Poetry Project
Project Description
The goal of this project was to look back on our year and put it into a fun project. We wrote poems about any subject that we had studied this year in that class. I chose to do mine about happiness. We spent a long time working on the happiness project and it was something I could connect with. I liked this project because we could chose whatever subject we enjoyed the most and do our project on it. |
Growth as a poet
Carter McQuinn For my poem I had no idea what topic I was doing and how I would start to write. I began by just deciding that I wanted to write my poem about happiness. It is a topic that I think is fun and a topic that I have a good connection with. When I started making my poem I did not know how to start it so I just began making up rhymes and small poems that I thought I could use in my final draft. The perspective that I started with was to create a long poem that showed happiness and sadness. One of the lines that I used was “In your life you might have deal with some hard stuff” I had a lot of lines that had to do with that kind of stuff but I decided on not having sad stuff in it. My poem then evolved to be a very up beat poem that only showed happiness. In the beginning I had twenty one stanzas and then edited them and narrowed it down to just eight stanzas. I started out with three pages of different lines and stanzas that I came up with. Then I just took out all the ones that I did not like as much and took the ones that I really liked, reorganized them and turned them to my final draft. The first most important poetic change that I made to my poem was using similes. When I first started my poem I did not have very many if any similes in my poem. After the first draft critique I realized that to make my poem better one thing I would need to do was put in more similes and metaphors. One place that I had was when I was trying to rhyme with guy. I thought about using pie but didn't know how to put in. I then changed it to “Your whole life is sweet like a fresh apple pie”. I think that putting in things like this improved my poem in many ways. First of all, the way that my poem was before it was not nearly as interesting because it was more of a simple poem with no clever rhymes or good poetic device usage. After looking over it when I put all the stanzas that I wanted together. I realized this and decided to edit it a bit to make it better in many ways as well as making it more fun to write and to listen to. The other very important change that I made to my poem was making it much shorter and only including the lines that I really liked. I did this so that when writing it I could get as many ideas out but then keep the ones that are good and creative. I thought about making it long and trying only to get a good grade on it and make it look like I spent a very long time on it. One thing that I did was put in about 7 lines that I didn't really like but thought were good enough for my poem to make it long enough. After thinking about it for a while I realized that what I was really wanting to do was if I'm going to write a poem I didn't care how good other people thought it was but I just wanted it to be good and mean something to me. I started making it long but then changed it to just working on the few good lines that I thought could be improved. This made my poem much better. I think that making my poem short also was very helpful for the tone of my poem In my poem the main point of it is a happy upbeat idea. By keeping it short it very much made it sound a little bit more short and sweet and happy. |
Happy
By Carter McQuinn Why are we happy Why are we sad If there was no meaning in our happiness Would that be bad? To be happy you don't need to try Enjoy the small things Let life pass you by Let people know you are one happy guy And your whole life is sweet Like a fresh apple pie Some say the only way to smiles Is when you have money Piles and piles But no the truth seems to be bent Cause you can be happy with no more than a cent Happiness is addicting We always want more You can find it anywhere It's a wide open door Be free, let your happiness soar Let it make you feel good right down to the core There's different ways to be happy Just explore It's not something you can buy in a store Every minute Every hour of every day Just be happy There's no more to say |
Happiness Project
Project Description.
In this project we studied happiness. We spent hours studying the things that have meaning in happiness, the happiest places on earth and what things make us happy. We read the book "Brave New World" in class and had a seminar about how the people in the book are happy and if they even are happy. We ended the project by writing an essay about how we are happy and what makes us happy and built a project of our choosing to reflect what we wrote in the essay.
In this project we studied happiness. We spent hours studying the things that have meaning in happiness, the happiest places on earth and what things make us happy. We read the book "Brave New World" in class and had a seminar about how the people in the book are happy and if they even are happy. We ended the project by writing an essay about how we are happy and what makes us happy and built a project of our choosing to reflect what we wrote in the essay.
Project reflection.I think that this project has helped me grow as a student because I have realized multiple things. I have studied for a long time about what makes us happy and after learning these things I have tried to include them in my life to make me happier and work harder in school. The Happiness and Meaning project helped me see what does and does not have meaning in my life and what I do and do not care about. This helped me forget other things and really focus on what I really care about. I also saw that putting off my work and saving it for later does not make me happy so it has also helped in my procrastination.
For my plan for the summer that will make me happy I am going to go on an adventure. I will pack only the things that I need most and I will leave. If some of my friends want to come with then they can but I am happy to do it by myself as well. This will make me happy because for me I really enjoy having nothing to do and just discover new things with people I love and not have to be around any people except for those who I want to be.
My biggest takeaway from this project is realization. I have learned about how people live in many places in the world where they have next to no money or anything in their life and they are still very happy. I have learned that money really does not increase how happy you are and that once you can get by you have to do things that matter to make you happy. I have started to see what really makes me happy in my life and stopped caring about the other things because in my life the only thing that really matters to me is being happy and having fun.
For my plan for the summer that will make me happy I am going to go on an adventure. I will pack only the things that I need most and I will leave. If some of my friends want to come with then they can but I am happy to do it by myself as well. This will make me happy because for me I really enjoy having nothing to do and just discover new things with people I love and not have to be around any people except for those who I want to be.
My biggest takeaway from this project is realization. I have learned about how people live in many places in the world where they have next to no money or anything in their life and they are still very happy. I have learned that money really does not increase how happy you are and that once you can get by you have to do things that matter to make you happy. I have started to see what really makes me happy in my life and stopped caring about the other things because in my life the only thing that really matters to me is being happy and having fun.
Model United Nations
Project description
This project was called Model United Nations, in this project each student was given a country that they would represent. We spent about one month doing research on our country and studying current events. The event that we studied was the North Korea nuclear issue. We spent some time studying the parliamentary procedure that is used in the United Nations and after lots of work writing resolutions and policy papers we had a real United Nations conference in class. This was our practice, we then began studying the conflict between the Israelis and the Palestinians. After more work studying this conflict we did another conference as an a=exhibition, in front of teachers parents and other students.
1. What are you most proud of about this conference:
The thing that I am most proud of about this conference is my speech. We did not have very much time to work on these speeches but I persevered and got mine done. For the first conference I was not fully satisfied with my speech and it was not as well written or presented as I had hoped. I refined my speech and worked on my presentation for the final conference and I think that I made a good speech and I practiced it well so that the final outcome was a clean, good and convincing speech.
2. What did you connect with the most in this project and how did that affect your conference performance:
The thing that I connected most with in this project was the actual conflict. We studied this conflict for a very long time and did lots of research. We did country research packets, wrote resolutions regarding the issue, and more. Almost 5 weeks of simply everyday research on the issue. So after learning all this stuff about how terrible the issue is I really connected with it. I was able to argue at the conference, I felt very strongly about which side I was voting for so the debates were not difficult to have good evidence on my side.
3. What was the most important thing you learned in this project: Why:The most important thing that I learned in this project is even more being able to persevere. Although the work was not too much there was absolutely no time at all to mess around in class and over this whole project I had to study very hard. This is the most important thing because as I go on in school I will have to put a lot of time into my studies and this project helped me prepare for wroking vry very hard.
The thing that I am most proud of about this conference is my speech. We did not have very much time to work on these speeches but I persevered and got mine done. For the first conference I was not fully satisfied with my speech and it was not as well written or presented as I had hoped. I refined my speech and worked on my presentation for the final conference and I think that I made a good speech and I practiced it well so that the final outcome was a clean, good and convincing speech.
2. What did you connect with the most in this project and how did that affect your conference performance:
The thing that I connected most with in this project was the actual conflict. We studied this conflict for a very long time and did lots of research. We did country research packets, wrote resolutions regarding the issue, and more. Almost 5 weeks of simply everyday research on the issue. So after learning all this stuff about how terrible the issue is I really connected with it. I was able to argue at the conference, I felt very strongly about which side I was voting for so the debates were not difficult to have good evidence on my side.
3. What was the most important thing you learned in this project: Why:The most important thing that I learned in this project is even more being able to persevere. Although the work was not too much there was absolutely no time at all to mess around in class and over this whole project I had to study very hard. This is the most important thing because as I go on in school I will have to put a lot of time into my studies and this project helped me prepare for wroking vry very hard.
MUN Mid Project Reflection
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCSwcK8jAsmSBlT3B-wj3RGA
4. Analyze and explain the following quote. " Complacency is where genius goes to die" by Matt Hughes. I think that what this quote is trying to say is that having complacency in everyday life will slowly kill the genius that is inside of you.
4. Analyze and explain the following quote. " Complacency is where genius goes to die" by Matt Hughes. I think that what this quote is trying to say is that having complacency in everyday life will slowly kill the genius that is inside of you.
Socialization and Identity project
This project was about writing and essay and making a mask to show our identity and how we were socialized. The essay was about you and the way that you were socialized by the world the media, family etc. The mask was made to explain the essay in a visual way.
Pushing Aside the Norms
When you are born you are born as a boy or a girl, immediately there are norms that you as a boy or girl are expected to follow. These norms are enforced everywhere. School, home, sports, friends, everywhere. Socialization is why we are human The way that most people have been socialized is by school, or media but I never went to school and I have been socialized not by how a boy should act and how a girl like being strong just because i’m a boy or I shouldn’t wear dresses because i’m a boy and I shouldn’t cry but more by how I should act as a person.
When I was little my parents didn’t teach me how I should act because I am a boy. They taught me how to act as a person. They didn’t say things like don’t cry, play with action figures, they told me things like, do what you like doing, don’t do just what people say you should do, be yourself. For me this seems like it’s something that all people should be told growing up. This seems to be one of the things I have seen with a lot of kids growing up, when a girl cries it’s ok but when a boy is crying it’s bad. Even if it’s not obvious this is teaching kids sexism before they even know what sexism is. As Tony Porter from his TED talk speech “A call to man: says, Jay could come to me, come to me crying. It didn't matter what she was crying about, she could get on my knee, she could snot my sleeve up, just cry, cry it out. Daddy's got you. That's all that's important. Now Kendall on the other hand -- and like I said, he's only 15 months older than her -- he'd come to me crying, it's like as soon as I would hear him cry, a clock would go off. I would give the boy probably about 30 seconds, which means, by the time he got to me, I was already saying things like, "Why are you crying?” When I would cry my parents wouldn’t tell me not to cry they would ask why I was crying and then let me cry or tell me that that wasn’t a reason to cry. Instead of just telling me not to cry they would figure out if i had a reason before they told me to stop.
Throughout my life I have been taught by everything around me that boys play boy games when growing up. I never went to school but some of my friends and all the other kids that I saw played with action figures and toy guns and swords. My parents told me that it doesn't matter, “do what you like doing” and I did. For a lot of my childhood my favorite thing to do was dress up, sometimes as a princess or sometimes as a dragon I liked doing it. Some people told me “don’t dress up that’s for girls” but I didn’t care I didn’t like girl things or boy things I liked just doing stuff that I thought was fun.
During the time that I was homeschooled people would tell me that “homeschool kids are weird.” or “You won’t do good at school because you were homeschooled” Going to animas high school was very different from my homeschool life but no because of actually going to school but more because I was getting more messages than ever telling me how to dress and act. Animas is a school where people are very accepting but still these messages were very intense. However, these messages were telling me things to do but I didn’t really feel that I needed to change the way that I dress or act.
When I think of socialization what comes to mind most are gender norms. All over the world for hundreds of years women have been seen as less important than men. Men have been forced to not show weakness. Girls have been forced to not play violently. Boys have been forced not to play with dolls. These are just a tiny part of the things we see everyday and don’t do anything about. These have been so important for so many years that it is hard to change anything. For me, I really liked that my parents didn’t force norms onto me, I grew up doing whatever I liked doing. I see my parents as some of the people who are trying not to force these norms onto their children. This is how I want my kids to grow up too, being themselves not trying to be like other people. Hopefully this will continue on with many people and eventually these gender norms will not be such a big deal in our world.
Project Reflection
1. The aspect of my mask that I am most proud of is the overall design. I attempted to show a separation between the way I was socialized and the way society socializes the majority. I feel like I effectively reflected my essay onto the painting on my mask.
2. “When I was little my parents didn’t teach me how I should act because I am a boy. They taught me how to act as a person.” This is the sentence that I am most proud of because it very simply explains exactly how I was socialized growing up.
3. I think what I will remember most from this project is the concept of socialization. We learned a lot about what socialization really is, how people are mainly socialized by the five agents of socialization, how socialization is all over the world and how it has been for many years. One of the most interesting things I learned was how strongly the media affects people’s decision making. In class we watched a lot of interviews and videos about people of all ages. These videos demonstrated how just watching TV, using social media or playing games on your phone affects the way you act, dress and speak for your entire life.
4. I think one of the concepts which I learned about in this project that benefitted me, and I hope will benefit my peers, is the influence of the media. After doing this project I saw how much the media affects people and I think that now I will be more critical of the things that I see on my phone and on TV.