Due to the sex-ed class on Thursday, we were behind on our book pages,so we really had to work hard to catch up. By the end of the week, I had all 16 pages of my book done. We also had a critique session to make our stories the best they could be. Our critique sessions were kind of useful, but it was hard for the people critiquing your work to understand the book’s plot, because of the lack of words. I still got good feedback though. Next week, we will start putting these drawings into AI, which I am dreading. I hope I’ll understand what we’re doing. In Phil’s class, we did an Independent Project. Mine was a study of Wicca, or the religion of witchcraft. I did my project with a partner, and I’m proud of the end result. The point of the project was to give us practice for our POLs, a presentation that’s coming up and a huge part of our grade.
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Even though this week was kind of short, because of sex-ed on Thursday and an off-day on Friday, we got a lot done for the children’s books. The physical drawings of pages 1-7 were due on Thursday, but then because of the unexpected all day sex-ed class, no one was able to meet the requirement. Personally, I was doing the required pages every day and then using the leftover time to work on other stuff, so I only had 5 pages completed. I’m not sure how much the sex-ed class messed up my teacher’s plans for this project, but I guess we’ll see on Monday. The other stuff I was referring to earlier was the Quarter 4 Self Assessment, where we propose a grade to our teacher that we think we deserve. I finished mine, asking for an A+, and I’m proud of all the components in that assignment.
Now that exhibition is over, the chair project is completely wrapped up and done. However, with 6 weeks left of school, we’re starting a new humanities project, the children's story book project. We are using children’s storybooks to convey a deep message or a personal story. Personally, I’m not too excited about this project, but at least I can draw pretty well. I am a bit scared about the illustrator side of his project though, because it will be dealing with tools on illustrator that I’ve never touched. My book is about a little boy who wants to wear girls clothes, so he wears his mom’s dresses while his parents are out. His parents come home early one day and see him in dresses and heels, but thankfully, instead of being mad, they accept him and tell him that they would always love him. I honestly just want to finish this project and finish my ninth grade year, but I’ll keep working hard to make all my projects shine. I also attached the Google Doc with my story's text.
The buildup has finally concluded. Exhibition, the goal for this entire semester arrived. As a bonus, it went well. My group members knew the material of our project and were able to talk about it. Even though our table was left unmanned for a bit of the time due to my team members having to do other things or just not showing up at all, Exhibition went smoothly. We were able to answer all questions asked of us, our work was well received by friends, family, and strangers, and our work looked professional. I do wish that my group members were a bit more reliable when it came to showing up to exhibition, but I understand that they had things to do. At least, I hope they weren’t just blowing exhibition off. Everyone else’s work looked stunning too! All our projects were well received by everyone and I felt proud to show my work alongside the rest of my classmates.
It’s mock exhibition time! Mock Exhibition was on Thursday, the last day of the week, since we had Friday off, so we dedicated our entire week to exhibition prep. Finally, our group was prepared for exhibition, ready to present our hard work to the masses. Our group was prepared, however, we could have been slightly more ready with all our work. One of the things we were showing was our Process Booklet, a compilation of all the work we’ve done as a group that have led up to our final products. We didn’t have as much work as I would have liked, but my main concern was that the pages were not hole punched properly and we ended up shoving them into the folder of on the inside of the binder, which is not very pretty or professional. We will have to copy them and reassemble the booklet. However, no one even glanced into our booklet, so no damage was done there. Exhibition as a whole went well. It was busy the first segment and slow the second half. I was in the first part, so lots of people talked to us for the most part and we got lots of practice for the up and coming exhibition. Thus mock exhibition made our group more prepared and we will definitely be ready for the real exhibition, coming up next Thursday.
So I’m actually writing this on Monday, because I’m lazy. Or maybe it’s because I can digest what happened over the course of the week during the weekend and be fully prepared to write a reflection come Monday. I’d like to think it’s the second one. We did do a lot of work last week and we had lots of important work due Friday, which included the near finished page layouts, a finished chair, and a polished and perfect final draft of our writing. However, all this work was overshadowed by the real main event of last week, namely that blackout we had on Friday. Of course, blackouts mean no class, which means no school, which means we had early release, which is great, but on the inside, I was slightly panicking the entire weekend. Earlier that week, Phil told us to save our Illustrator work on Google Drive, so that it would be safe if something were to happen. He made an example out of a possible blackout that could delete our work. The issue is, I didn’t, so when the blackout struck, I was scared all of my Page Layout and design work would be gone. Considering I had been planning to print the pages out and be completely done with them that day, I was scared I’d have to start all over. As you can probably guess from the fact that I’m spending time writing this and the fact that the tone of this blog post isn’t near hysteria, the pages did save, and nothing was deleted. Otherwise, I think I’d be working on those pages instead right now. I think I’ll go save my AI files into my Google Drive just to be safe.
Last week, we started going full force on our wiring. Our entire second draft was due by that Friday, typed and ready to go. On Tuesday, we worked on the body paragraphs of our writing, and we had the rest of the week to put together the parts we had been working on into a comprehensive google document. Additionally, the build team was expected to be finished with the chair completely, which, admittedly didn’t happen for us, but at least we got close. Even though I’m not a part of the build team, Torrien and I took charge of making the banners, so we also worked hard on that on Friday, when we decided we needed to make another flag for our chair, so that it could cover all four sides. The first flag we made didn’t turn out so good, so we had to quickly put out another one. Hopefully, come Monday nothing else is going to throw curveballs our way. We already endured issues with mixing the paint, having to fix a sewing machine after it kept stopping for no reason, and the flag blowing away as we tried to paint on it. We can only hope everything will turn out smoothly. Although it would be an unlikely miracle, hopefully this extra flag is the last hiccup in our project. If we could do over the project, we probably would have done the extra flag off the bat when we made the other three, which would have saved us lots of extra time and effort. However, nothing can be done about that now, and the flag turned out fine, so no use stressing over ‘could have beens’.
Last week, everyone was in charge of turning in a first draft to their writing piece (mine being the historical question) . Over the break, Joe, our teacher, gave those of us who turned it in feedback, focusing on the quality of our introduction and conclusion. This week we talked about introductions and conclusions and the aspects of writing a strong one. Upon receiving the feedback and sitting through the lessons on writing a high quality introduction and conclusion, we began our second drafts out with a revised second draft of our introduction. We then made a second draft of our conclusion. Then we got another round of critique, this time from our peers. Next week, we will work on a third draft to our introductions and conclusion and we will get a lesson on writing the body paragraphs as well as more helpful criticism to our writing.
The goal of this week for everyone was to have an outline done for our writing (for me it was the Historical Question, in which we answered an under-the-surface question about our historical event though an array of primary and secondary sources). For the design team, the Concept Poster was to be finished and for the build team, the chair should be assembled, although not necessarily polished. All this was due Friday, so that over break we would be work-free. Torrien, the other person on the design team, and I were done with our things by Wednesday and essentially had nothing to do but support the build team in whatever they needed help with. The build team, however claimed they didn’t need any help until fourth period of Friday when one of the members went home early. Torrien and I picked up the slack and finished the chair’s assembly, finishing just in time to finish the end-of-the-day Friday deadline. We had also painted the banners for the chair earlier the same week. Overall, it was a busy week for us, for building, designing, and writing.
Our chair design fell through this week, after our group decided that our original plan was too difficult to build. Turns out that Chinese architecture is several layer process, and would require material, time, and money that we don't have. Luckily for us, we decided on another plan rather quickly and were actually one of the first groups to go get our materials, which was an accomplishment, considering the setbacks we encountered. Our chair is a two foot tall stool that resembles a boxy Chinese lantern. On every side is a cloth banner. One is the Qing Dynasty flag, one is the Society of Righteous and Harmonious Fists, and the last is the People’s Republic of China flag. This is representative of our context, the Boxer Rebellion, an event from the early 1900s that marked the westernization of China and the fall of the Qing Dynasty.Our stool displays the transition between the two types of government. We also got our materials this week. Our build team polished the wood pieces they cut out of the block of wood we got from Home Depot and will shortly be building. Our goal is that the pieces of wood are assembly ready by Monday, but with the amount of time it will take to sand and stain the wood it’ll probably be more like Tuesday. As for the design team, my partner and I are working diligently on the concept poster and it is so far turning out good. We’ve had a few rounds of critique and it will soon be exhibition quality. Next week, with around a month’s worth of school days left until exhibition, we will be starting our historical investigation, done with our concept poster, and beginning to build. |
Sasha A'HearnHigh Tech High student passionate about science and music. |