Emily C. Portfolio - Project Updates

Friday, September 27, 2024

This week, I will explore the possible topics for my signature, topics related to my interest in economics and finance. I want to learn something that is more than just theorems. I want to learn how those areas are connected with our everyday life, such as sustainable development, well-being, and decision making. I want to do this because I understand how economics are shaping and influencing our lives. I want to help people when economics is connected with big issues like poverty. I first searched up impact investing, which is a field of study that focuses on investment associated with sustainable development, basically making the world a better place. Many schools don’t teach people about financial literacy and concepts about decision making, including my middle school in Taiwan. I attended a student exchange program convention where each group needed to present the topics from the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), and my topic was education inequality, especially focusing on the remote areas. While learning how economics can connect with social impacts (impact investing), I also want to try to make deliverables that help advocate for financial literacy education.

With those ideas, I’m really excited about how I can take those brainstorms into actions and projects, as well as the result. I believe I have a strong motive for doing the things I have passion for. So far, I have many ideas floating in my mind. I'm worried that I might face difficulty in finding a targeted idea or when dreams don’t meet reality, but I believe those potential challenges also serve as the nutrients for my ideal tree to grow strong and tall!

Friday, October 11, 2024

As I planned my deliverables, I realized there are definitely challenges to find a way to make an impact or have audiences. I have a pretty solid direction of creating an AI chatbot for investment suggestions and company information, covering the area of impact investing at the same time. I’m also interested in creating a financial calculator or people in need to enter their loans and mortgages. Overall, I think my signature this year will split into two directions. While creating outcomes, I also want to dive into researching how companies are working on their goals towards sustainable development. I planned to interview some businesses and banks in Taiwan to learn how each company promotes and advocates for social impact through the influence of their company.

Reflecting back on my ideas, I feel like there’s too many deliverables that I want to accomplish. I know my ideas might change, but so far I would like to work on creating an AI chatbot and financial literacy education. I have some experience in coding, so I would need further research, which I’m really excited to learn about. For the financial literacy education part, I would like to separate into two branches, interviews and sharing. Interviews involve connecting with companies or people who are experienced, and I’m also really excited for this part because I get to gain new knowledge. For sharing, I want to create a social media account for educational purposes and connections within the school, which I should get in touch with soon. My next goal is to sharpen my deliverables and get into the research process, and hopefully I can progress!

Friday, October 25, 2024

I’m working on settling my deliverables, including reaching out to the people that I want to work with, such as contemplating emails for classes and clubs that I want to demonstrate. Im sophomore year, I took a financial math course with Mr. LaFave and got a lot of inspiration from that class to learn more about financial literacy education. For deliverables, I decided to email Mr. LaFave first as the start of my “reaching out to people progress.” By asking if I can demonstrate my result in his class, I soon got a response from him saying yes. That moment meant a lot for me because I have confirmed my first official deliverables, giving me more motivation to move forward.

I next reached out to the stock market club heads, and one of the heads told me personally saying that she hasn't read the email but she will do that as soon as possible. Lastly, on Saturday, I went on the food pantry as usual, and I was able to ask Ms. Halfi about School 16. She said she would love to help me arrange my financial literacy education for kids as soon as I’m done with my material and recommended Hope 7 could also be an option for afterschool. This marks my reaching out process within the school and surrounding community. I figured out just by communicating for available resources around me with positive feedback can bring so much motivation for my upcoming plans for the financial literacy part. After this, I plan to also reach out to my interviewees for the impact investing aspect. I have a more clear vision of my signature project now.

Friday, November 8, 2024

I feel like I have a solid plan right now for what my signature project is going to be, and the next thing I need to make sure is I stick to the plan. I’m an organized person and like to plan things, including doing a To-do list every day. Since my signature class meets on Friday, I tend to work on my signature projects on the weekends when I have fresh memories for the feedback in class, and I get more time. I usually spend around an hour outside of class after the brainstorming phase. Time management

When setting the short term goal, I realized sometimes my goals are too general even though at first I thought it was specific enough, so finding a specific goal for “myself” is the part I’m working on right now. In this way, I would not be able to finish the goals. Also, sometimes I could set goals that are not effective, one of the other reasons I couldn’t accomplish goals. After the first two weeks, I started to get a sense of what goals I want to set that are helpful for me – we all learn from experiences. By setting a really specific goal for myself, I can push my progress. In fact, they actually help me get my thoughts into actions step by step, and make little progress everytime I believe I can make great milestones.

Friday, November 22, 2024

This week I’ve completed my interview with Mr. LaFave with the question I prepared for financial literacy. One of the most memorable parts is when I ask him how to teach kids the concept of financial literacy without showing them hard equations and ideas that they don’t understand. He recommended that I prepare candy in terms of cash and to teach children concepts about saving. One of the reflections I thought of was the marshmallow test, but for different uses. I think that's a great idea because it introduces the concept of compound interest and savings. If we wait for another 5 minutes, they will get extra candies, which represents the compound interest that they get.

Additionally, I feel like I wasn't really productive these two weeks because of my stress for my solo in dance assembly, but I still set an hour dedicated to signature. This made me realize, to work on something that I’m passionate about, even if the outside environment is stressful, this would not stop me from moving forward. I think my dedication of pushing little progress every week has become a habit that I’m used to, which is a good sign for the overall. My project also led me to a reflection about the inclusivity of my audience. My thought of my project’s aim was to try to prevent stepping into the endless cycle of poverty because of lacking financial literacy. However, I realized that, considering different socioeconomic backgrounds, there are people who are not able to implement the ideas, so this became my primary goal to rethink what certain aspects of financial literacy are effective to teach all people.

DEIB blog post (Friday, November 22, 2024)

Reflecting back to the center of my projects, my initial aim was to focus on promoting financial literacy education to students in general, preparing all of us for the real life financial challenges. As I develop my projects, I started to combine my initial center to women’s education, and youth education. At Emma, I focused on a specific topic of impact investing and plan to develop an AI chatbot to give access for people to utilize and play with it. Although, my deliverable with the AI chatbot might not be approachable to everyone, especially for groups of people that have no internet access, speaking in a broader audience. With that, I hope to complete that through in-person education. I thought about my deliverable with these two focuses by reaching out to school 16 and hope 7 programs while researching my directions of financial literacy into a suitable fit for young children. Another point I didn’t think of is the different socioeconomic status. In some topics, it’s impossible for people to implement the idea because of their own financial background, and this is the part that I should focus and consider from now. The broader goal of my project is closely tied to the endless cycle of poverty, so I hope my project can make an impact, even just a little is enough, on youth, setting a healthy mindset for personal finance, and preventing one of the possible forces that drives poverty, lack of financial literacy.

Interview blog post (Friday, November 22, 2024)

I finished one interview so far with the aspect of financial literacy with Mr. LaFave in the Emma community. I didn’t particularly feel nervous because I know him pretty well from classes with him last year. I’ve prepared mixed of interview questions, some related to personal perspectives on financial literacy education, some are for solving my confusions. One of my confusion was the suitable topic for children to learn financial literacy without going deep into the theory and definition. To answer this question, Mr. LaFave responded with replacing money with candy, and teach them the idea of budgeting, with was really helpful for my interview. For this interview, I used voice memo to record our conversation, as a note, so that I can “listen” back when I forget something. However, I didn’t take a complete note on the response because I was too focus listening to him, so taking complete notes will be my goal for the following interview for improvements. Overall, I was able to get the responses of my confusion and my curiosity of financial literacy education from a teacher’s perspective, including advocacy of schools on financial literacy education, and what topics specifically are suitable for high school students to learn: Compound interest calculation, basics of stock markets, and debts. This interview is a milestone for me because it is the first interview I’ve done for my signature, serving as a motivation and courage to reach out for more in the future.

Friday, December 13, 2024

Following the thanksgiving break, I realized that I’ve sort of lost direction in my “impact investing” part. I don’t know besides making a presentation for the financial literacy class, what is my purpose and deliverable. I know I want to learn more about it because it creates positive social impacts, which is closely related to my goal of exploring some social issues. However, as I research, I think I got lost in the definitions and the purpose. At this point, I feel like reaching out to my signature manager or having an interview could be helpful in processing through the challenges. I can do this by setting up a list of confusions I have so far, not just for planning but also for what is “impact investing.” In this way, I hope I can make progress.

During Thanksgiving break, I made a lot of progress towards my AI chatbot. I had conversations with my dad, and worked together to build the page. I reflect that I want my chatbot to have an ESG (environmental, social, and governance) feature, so I design the page into four sections, including ESG news, ESG chatbot, stock chart, and stock selector. However, I faced challenges because I don’t have enough coding experience, so when connecting in the OPENAI api key, and the new.org api, I struggled a few days until the last day of thanksgiving break I finally successfully finish the ESG news and ESG chatbot page, which I’m really proud of my process. I realized that the key to success is effective communication as I kept having conversation with the person providing me help to figure out where my problem was, which I think is a valuable lesson to learn and keep in the future for problem solving.

Friday, January 17, 2025

Over winter break, I did less than I expected due to family travels and wifi issues in the hotel. I finished another slide for both of my impact investing and budgeting presentations. As for the AI chatbot, I face some challenges to move forward, and I somehow have not planned for what the other two taps should be like. For this semester, since I already did the majority initiative and hard work in the fall semester, this semester will be more focusing on “completing for deliverables.” This includes communicating with the adults and club heads for the time to showcase my results. What I need to do is to demonstrate the AI chatbot to stock market club and entrepreneurship club, and present the slides with Hope 7 and financial literacy class. Additionally, complete the interview with my Taiwanese contacts during spring break.

Over the weekend, I almost finished my impact investing presentation except for a little polish needed. After finish polishing, I will contact Mr. LaFave scheduled a class to share my presentations. I definitely feel the time pressure for completions as I realized there isn’t much for me to do. Knowing I’m a person that plans a lot and tries my best to stick to my schedule and principals, I need to make good use of my characters, and do it with DETAILS. For that, I have created a “TO DO for signature,” listing every interview and presentation that I need to do and label the month to give myself an overall visual. For the following week, my main goal is to finish the interview with Ms. McGivern’s contact.

Friday, January 31, 2025

I made a big progress towards my presentation for impact investing, I finished it, only needing some final touches. When doing research, I faced challenges identifying what I could really learn from impact investing because the strategy itself sounds too ideal, almost like it only exists in the Utopia. Usually, when we learn about a new topic, especially an investing strategy that is beneficial for making financial returns, we tend to look at its positive sides and risk, but we rarely look into the feasibility and consider human factors. This is the first time I learn an investment strategy looking into reality as a factor.

Additionally, I have scheduled the presentation time with the club heads from both E-club and Stock Market club, and it will happen in the first week of April, which I’m looking forward to. Last week, I dropped one of my plans of making deliverables from budgeting, while getting in touch with the Hope 7 program. I don’t regret making that decision even though I really wanted to have a connection with the surrounding environment about my project, as well as teaching kids financial literacy. However, I’ve seen my overall path is going towards learning impact investing as a financial literacy strategy, which at this point, makes the budgeting presentation concept scattering my focus on ESG chatbot + impact investing. I also started to hesitate if I should do a follow up email to Ms. Mcgivern asked her contact Ms. Anne Putnam for an interview because I figured out she’s coming to Stock Market Club as a guest speaker, which already provides me an opportunity to ask her questions about her career and experience.

Friday, February 14, 2025

I think I’m in a period where I’m “waiting” because a lot of my actions are planned on a specific date. For example, the interviews with Taiwanese companies will happen in Spring Break and the deliverable presentations are scheduled in the first week of April, and I’m going to work on my AI chatbot during Spring Break when I’m with my dad. At the same time, I'm in the period of low productivity and I am aware of it because this not only reflects on my Signature project pace but also my academics in general. I want to try my best to push myself into “getting things done.”

I have been really tentative towards “finishing” my impact investing slides, so I’m going to promise myself to finish it by the end of Winter Long Weekend when I have more time, and regardless how I feel unmotivated in the current moment, I am going to get things done and I will remember the initial motivation at the start of the school when pick this topic, remembering the enthusiasm I had for starting this project. I realized doing Signature requires a lot of self-discipline. Knowing that I’m really organized with having To Do lists everyday, I should utilize my advantage, so I want to make sure that I will stick to the To Do list I made for myself. After putting down all the deadlines into the short-term goal, I feel more rest assured about my progress; I’m really glad that I acknowledged the challenges I’m facing, and try to find the solution towards it.

Friday, February 28, 2025

I am seeing the shape of my signature project this year. Looking back at the start, I struggled to focus on a specific topic and thought it was impossible for me to complete the AI chatbot. I gained some insights from the project and also let go of some wonderful ideas, finding the balance between innovation and feasibility. The final stage of the work will happen in Spring Break because my interviewees are in Taiwan, as well as the time I need to finish the AI chatbot. I actually discovered that using Replit, another SaaS, can also accomplish the same goal, so I might explore more with that rather than struggling with not knowing how to export the code. I also confirmed my presentation for the Entrepreneurship club and Stock Market club. Finishing the first presentation for the financial literacy class, at first I thought my presentation could only last for 10 minutes, but I talked for 30 minutes at the end instead. Surprisingly, class participation was very good because we ended up having another 10 minutes of deep conversations surrounding impact investing during the Q&A section, which I’m really grateful for how people can also have takeaways from my presentation.

I felt pretty accomplished from my signature project, knowing my productivity with self-learning, and exploring the new areas that are not taught at school. Most importantly, critical thinking, being able to explore the challenges associated with impact investing and develop my own reflection. However, I think I definitely did not fully gain understanding in impact investing, but this project rooted my interest in the intersection of investments, sustainability, and exploring solutions with technology.

Final Blog Post

Throughout this project, I have a satisfying learning journey. In the end, I was able to achieve my goals of learning impact investing, delivering my message and perspective in forms of financial literacy, as well as utilizing technology as a tool. Over spring break, I had an interview with the Everrich company that integrated ESG values into their business operations. I feel really lucky that I was able to hear a real world experience beyond paper and online research. I'm really thankful of the Signature program at Emma, giving me the opportunity to explore topics of my own interest, especially concepts that we don't usually get to learn in high school. Meanwhile, I learn how to balance between dreams and actions. At the start, I have so many visions for what my signature should be presented, but soon I realized my ideas are too scattered, as well as being hindered by other plans. For example, I plan to work with local school 16 program to teach elementary school kids some basic functions of financial literacy, yet not only there is time conflicts but also my focus land on impact investing, instead of topics of financial literacy -- financial literacy is the way I deliver my message. I summarized my process as challenge + encouragement = growth. While dealing with problems such as, fail of first deployment of my website and non-response interview, I received a lot of encouragements along the way. I was able to have a productive conversation with the students in the two financial literacy class, stock market club and E-club, eventually understand how to utilize technology to develop a website with AI features, and also developing a holistic perspective on one subject. I look at the influence of impact investing from business operations' view, investor decision-making perspective, as well as general consumerism. The skills that I learned along the way will be a valuable experience that I hold, shaping my learning identity in the future and beyond.

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