Educational Digital Portfoilio

My Project Reflection 

 

During this project I produced multiple deliverables that I consider beautiful work. In the beginning, we built a strong foundation for our topics with our research notes. These were to help us choose which event in WW1 we wanted to relate our country to. For example, my research notes lead me to the Gallipoli Campaign for my country of Nepal. It took us a while to get to this point, as we learned a variety of information about WW1 before the true project could even begin.  After these first few steps, we took this research and used it in order to construct our book. The two things that were expected of us were a poem with a form and meter and an essay that explained our poem. Writing poetry was exceptionally difficult for me because I was always told to write a free form poem to express myself. It came as a shock to me to find out that there were many techniques that must be addressed. Lastly came the exhibition, as an Event Planner, this quickly became my biggest task and, in the end, the most rewarding.

I am most proud of the way our final exhibition of our project turned out. As a member of the Event Managing team for this project, it was up to me to make it great. My task was to make appetizers for the event, create an fun and relaxed environment, and decorate our venue. The day of the exhibition was very stressful for me simply because I had never planned an event before, or anything along those lines. The school day went by incredibly slow and then finally it was time to set up. It was a mad dash that consisted of cutting flowers, finding matching tablecloths and making sure that hungry students didn't eat the appetizers that we had worked so hard to make. By the time the exhibition actually started I was exhausted. However I soon realized that all my hard work had payed off, it was unlike any other exhibition I’ve been to. Throughout the night I received many compliments on how much the little details really made a difference.  It made me feel really good about the beautiful work that my team and I had produced.

The thing that I remember most clearly about the WW1 project is the alliance system. This system was really intriguing to me because it really could make or break the war. Without the alliance system, many countries would be at a disadvantage. This is because of their size or even because of their intentions in the war, whether they were good or bad. In addition to this, the alliance system was also very toxic to the war and to the world.  The alliance system seemed to forcefully enter multiple countries into the war, despite their own beliefs as a country. This to me is what really created the first world war. Simply because if there was not an alliance system, the conflict could have potentially stayed between two countries.

The lessons that I learned throughout this project are that I should always be open minded about other people’s ideas in addition to not obsessing over small details. Throughout this project I began to realize that being a “perfectionist” isn't always a good thing. I was very close minded to what the possibilities were for the project and more specifically the exhibition. I was constantly worried that the tablecloths wouldn't match or that there wouldn’t be enough food for the exhibition. Looking back on it, I realized that stressing didn't change anything. If anything it was just hurting myself and those around me. I also wish that I would have had a better outlook on the beautiful thing that we created. Overall, it was good for me to learn these lessons in a school project because they are also extremely relevant to my personal life.

As the WW1 project progressed, I learned very important transferable skills. The ones that particularly stood out were dealing with the public and anticipating problems. This project was unlike anything that we had done before, and it was definitely larger scale. So everyone in Stephen’s Humanities class needed to anticipate the budget, the design, and the advertisement for the book and exhibition. As a class, we used a lot of resources outside of school. Such as our generous donors, and we even had a professional event planner come in to talk to us. By having these elements in our high school project, we are also preparing for skills that we may need in our adult life and future jobs. In this project I really learned about what my strengths and weaknesses are and where I can offer the most help when contributing to a group. Not only have I grow as a student and a learner, but also as a person.