New Skills/Knowledge:

• What new skills or knowledge did you acquire in this course?

  • Overall, the greatest skill that I obtained was how to do this sort of project in the first place. Before taking this class, I would never had thought to do a project like this.

• What did you learn about yourself as a learner, volunteer/worker, or citizen? (You can include reflection on skills such as: time management, communication abilities, your strengths, weaknesses, etc.)

  • I feel as though I did not learn very much about myself. I went into this class with the goal of learning more about how to do a long-term project, which is what I feel that I got out of it. I’d like to think that I already know myself pretty well.

• If you could do anything about the project over again, what, if anything, would you change?

  • I would go into it with a clearer idea of what I wanted to accomplish. I feel like I spent almost as much time figuring out what to do as actually doing it.

• What surprised you about your work on your project?

  • Not very much. I felt pretty confident on the actual work of the project, it was everything else about the class that I was inexperienced with.

Challenges:

• How did you challenge yourself to move out of your comfort zone during this course?

  • I just sent emails to people out of the blue asking for their help. It still feels pretty weird to ask people I don’t know for things, but it’s worked well so far.

• When did you doubt yourself the most during this project?  What did you learn from that?  How did you work through your doubt?

  • I didn’t really doubt myself that much. I liked my original idea and worked at it until I found out that the changes I wanted to make would be infeasible. Then, I changed tracks to a new idea and worked at that until the end of the class. I think I did very well for myself.

• What was the hardest part of doing this project?  What were your challenges and how did you overcome them?

  • The hardest part was definitely the things outside of the project. At the end of the course, there were a lot of other things to fill out, like a summative reflection and a digital portfolio. By that point, I had pretty much run out of mental energy, so it took far longer to get those done than it should have.

Process:

• How has your project changed or evolved from your proposal?  Discuss the reasons for the change or evolution.

  • My original idea for a project was some sort of ingredient sourcing to improve the quality of the school lunches, which ended up not working out, on account of how there’s already a state nutritionist in charge of setting meal plans. Changing it would require talking to them and possibly also the mayor and a much better reason than “I thought it could be improved”. I then spent a few weeks figuring out what to do instead, and I ended up with an idea to do something related to the math team. That got refined for a while before I ended up with my final project idea: providing competition math resources to high school students.

• How was the process of integrating community experts into your project?

  • I honestly didn’t do much of it until the very end; my school lunch project failed before I got to that point, and I didn’t need to ask for math advice because I’ve been doing it for long enough to have personal experience. It was only in the last few weeks that I reached out for help in distribution, which I believe went very well.

• Did you have any interesting or unique experiences while completing your project?

  • Honestly, not really. I wasn’t focused on learning something new so much as teaching something I already knew, so there wasn’t as much opportunity for exploration as in some other projects.