9th Grade  2022-2023 

For my freshman year of language arts, I completed a project about something I was passionate about. At the time, I decided to pick skateboarding because I was passionate about practicing and improving. The project lasted ten weeks, and each week I documented pictures and progress updates about how I improved. In the end, I had lots of improvement, and it felt good to see how all my practice had paid off, especially when I had to present it.

I connect my Genius Project to the JAGS pillar of Take Action. This was my freshman year, and up to this point, I had not done a project like this. This was a big step up because it was the longest project that I had done up to this point, and it was completely up to me. This helped me grow and develop skills for larger projects. It was an invaluable tool for later projects to come, and was one of the first times I took action.

In my freshman year of world history, my artifact was a defense paper for Vladimir Lenin. The class had just finished learning about the Russian Revolution, and we had a debate about Vladimir Lenin. The class was split in half; one side had to defend Lenin, and the other side advocated for Tsar Nicolas. I was supposed to act like Leon Trotsky and advocate for why Lenin was the better leader.

This connects to the JAGS pillar of communicating ideas. I had to use all of the information that I had learned over the past couple of months to write my debate. It taught me that you can debate something even if it is not something that you completely agree with. This gave me experience debating, which is a skill that I use a lot now for several classes, and even outside of school. 

My extracurricular from my freshman year was my trip to Heifer Global Village in Maryland. We took part in a simulation where I was immersed in the culture and life of someone living in Appalachia. I cooked and made the food they ate, and slept on the wooden floor with many other people. The whole time, I was learning and experiencing the life of someone else. Through this experience, I was able to meet and connect with many people I hadn't talked to before, and it was the highlight of my freshman year.

This trip helped relate to the JAGS pillar of recognizing perspectives. I had done several research papers and presentations about other countries, but none of those compared to this. Although it wasn't a one-hundred-percent accurate simulation, because it only lasted one day. Heifer was a great experience that put into perspective all the things we had researched. It was my first real step to recognize and experience the lives of people opposite to me.