Embedded Files
| Sophomore Year |
History
What if US Border States Joined the Confederacy?
After learning about the uncertainty that the Civil War held in its time, our teacher assigned the class to imagine different scenarios which would have occurred during the war and explain this scenario on a slide show. I worked with a partner to create an alternate history scenario where Missouri, Kentucky, and Maryland all seceded from the Union to join the Confederate States. After creating the potential actions which could have spiraled into these border states seceding, we imagined a history afterwards. Our slideshow told the story of how a failed assassination attempt on Lincoln’s life made him more aggressive towards slave states in the Union, leading to them seceding. Meanwhile, Lincoln’s aggressive policies and failure to secure border states led to heavier draft protests and a revolt which needed troops to be diverted from the Confederate border, leading to an eventual ceasefire.
In order to create a scenario involving alternate history, the general history of the scenario is not enough. A more specific understanding of how history is influenced by different figures and different events is instead required, where a person must investigate the perspectives of alternate leaders, peoples, and governments to determine how a scenario could occur and what would happen afterwards. Because of this, the “What If” project has shown considerable reason to be seen as Recognizing Perspectives. Without understanding historical perspectives, there is no way somebody could determine what would happen if something changed in history.
English
Global Issue Essay
Religion has always been a great interest to me due to how influential it's been in every aspect of history, so when I was given the opportunity to examine a topic and how it’s perceived in different countries, I chose to cover religion. I wrote a 5 page essay covering the treatment of religion in the middle-east, China, and the United States. Each perspective covers the current stance the regions/countries mentioned have on religion, their interpretation of religion, and the history behind both of the previously mentioned topics. The essay covers how middle-eastern countries justify strict religious sharia law because of an attachment to the 7th century islamic golden age, how China has persecuted every religion in their country to create an atheist state, and how the United States, while having a separated church and state, struggles with a religious culture that still manages to bring faith into the government. In this essay, I was able to conclude that faith is not a negative aspect of any culture, but rather, it’s the weaponizing of faith through hate which causes aggression from or towards religion.
The research I presented in this essay was backed up by organizations, censuses, education websites, or credible individuals. I was able to gain a lot from the research I had done, especially about the state of religion in the middle-east, a topic which is under heavy examination around the world. Because of this, I was able to achieve the Investigate the World pillar. Furthermore, I believe that I was able to also show the Recognize Perspectives pillar by looking at the perspectives of different cultures on how religion should be seen in political, social, and ethical environments. While both of these pillars were shown in this essay, the Investigate the World pillar stands as the primary one shown due to the impact religion has around the globe.
Spanish
Escape Room
As a way to review a unit of our spanish vocabulary and grammar, our teacher put our class into groups and asked us to use google earth to solve an escape room she created. On her schoology page was linked to multiple places in google earth we would need to go to. From there, we would work together to look around in these locations to fill in the blanks on the paper we were given so that we could determine the secret code. The blanks on the paper would be answers to questions about the area we were dropped into. Each letter would correspond to a number which we would put together at the end of the assignment to create a sentence that the teacher needed to check.
The group I was assigned to work in was made up of people who I was unfamiliar with. But I still had to work with them so I would need to move out of my comfort zone to be more social, an issue I had during sophomore year. None of us were very great at Spanish, so we needed to cooperate and communicate to figure out the answers for each of the questions presented. When one person would find something on the google earth location, they’d let the whole group know. During this assignment, I showed my ability to communicate with a group of people who I had no experience with talking to before and I learned to move out of my social bubble.
Science
Mousetrap Car
During the 3rd quarter of my physics class, we were assigned to construct a mousetrap car. The car would be built out of wooden planks with plastic disks as wheels. The mousetrap would be glued onto the plank and a rod attached to a string would be put on the mousetrap. These parts, if put together right, would create a moving car that could be propelled by the mousetrap and string. After the cars were constructed, they were all placed on a bracket where they would race one another. Me and my group created a mousetrap car based off of the Oscar Mayer Wienermobile; we painted the wooden base yellow and put a paper hot dog on top of the car. We initially struggled with our car but after a few more test runs, we were able to become a contender for victory. But, in the end, we lost to another team.
Throughout this project, I was able to effectively work together with my teammates to create a functional mousetrap car. We had struggles on the way, such as broken resources and a poorly glued base, but we were eventually able to get past these issues and create a working mousetrap car. I showed my ability to communicate ideas with others through this project but also learned to be better at problem solving. During this project, there were a few times, as previously mentioned, where my group had struggled with broken or poorly made resources. We also had troubles with the initial test runs. But, we managed to overcome these problems by going through every aspect of the car so that we could determine the issue at hand and produce an effective solution to the issue.
Co-Curricular
Death by Ignorance: AIDS Documentary
The second assignment for our JAGS Sophomore year was to produce a documentary that investigated a global issue from 3 different perspectives. For my group’s documentary, we looked at the AIDS Epidemic of the 1980s to determine how poorly the situation was handled and the horrors that many people went through due to the world’s ignorance about the epidemic. The documentary first introduced Ryan White, a young boy who received AIDS from a blood transfusion but was kicked out of school for it. He received heavy discrimination before he finally died due to it. This led us into the overall handling of the AIDS epidemic. The Reagan Administration in the United States was another problem mentioned, as they had poorly handled the epidemic. In the documentary, we included footage of the administration laughing at it being called the “gay plague” and how they had no plan to deal with it. In the end, the documentary was well received and our group scored the highest of the class.
I learned a lot about managing my time during this project. I needed to start on editing the documentary early or else I would not be able to make it as quality as I wanted it to be. I worked 5 hours each night to create the best documentary I could make. With the extra time, we were able to re-record clips that didn’t sound good and review footage together to see issues that needed to be fixed. I also learned how to better investigate major global issues such as the AIDS epidemic.
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