDeleteSo far I have 23.5 hours that I've actually kept track of. Take into account all the hours before Christmas break that I didn't bother keeping track of and I easily have 50+ hours. I've learned that you have to be born rough to like getting hit in the face. It's not something you just jump into at 17. These guys have been kicking each others' heads since they were 10. I'm having trouble finding time for all of this... with school and homework and my job at the theater, I'm a bit cramped for time.
ReplyDeleteOverall, I may have 3 hours of work. This seems very low but because my trip will be around 36 hours I will have no problem with hours. Right now I am working on forms for my project, such as medical release forms and medical information forms. These are important because if there is an injury on the trip I need these releases to get professional medical care for the person. I have also learned that the sight I want to use is not able to be booked and is given away on a first come first serve basis. This will change our departure time to a little earlier, or at least send a group earlier. I have also gotten approval from my troop to use the tents, tarps, and cooking equipment. I am learning that I really do not like to take notes and put stuff in writing. Right now I am struggling with planning this while working on my other schoolwork.
ReplyDeleteRight now I have about 10 hours logged. Most of that number consists of time I have spent looking up vocabulary, as well as time I have spent learning on an iPhone app called Duolingo. Duolingo is a great tool that I found that helps me learn new words and teaches me how to form sentences using those words. Since I have most of my vocabulary translated, I really have to start practicing using Italian more often. That includes listening, speaking, reading, and writing. Something I'm still having trouble with is holding myself accountable. When someone has an actual teacher or a room full of classmates, it's easy to be held accountable for work just because so many other people know about it. Since I'm teaching myself, the only person holding me accountable is me, so it's easy to rationalize not doing homework because no one else will know.
ReplyDeleteI don't have exact hours calculated in my head as of right now. To be honest, I have been insanely busy with school, musical, and various activities and my senior project is going to become my main priority over spring break where I can log most of my hours. I have met with my mentor and developed a routine that I want to teach. Now my hours will be spent practicing and perfecting the routine. The project has taught me its harder than you think to develop and be able to teach a routine that keeps the class with you and not confused.
ReplyDeleteI probably have about ten hours right now. I am making a lot of progress. I have started learning to sew without using a pattern, and that is really a lot of fun. I am learning that I really enjoy getting to design a piece and plan out how I'm going to make it a reality. I like choosing the fabric and deciding how I want it to look - the artistic element really appeals to me. About the project, I keep learning that there's a lot more that goes into any sewing project than I would have thought. When I sew without a pattern, I have to work out all the math about how big each piece of fabric should be (taking into account the seam allowances) and make sure I sew all the right pieces together in the right order so it ends up looking right and I don't "sew myself into a corner." It takes a lot of planning and a lot of attention to detail. This is probably the part of the project I struggle with the most. I can usually figure most of it out, but every once in a while my aunt has to remind me about a seam allowance or point out that I'm about to sew the wrong sides of something together. It can be difficult to envision how things should look and then plan backwards to figure out what has to happen to make it work. However, even though it can be a challenge, the whole planning/design stage is probably my favorite thing about sewing. It's like trying to figure out a big puzzle.
ReplyDeleteI have not fully calculated how many hours I have spent on my project this far, but I would say close to 8. It seems pretty low but once I fully shoot my videos and take the time to edit them and put it all together, I should have what is needed if not more, easy. Overall I have found this to be very difficult for me, not the concept or learning behind it but managing my time. With having two jobs and keeping up with my school work, I feel like there are not enough hours in a day and I often put this at the bottom of my list. I have my storyboard for my video planned, music picked, and am currently recruiting people. I plan to shoot the videos at the end of this month into April. I'm trying to make this as modern and fun as possible, so I'm trying to come up with lots of cool ideas that high school kids will like and remember. I have definitely learned that I can get easily frustrated with myself but that I can pull it together. At first I liked my idea and then I wasn't sure about it, but now I'm starting to love it because of the creativity and collaboration I've gotten from it. I'm excited to see the final product and share it with everyone!
ReplyDeleteFor my senior project, I am currently working towards learning the sport of Muay Thai (pronounced moy tye). It is a hard martial art categorized as sport and self defense. The sport of Muay Thai originated long ago in Thailand but mostly became what it is today when King Chulalongkorn ascended the throne in 1868. It can be used as a means of personal advancement, battle training, exercise, self defense, sport, and just recreation. Muay Thai became very popular when the UFC (Ultimate Fighting Championship) originated in 1993. Muay Thai itself is also well known as kickboxing.
ReplyDeletePersonally, I have approximately 9.5 hours logged for my senior project. I have had a difficult time getting to the gym to practice and log hours. Before I got my car, I had to rely on a ride to the gym to make it there but now that I have a car I’m going as often as they have the class. The class is extremely rough and you must be tough and obedient to stay. Getting kicked in the head or punched in the face are very common accidents that happen but you just shake it off and get back to work.
Everyone there is extremely nice and they are willing to offer any advice they may have to help you if you are doing something wrong. If you are doing something wrong, the instructors will let you know. A very important part of MMA (mixed martial arts) is to always be in your stance with your guard up. Doing powerful fast-paced drills with minimal breaks leaves your body aching and you often drop your guard. As soon as you do, expect to get hit. While doing quick combos, it’s easy to drop your guard and get hit or kicked. The main trainer is Russian and it can sometimes be difficult to understand what he says because his English is not that good. The other trainers there are extremely fun to train with and get a great work out.
You must be extremely tough to pursue this sport and dedicated as well. Its commonplace to leave overwhelmed in pain and bruises. Sometimes we have to tape ourselves up if we get cut so that blood doesn’t get on the mat. Blisters are also common for the beginners because you are barefoot and sweaty on a mat and are constantly pivoting on your feet. With bruised knuckles, shins, arms, thighs and bloody lips and blisters, this is definitely the sport that has challenged me not to come back. And that’s exactly why I continue to try.
I have learned so much while doing this. For the mere 9.5 hours I have logged so far, I have greatly advanced in not only physical endurance and shape but also in team work, coordination, confidence, and fighting skill. I’ve learned a lot about myself and I’m really glad that I have taken this class. The sport is very difficult and I find that I'm constantly challenging myself and pushing myself to continue through pain and exhaustion in order to complete a goal. Practically the only thing I’m struggling with is the cost of the project. To do Muay Thai, you have to have a gym membership, hand wraps, gloves, mouth guard, and gas money to drive back and forth to the gym. Also, I usually am at work after school from 5-close (around 11:30 or later) and if I’m at the gym, I’m not at work making money. It’s difficult financially but I feel that it is well worth it to push yourself to the limits to find out who you really are.