This year I went on the JAGS Europe trip to France, Switzerland, Liechtenstein, Germany, and Austria. This trip allowed me to experience a wide range of cultures and interact with various people. I learned about the culture of multiple different countries through the different foods, languages, and histories that were unique to each country. I was also able to practice speaking in a foreign language to native speakers.
This trip connects to various pillars, including investigating the world, recognizing perspectives, and communicating ideas. I was able to attempt to communicate ideas during this trip by speaking in French and German to the locals in the countries we visited. I was also able to recognize perspectives throughout Europe by learning about the histories of each nations, such as learning how the Munich people cope with the shame of their past in World War Two. Finally, I was able to investigate the world by experiencing a vast new variety of locations throughout Europe which enriched my overall global competence.
This presentation was modeled off of an old essay written by an Irishman expressing anger at the English government for failing to meet the needs of the people that they were controlling. He proposed that in order to solve the current famine they should resort to eating babies to highlight the absurdity of the issue and he also presented multiple potential solutions that the English government could take to fix it. For our presentation, we had to choose a current real world issue and create our own outrageous solution. My group chose the issue of garbage pollution and created a presentation around launching garbage into the sun via a massive catapult. This project connected to the pillar of communicating ideas because we had to communicate our solution and create an effective argument to make our solution appealing. We also had to investigate the world to determine the root cause of the issue and explain the real potential solutions to our problem, such as regulating the corporations that were responsible for producing much of the non-biodegradable waste such as plastic.
In AP Seminar we authored multiple research papers and corresponding presentations, both as a group and individually. I chose our team multimedia presentation on nuclear weapons because the topic was most closely related to JAGS. Part of the project involved researching the political and cultural lenses of how different nations view nuclear weapons. This gave me and my group a better understanding of the global relationships between countries and why it is important to avoid conflict between nations with nuclear arsenals.
This year in physics, we created a bridge out of small pieces of balsa wood held together with super glue. Me and my partner chose a simple truss bridge design modeled after a bridge blog online which claimed it had incredible strength. Our bridge was very successful and when it was tested it had the highest weight held to bridge weight ratio, meaning it was the strongest bridge out of all the physics classes. This project connected to the JAGS pillar of recognizing perspectives. It connects to this perspective because it allowed us to understand the process of constructing certain structures which relates to the sustainable development goals of the United Nations. These goals include visions to create beneficial infrastructure in developing nations, and our project showed us a piece of what is necessary in achieving such goals.