This was our first project of the year for Spanish class and I found it to be fairly easy. We were instructed to make a family tree that included our extended family, all in Spanish. I started by making a draft that consisted of a basic sketch of a family tree. After expanding it a bit and exploring some ideas for the design, I started work on the final draft. It took a couple days but I'm pretty happy with how it turned out and it was overall a really pleasant experience to create it.

In the first week of school, as our first math assignment, we took a personality test. We then reflected on our results in a Canva document. I personally used a Google document instead because Canva f****** sucks to use, but that's besides the point. Anyway, the assignment was 4 paragraphs. The first paragraph was about my experience with math up to that point, the second was about the results from the personality test I mentioned earlier, the third was about standards of mathematical practices and which ones are our strengths and weaknesses, and the fourth and final paragraph was about our aspirations in life. Overall the project was an amazing introduction to tenth grade and I'm glad that I could be honest about everything. I'd say the test results were accurate, too.

Soon after we finished our Mathematician Biographies, we began working on a survey that we were going to force other students, teachers, and staff. Anyway, this survey was supposed to be about understanding the mindset of various demographics toward math, and I think we did a good job. We found out that most older people have a more positive mindset toward math and most younger people are indifferent about math, among other things.

This was the most exasperating assignment I've had to do throughout my entire academic career. This was for several reasons but for the sake of this paragraph not being longer than every f******* book ever written combined I'll only go over a few. First, the instructions were incredibly vague. I thought we were collaborating on the essay so I wrote a couple paragraphs and called it a day, until I was informed several days later that this was an individual assignment. But as stupid as it was, I guess it was my mistake, so I'll let it slide. But what I won't let slide is that fact that the information that we needed was beyond scarce. I could only find a couple of resources about the performance I was assigned to write about. Third, we were given very little time to write the essay. I figured we were gonna be given some extra time because at this point it was months since we wrote something longer than a paragraph or two, but no. This is not to mention the lack of support we were given when revising. I'm sure Lisa and Nils did their best but at a certain point when 15+ students have half-baked essays under a week before the deadline there's not much you can do, so I don't blame them whatsoever. Finally, the entire thesis of the essay was, to put it at best, ridiculous. We were practically forced to write about how our assigned plays are a good example of social justice, but we weren't allowed to disagree even if we were right. This created the issues of having to invent new ways to rephrase the same things over and over again and every essay's message being the exact f****** same. Overall this assignment sucked but I like I said I don't blame Lisa or Nils at all.

Every few weeks we were instructed to share our experiences with reading recently by means of a short slide deck. We then presented this slide deck to our class. It was an easy way to sharpen my public speaking skills and it was interesting to see what others had read.

This is the backbone of our entire project. We started by taking and individual survey about what problems we thought we should address in our community. Lisa then put us into groups with other people who answered similarly to each other to said survey. So, people who thought drug abuse should be addressed were put in a group together and so on for the other subjects (I believe there were 8 or so). Next, we brainstormed some characters and a plot. From there we slowly but surely pieced together a script and after a few revisions and restructures, we were done. I was pretty happy with my work, which mainly consisted of making the story make more sense. Everybody pulled their weight and were cohesive with one another. I liked the ambiguity of the instructions we were given, but I do think the issue that we tackled (bullying) could only be explored on a superficial level because we were only given a couple weeks to make the script and completely finish it. Furthermore, I think this was the biggest issue in nearly every single story, as evidenced by some plot holes, low stakes, and a surface level exploration of their given issues. Regardless, I and most others appreciated the simplicity of the plays because when we started making them we just got done with writing our Theatre For Social Justice Essays, which for I and many others was really exhausting to make.

Both exhibitions we held went pretty well for me. I barely forgot any lines and when I did I recovered just fine. My group was pretty cohesive which I think helped a lot. I'm sure the audience enjoyed our play and I'm glad everything went well. I learned a lot about the process of making something like this and it was cool. 

To advertise where and when our Actos took place, our group created a flyer that showed a couple of photos of us rehearsing and also when and where we were gonna perform. Truthfully, I didn't contribute to the flyer very much but regardless the flyer did it's job and looked nice.