This week, we finished Food Inc. and continued working on our student businesses. I've designed the logo already (in the picture below) and we're deciding on which organization we'll donate toward with the money that doesn't go directly back into our business. Also this week was our third seminar, and I think this one was definitely the worst. Our group didn't get any help from Matt and none of us had very strong opinions about the news article about GMO apples that don't brown, and there were a lot of long silences. I usually talk a lot, so for my goal during this seminar, I decided to try and talk ONLY five times. I did not reach that goal, I think I talked 8-9 times but it was hard when there were long silences and questions brought up. I think in this case, I think it was fine that I talked a lot though because I wasn't overpowering the conversation and nobody else was talking even when there was an opportunity. Still, I think there's room for improvement and hopefully next seminar won't be as awkward and I'll have more self control. I definitely don't interject when I have basically nothing to say, I sit and think about what I'm going to say before I say it, but I have too many thoughts about things and I should be way more selective with what I say (I'm already selective, but perhaps I need to be more so).
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This week was full of advancing our project. On some days this week, we worked in our project groups to really get our project rolling, by researching costs, recipes, emailing stores to donate some food to us, designing our product etc. We also started a gofundme (click here) to help us get our business off of the ground. We also did our second socratic seminar on an article about the question of "Why bother?". Why bother fixing our environment? Why bother walking instead of driving? I liked the topic of this article (not so much the article itself, but the topics it touched on) because it was far more interesting to discuss, as it wasn't telling us what to think, just presenting us with questions to ask ourselves. It was interesting hearing what everyone had to say and the topics that the questions led us into: we covered the environment, food, our voice, the education system, happiness....and a lot of existential questioning. All in all, I think it was a very interesting seminar to be a part of, and I feel everyone left the circle with something to think about. The only thing I really regret is I totally didn't meet my goal to talk only 4 times, I talked 12 times. I didn't feel like I overpowered the conversation, but I feel maybe if I had remained quiet (like I did a good job of in the beginning) maybe other people would have had to step up who don't talk much. I think I only talked when I felt I actually had something to say rather than just wanting to talk, which is good, and I felt satisfied with most of my points, but I felt I was too eager to speak and maybe should have been more patient in my speaking.
This week, we focused on food production. We did a lot of things, like going to the farmer's market, talking about the history of agriculture, and today, learning about the different components in industrialization, which I wasn't thrilled about doing at first as it included making posters and reading up, but it turned out to be interesting to learn and I look forward to the coming weeks, where we will apparently be delving deeper into these subjects and watching Food Inc. section by section and discussing, which I like doing. But going back to the topic of what we were doing THIS week, I did just gloss over going to the farmer's market in Ocean Beach, because I feel like I didn't get as much out of the experience as possible. I did like the design aspect, in specific seeing how people set up their stands according to what they were selling, the decoration (my favorite stands were the aromatherapy, jewelry, and plant stands because they all looked very cute and appealing), the lineup and grouping of stands, how people advertised etc. But I didn't get what I wanted from the vendors, I did observe their behavior and how they sold but, as expected, they were all busy selling and I hardly even got to ASK anyone to talk to them. In reflection, maybe there were people who would've actually been willing to talk to me but I wasn't sticking my nose in far enough and trying hard to get questions. i think we will be going to another farmer's market soon, however, and I will try to get over myself and get more answers from vendors to benefit me.
This week was where our hard and rushed work for MUN paid off. The MUN conference happened yesterday, Thursday, and it really was not as stressful as the prep work for the weeks prior. It was a relief to be there presenting my hard work. It was basically just like the practice conferences we had held a few weeks back, except more formal and with a little more research behind it. Still, I feel like due to the limited time, and I don't think I'm the only one, I felt I was lacking in some research in order to participate in certain discussions. I wish I had spoken up more about certain issues, part of the reason that I didn't was of course I felt like I didn't have enough research due to the time constraints and also, on my part, I tend to listen/observe first and then "dig in". I don't feel that was too beneficial because then by the time I felt I was ready to give my two cents, it was too late and the topic had moved on or I didn't have much to say that seemed relevant or necessary to say anymore. It was a generally fun experience for me, but I honestly don't think I will do any more MUN work if I can avoid it, because it personally doesn't fit my style. I'm more suited for full on debates, and MUN feels less hands on and more in depth, standard research (which is boring to me) and reciting rather than the quick information gathering, fast paced, heat of the moment and less teamwork oriented manner of a heated debate. Heated debates are definitely more in my comfort zone than such a "civil" and organized type of thing. Even so, as I said before, it was a pretty fun experience and it was interesting to put myself in the place of a UN delegate, even if it wasn't really my scene. I'm trying to get out of my comfort zone more and I'm glad that this experience was force-fed to me.
CLICK FOR POSITION PAPER The work we did this week was mainly MUN (Model United Nations) work, annotating packets, lots and lots of boring research. This week wasn't incredibly successful for me, but it wasn't necessarily unsuccessful either. No big revelations happened for me but I have been completing my work, though I guess since I have nothing to reflect on I was doing the bare minimum. I wish I had more to reflect on but unfortunately for me, this week wasn't very personally or even academically exciting or interesting. If there's anything I could take away from this week, it's that I hope to challenge myself some more in the coming weeks so that I may have more to reflect on and reference back to from weeks past. I don't know if it was just me personally not taking the extra steps to learn something from this week or if the work was especially dull, but either way, in terms of reflecting, growing, and learning, I do not feel entirely successful. I also hope in coming weeks that more exciting work comes my way because I did not feel too thrilled about the work that we had been assigned, it did not push me personally, it wasn't personally interesting, and it ESPECIALLY did not push me creatively.
This week was not so successful for me, to be honest. I got through my work eventually, but I really didn't take pride in any of my work or thoroughly enjoy any activities. Some of it was the assignments themselves, but most of it was probably me. The main thing that we did this week was learn about Human Rights and in order to get through the long list, we got into partnerships and were assigned 3 Human Rights to visually represent. That part was challenging, since you're usually accustomed to just writing a paragraph on what it means, but instead we had to draw it in a way that made sense. Luckily, I consider myself an artist so the execution of it didn't go too horrible (It's definitely not my proudest artwork and I admittedly didn't put that much effort into it but it got the job done), it was just hard to think of ow to show it. We decided to take a "humorous" perspective on it and I think we did the best we could as for some reason, though it sounds simple, it was pretty hard to accomplish. I wish I could've done better on it, and maybe I could've if my attitude had been better this week. I've had really low motivation this week and I think my work has reflected that. I hope to step it up and get out of my stress/motivation funk so that I may do my best work and enjoy school and schoolwork to the best of my abilities.
This week was fun and successful for me. The best thing we did this week was Model United Nations. It was fun to put yourself in the place of those countries and negotiate with other people/countries. The goal of this activity was to warm us up to the idea and process of MUN and take place of the countries in the real United Nations conferences, as we're going to be attending an actual MUN meeting in a few weeks. The situation we were placed in was a zombie invasion, and we had to decide how our country would deal with it (containing it, curing it, informing citizens or not, etc.) and who we would collaborate with. People were actually taking it pretty seriously, which made it actually fun, while I thought it wasn't going to be. Michaella and I represented North Korea, which we were at first kind of disappointed that we got stuck with, as it is a secretive country with many problems, but it turned out to actually be useful and kind of more fun somehow being a sort of "outsider" country. It was interesting to debate and make demands and seeing people making convincing arguments to join their side. It was successful, because the group of countries that we decided to collaborate with won the majority vote (our plan for the zombie invasion was to attack it from all points, for example, using China for research, North Korea for firepower, etc.). It was a little challenging to convince people to join our cause (at first it was just us, China, and Russia), because other countries wanted to join with the United States (probably out of personal bias) and because they felt their needs weren't met, but after convincing and bargaining eventually all except two countries were with us. (image from https://www.timetoast.com/timelines/the-united-nations-of-pristopia)This week was pretty successful and a nice transition back into school. My good handful of successes have been that I'm already getting better and more confident at speaking Spanish, through being forced on occasion to speak and listening to Spanish being spoken, going through reviews of the basics, etc. I cooked pesto pasta for under 5 dollars, which was delicious and only cost us about 4.60, so 40 cents under budget, which is a total success in my book. I had a peaceful-ish class discussion about this unfortunate inauguration, which was great because I and everyone else was building off of each other's ideas and there were no arguments. I'm sure people disagreed on some parts but nobody caused and arguments and I felt everyone had a good idea of what was going on and made nice points (my notes from this discussion are pictured below, not entirely accurate to what I said but the basic idea). Lastly, I refreshed my memory of some math subjects and rules, by doing practice problems assigned to us in the beginning of class. There were honestly no challenges too large, besides not being able to perfect the pesto pasta (we did not get to cook the tomatoes in the pasta but it didn't matter too much since our end product was tasty). It's honestly the best start I've had to any week ever, I got a lot done and I feel I also I did a good job on the things that I accomplished.
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Andrea Snider's | SPRING 2017 BLOG |