Homestuck: Insight to Life Under Covid-19

When I first heard of Personal Project, I was excited to do it as I thought this was a project where you could freely do anything as long as there’s a product that would come as a result of it. I had my early plans, plans that I was excited for, up until the pandemic happened and it put me at a loss for what I’m going to be doing for my personal project. Going into this pandemic the first time around, who would’ve thought it would’ve lasted this long and have it be as detrimental as this. This pandemic has negatively impacted everyone’s lives as people in Indonesia are still rather ignorant about this pandemic and how to properly deal with it. Aside from the obvious physical detriments of a pandemic to our society, there are many other negative externalities that this pandemic has influenced in this world, such as how it affected the world’s economy, almost every business in this world, our education, and many more. People’s ignorance and blatant disobedience to the lockdown protocols and laws, angers me as their own actions are contributing into the spread of the coronavirus, such as not using masks, unnecessary travel, lack of social distancing, etc. This frustration towards the pandemic is what gave me the idea of doing this as my Personal Project, which is this book. Through that frustration I realised that people are still going to be ignorant about the virus, leading to the pandemic being prolonged, and with more people all over the world dying to this virus, unless if they were well informed of what’s happening and what they should be doing in order for us to end this pandemic together.

Global Context

The global context of my PP is Identities and relationships. This global context focuses on the relationship between an individual and their community. The specific strands I will be exploring are personal, physical, mental, social and spiritual health, and human relationships including families, friends, communities. The issue I’m addressing through this book is how the pandemic has affected people’s lives and how to do our part in overcoming the pandemic, which in turn corresponds to their human relationships.

Product

My final product is a short book describing the current pandemic we’re facing and how it has affected the world and me personally. It also shows a simple guideline as to how we as a community should be dealing with this pandemic properly. The book is titled “Homestuck: An Insight to Life Under Covid-19”. It mainly focuses on self, adapting, community, and family relationships.

My product is able to relate and is relevant to the global context strand identities because the content of my product discusses the topic of self as I speak about my struggles with keeping up with life under this pandemic, discussing about my mental health and academic struggles. This product also responds to the global context of relationships I speak about my relationships with friends and family, and how we all try to stay connected as it relates to our nature as social creatures. The product’s visuals are rather bland, but is professional and serious as it serves its purpose of being informative and relatable through the use of comprehensive and appropriate language usage.

Reflection

This is my first year as an IB learner, and through this experience of creating my Personal Project, I’ve gotten the true taste of IB. As a new IB learner, I found that our profiles “imply a commitment to help all members of the school community learn to respect themselves, others and the world around them”. Although every IB learner profile was implemented onto this project, the main profiles that stood out in this project were Knowledgeable, Risk Taker, and Reflective.

In an informative non-fiction book, you need to not only have the right information, but also use it correctly, and in this project I believe that I’ve been knowledgeable when it came to the topic at hand. As an IB Learner I’ve “developed and used conceptual understanding, exploring knowledge across a range of disciplines”. I researched, made my analyses, and did my best for this project to be educational for those who read it.

I took a big risk for choosing this project as I’ve had little to no experience writing books and prior learning. I also believe that I took a risk in having this project go into this direction even though my lack of time management got in the way of this project.

A big part of this project was that I was reflecting on my life during this pandemic. As an IB learner, I thoughtfully considered the world and our own ideas and experience throughout this project. Through the process of creating my Personal Project, I’ve come to understand my strengths and weaknesses as a student and recognizing them will help me grow as an individual.

IB Learner Reflection

Through the process of making this project, I’ve come to a better understanding of the global context of identities and relationships. I’ve learned that those two things are so intertwined with each other that any small change to one’s identity can also change one’s relationship with another, and vice versa. I’ve learned that through experiencing this pandemic and while working on this project.

With this project, I’ve relatively sharpened my communication and time management as those two things were crucial in informational projects such as this. I’ve also learned to be more willing to take risks and be bold with what I want to do and what I need to do. But to me, the most important thing