Overall, this year doing Capstone has been a very good challenge for me. This class has done a good job preparing me for some more of the responsibilities I should expect when I get to college. The best thing about this class and this year is that I learned so much about myself and proved myself wrong in many, many, but in some of the best ways. I learned about the ways I best work, how I work with deadlines, and how I prioritized this class along with my others because this class not having a letter grade made it hard to place the assignments in a prioritized to do list because each deliverable counts the exact same as the other deliverables in this class and not by assignment type or percent of my overall grade like it is in my other classes. I proved myself wrong by pushing through the many challenges I faced, challenges that I thought would be a road block that I couldn’t get around. Some challenges were directly related to my project, such as not getting responses from people in a timely manner, some even at all, and having my project be in some ways community dependent. But also, some challenges were more pertaining to myself, such as my fear of public speaking, speaking to unknown adults, and being able to focus on a single project for that long of a time without losing motivation or giving up. By the end of my project I had unconsciously and consciously faced so many fears and things I had previously thought would be impossible for me not only to do, but to be able to do them well and comfortably. For example, reaching out to adults I didn’t know over email and actual phone calls was something I was extremely afraid of doing in fear of doing or saying the wrong thing. In order for this project to be able to even start taking place I had reached out to so many teachers and administrators that I didn’t know from other school districts. Pushing through all these struggles was extremely worth it in the end. 

Being able to complete this project was a very gratifying experience. At the beginning of the year I had a completely different idea. At first, I was planning on an art collection that represented mental health struggles, but after some of my research on how beneficial art is in and outside of school, I decided I wanted to give more students the opportunity to experience these benefits year round, and rely only on art classes during the year. I know I took my project in the right direction when I saw all my hard work pay off. Between seeing the amount of art supplies I collected and the reactions of the Fowler art teacher and some of the students that will benefit from the art supplies collected and donated, I felt proud of myself for facing challenges and making a positive impact on other people’s lives.