Summative Reflection

New Skills/Knowledge:

Throughout the year in the capstone course, I acquired many new skills and knowledge. I learned a ton of new information on my topic, but I also gained knowledge and skills that go beyond my topic and project. One skill I learned is how to conduct an interview. I did a lot of interviewing throughout my research process, and I learned how to ask questions and communicate in a respectful, assertive, and professional way that will get me the answers that I’m looking for. In addition to learning how to conduct an interview, I learned how to construct questions to ask in an interview. I learned the importance of not being too direct in a way that might come off as accusatory, and instead posing what I’m looking for and letting the person answer/elaborate in a way that they want to. I also learned a lot about reaching out and talking to new people. In the beginning of the school year, I was so nervous just to hit send on an email to a community contact, and even sat there reading over my email 15 times and just staring at the send button for a while before sending it to my first community contact. Now, I feel confident and comfortable when sending a cold email, and even feel more comfortable picking up the phone and calling someone or having a zoom meeting with someone I don’t know. I also acquired a lot of networking skills in this course. I learned how to form connections with community members that would then lead me to new contacts and relationships that gave me valuable information for my project. 

Throughout this process, I learned a lot about myself as a learner. I learned at the beginning of the year that I needed to work on my time management skills, which I worked hard on improving throughout the year. I also learned that I work best when I make a schedule of things to accomplish, since it organizes what I need to get done in my head. If I could do anything differently about this project, I probably would have started working on the physical project itself earlier as I felt like my biggest issue was not having enough time to fully accomplish all of my goals to the extent that I was hoping for. I’m still happy with my project, but there was still more I wish I could have done. What surprised me the most about my project was the community’s reaction to it. Obviously I think this is an important topic since I chose to spend a year researching it, but it was really rewarding to see how much the community cared about it at the exhibition. They were commenting on how important and impressive this topic and my work was, and it made me think that my project was making a difference, which was really cool.

Challenges:

Working on my project really pushed me to move out of my comfort zone. As I mentioned before, I conducted many interviews throughout this process. This made me step out of my comfort zone many times. I am not the type of person who would just call or zoom with someone they didn’t know, and I definitely wouldn’t walk into the office of someone I had never met before to ask some questions. However, these were all things I had to do in order to conduct research for my project. I survived them all and I learned that they were definitely not as scary as I thought they would be, and now I feel comfortable and confident doing these things in the future. One of my biggest challenges was figuring out what I actually wanted to do for my physical project. I knew what I wanted to say to the world, but I didn’t know exactly how to say it in a way that would reach a larger audience. However, I am proud of how I overcame that challenge and I’m proud of what I created. Another challenge I had was with technology. I first had challenges creating transcripts from my longer interviews on YouTube, but I was able to figure them out and work around what I couldn’t figure out. Another technological challenge I had was with Wix since it was blocked by the school and then once we got it to work, I couldn’t use it anymore since it didn’t comply with some Ed laws. I had to redo my entire website on google sites, which was annoying and took a little more time that I didn’t really have. 

I would say that I doubted myself the most in the time period from December-March-ish. This was the time when I was really struggling with an idea for my project because I was hitting so many dead ends. I was struggling with hearing back from community contacts. Every time I thought I had a project idea there would be a roadblock and I would have to find another avenue for my project. It was extremely difficult and frustrating and there were times that I was so burnt out and didn’t want to continue. Burn out was another huge problem I faced. Having capstone 6th period on AC days which are my most challenging days was extremely difficult. I was so burnt out from the day that I struggled to find the energy and motivation to work on my project and give it 100%. However, from these challenges, I learned about perseverance. I learned how to bounce back when I hit a roadblock, and how to push forward through challenges and burnout, and these skills are something that I will take with me beyond this course.

Process:

My project changed and evolved a lot throughout the process since the proposal. I knew I wanted to do a website, but I wasn’t really sure what was going to be on it. To be honest, I had no idea what I wanted to do when we did the project proposals, so I came up with something really basic to meet the deadline. I think that the most influential research/interviews came after the project proposal, so I was able to fine tune and adjust my project based on what I learned from those experiences. The community was a huge part of my project. The field trip we took to ESF was one of the most valuable experiences that contributed to my project. We met with experienced and knowledgeable individuals there who taught us about the sustainable initiatives that ESF has taken on, such as their green roof, their recycling and sorting systems throughout the campus, and their composting system. In addition to sharing ideas about potential projects, they also shared valuable information about how to approach research and create a project. They taught me the importance of a stakeholder analysis, to go above and beyond to put myself out there with community contacts,and to consider the time, people, and resources when thinking about sustainability. Because of this experience, I gained knowledge that helped me develop a project idea and work through the project. Additionally, my conversations with people from the community were my main source of research for this project. My interviews with Mr. Falter, Mr. Furlong, Mr. Sommer, and State Senator Mannion were more influential in my project than any source I found online. The community played a major role in my project and I wouldn’t have been able to accomplish it without them. 

The most unique experience I had was my interview with NY State Senator John Mannion. Mr. Stroh gave me his contact information after the quarter two roundtable and I emailed him with some information about my project, but never expected to hear a response back. However, within a day I heard back from him and one of the people he works with, and they went out of their way to try to find a time for us to have a conversation. We unfortunately never were able to call or zoom with each other as our schedules didn’t line up since it was his busy season and the only time he was available was during my DECA competition. However, I emailed him my questions and he answered with insightful information, and gave me additional information and advice on what he thought would be a good avenue for my project, and I followed through on his suggestions to write an article/op-ed. Never did I ever think I would be casually emailing  with a State Senator, let alone getting his advice on a school project. This was definitely an instance where I went out of my comfort zone. This experience just reinforced the fact that the community was so willing to help us and were invested in our projects throughout the entire process.