Help the Prisoners

For my external credits, I did some work at a law firm for my aunt and one of her coworkers. To give some background before I explain what I did, my aunt had a case during which some of her clients missing files were found in the basement of a police station. Along with her clients files, there were hundreds of other peoples. These files contained information that was withheld from them and their attorneys during the time of their trials, and could potentially prove their innocence. After finding all these missing files, my aunt decided to contact every person whose file was found. She sent a letter to each prisoner. One of the things the letter explained was that the courts ordered her to not give any of these prisoners their files, the only way they can have access to them is if they have their own lawyers contact her. The problem with that being that the majority of these prisoners no longer have lawyers and aren't able to contact any. In response to her letter she received hundreds of responses, not only from the people she wrote to, but from other prisoners who heard what she was doing.

You've Got Mail . 11.30.15 . Web: 5.27.16

What I did for my aunt over a couple months, was went through all the letters and figured out who was writing to her and why. I summarized each letter for her, and had them in categories: who she wrote to, who she did not write to, who she wrote to about a different topic, and who she did not write to but their letter made it seem as though she had. Once we got through that bunch of letters we created 3 different generalized response letters, answering the questions many of the prisoners had, and explaining the situation. After that the work consisted mainly of folding the papers, fitting them into envelopes, stamping them, and mailing them. With some hours left to go, I returned almost two months later, to go through some new responses she received, and basically restart the process with the new letters. I learned to be more open minded from this experience, so many people had very interesting stories where they spoke of many unjust things that happened to them. It showed me that even though people assume everyone in prison did something horrible, it reminded me that that is not necessarily true for many people. I think I really made a difference with this, because I was helping people whose form of living was at stake. I was helping them with a process that could potentially free them from a hell on Earth. When I volunteer in the future I plan to keep this open-minded mentality, I think that is a very important quality to have in life and especially while doing service for others. This experience is one that I want people to know about, because it is such a crazy situation. Police are breaking laws and not enough people are paying attention, and I plan to do everything I can to educate those people, and tell them about this situation along with many others.

Night Time Snacks

For our final STEAM unit, Pitch in Entrepreneurship, we researched all the skills needed to pitch or sell your business. We started out with 15 second pitches, later made 30 second pitches, and finally for our action project made 3-4 minute pitches, that covered all the important facts an investor would need to know about our businesses. This unit was fun, because it was taking all of the work we did in the first two units, and combining it into a video. I'm proud of my video because I did a lot of extra editing, which was challenging for me, but I really liked the final result and think it was more than worth it.

“What? Like it’s hard?”

For our final Humanities unit, Apotheosis in Endurance, we studied what it really means to fully dive into your journey, and what post-katabasis life looks like. In this unit we investigated the endurance of survivors, and we used their wisdom as inspiration for our own lives. For our action project, we were assigned to write a survival guide, which is our way of sharing knowledge once we reached apotheosis. I found this project difficult because I was, for once, at a loss for what to say, but I'm proud of myself for completing the project and all of it's components.

Yummy Business

For our second action project in our Entrepreneurship class we took all the information we learned in the first unit and applied it to the real world. We looked at many examples and then made it more personalized by either creating our own business or working on an existing one. I chose to look into Insomnia Cookies and make many improvements. We then had to each create a business plan for those businesses, as our action project. The project was pretty difficult but I'm proud of all the work I did and that I completed it.

Endure the Contour

For our second unit of Endurance, Katabasis, we got to dive more into our missions. Throughout the unit we studied different endurers journeys and used them as inspirations for our own. We then began to pursue those journeys. We learned how to turn our visions into missions, start our journeys, and document them. For our action project we were assigned to do just that. We each chose a mission and spent 12 hours doing and documenting our process. Doing something repeatedly for 12 hours was challenging at times but I'm proud of myself for following through and doing what I set out to do.

My mission was to learn to contour, with the guiding question: what is the best contouring technique for my face? Looking back on this experience I'm really glad I had this project as motivation to try something I've been wanting to try for about a year. I'm someone who really enjoys makeup and use it as my creative outlet on a daily basis. I saw many contouring videos and images and thought it was something really beautiful and interesting but never personally got around to trying it. It's something that looked very simple but  I knew wouldn't be, so I put it off to the side and never tried it. So when this assignment was given to us I saw it as the perfect opportunity to finally give it a shot. Doing the project was really fun but very time consuming --obviously. It also took a while to find the technique that was best for me. You have to find the best brand, the best blending technique, the best tools for the blending. All of that sounds easy, but it isn't something you can just figure out on the spot. You need to try again and again before you find the thing that works best for you. I'm really glad I did this project for 12 hours though, because now I have a new skill that I enjoy using. I plan to expand my contouring knowledge in the future and learn more tips in order to get better, but for now I am more than satisfied with what I've learned.

It's Not Always Sunny

For our final Humanities course of our senior year, Endurance, we started out with the unit Morpheus. In this unit we read Dante's Inferno and Strayed's Wild, both books about two individuals' journeys. Throughout this unit we figured out what our own missions are and what our journeys look like. For our action project we were assigned to write an autobiography that takes place 30 years from now. I'm proud of my finalized project because it's hard to say what my future will look like because I don't really know what I want my path to look like yet.

IJP . Family . 2016

Blue Booking It

For the first unit of our Entrepreneurship course, Know, we learned about all the fundamental concepts of business. We studied entrepreneurs, missions, visions, accounting, marketing, legal structures, investments, sales, management, and exit plans. I’m proud of myself in this unit because there was so much different information but I think I mastered them all. I showed this mastery with our action project. This project was a lot different than ones I’ve previously done at GCE. For this unit, our action project was taking a blue book test, showing that we are ready for the upcoming units, as well as the immense amount of preparations that happened prior to the test.

AMD . Untitled . 2016

The purpose of the entire first unit was to prepare us for the next two where we will be creating our own business plan. Without this basic knowledge of business that we learned, we’d be going in blind. I also got to see specific ways all the different information we learned is actually used. I I researched and spoke to over 15 different entrepreneurs and businesses. The ones that stuck out to me the most were all the entrepreneurs I spoke to directly, because I think you can get a much better sense of a business when you speak to the founders directly. The person who inspired me the most is the founder of GCE, Eric Davis. He is making strides every day to reinvent education and to improve the the way kids are taught. It was crazy that even though I have gone to this school the past 2 years, there was so much I had no idea about that Eric was able to shed a light on. From the way it was started to where we are now, there was so much I found out about GCE and what I am a part of. It was an interesting perspective to hear, as well, because of how honest he was and how he was able to address the mistakes that he’s made, not just the successes. When he spoke about himself personally, we were able to see what a motivated person he was, and it inspired me to be the same.

For the actual action project we spent 3 weeks learning about the 10 concepts I mentioned earlier--entrepreneurs, missions, visions, accounting, marketing, legal structures, investments, sales, management, and exit plans. We also did our own research, created our own study guide, made our own test questions, planned and participated in group study sessions, taught our own lessons, and then took an hour and a half long test showing the mastery of all those concepts and that we know how to apply them to the real world.

I’m nervous going into this next unit because it’s one thing to learn all these concepts and see how other people use them, and it’s another to have to use them yourself. I’m not yet sure what I want my business to be, or how I will plan everything out, but I’m excited to figure it out. I know that whatever I choose it will be an intense yet extremely useful two units. I’m looking forward to creating my own business plan and maybe even follow through with making it happen.