Second Week Reflection

 May 21st  

My Academic Concentration carried on into my senior project which was beneficial having set aside time explicitly for the concentration.

My Academic Concentration is inspired by the port interviews we did on Ocean Classroom.

Which provided a therapy of sorts after a summer of college applications, essays, interviews, lists of majors, tours, and pamphlets.

During the college process, excitement for the future was overcast by stress, anxiety, and apprehension.

Through the port interviews, I had the opportunity to hear others' stories, the hard lessons they learned, and their career paths, which left me with excitement, anticipation, and gratitude for what lies ahead.

This translated into my academic concentration, I wanted to attempt to ease others’ stress towards the future and remind them of the amazing position they are in.

I did three conducted interviews. Gaelic McTiuge was my first interviewee in Waitsfeild Vermont, she is crafts and paints ornaments in her shop that she has had for over five decades.

Being in her space, seeing her in her element, and witnessing her create her magic was extremely unique and beneficial to encapsulating her story.

The second interviewee was Mehrnaz Mohammadi, she is an actor, filmmaker, and writer, we met over Webex which proved to be challenging.

There is so much lost in translation over Webex, the power of body language, and the value of seeing someone in their element.

The words were profound but I think more could have been gained from being in person.

I met Jose on the plane to my sister’s graduation, he is a car genius and a passionate tire salesman, although I did not interview him in his element, I could still read his body language which makes a conversation much more powerful.

The essay took me a long time to complete. I found myself going down rabbit holes of statistics, which were fascinating. In the end, I’m content with the structure of the paper.

I built off some of my takeaways from the text we covered in John Bouton’s seminar, Making a Life, Making a Difference, including the importance of having a purpose.

I then dove into the statistics surrounding Americans’ views on their jobs and then wrote about the pressure we put on kids to know exactly what they want to do and how that blocks out the growth of passion. 

There are direct lessons I learned from my specific concentration and the discussions I had, then there are the general takeaways that apply to Academic Concentrations as a whole.

Directly, I learned many valuable lessons through talking with Mehrnaz, Gaelic, and Jose. The importance of trusting yourself, your community, patience, hard work, and introspection.

In the future, I would aim for in-person interviews and ideally in the space the interviewee works in. Writing the articles only ingrained in me further the lessons I gained from them.

In society today the art of doing something simply to do it is lost, everything we do has an agenda behind it. For me, the Academic Concentration was an exploration of something I wanted to explore further.

I didn’t report it to colleges, you don’t receive a grade that goes on a transcript, there’s no “reason” with consequences if you do not complete it. This element proved to be a challenge in motivating myself to complete it.

But it made me realize the lack of passion projects in our lives. I intend to continue using my blog as a diary of the interactions I have with people throughout life and the lessons I learn from them.

There is so much value in the stories we tell. 

Today's hours: 4 hours

Project Total Hours: 74 hours

Link to the website! https://passionpurposeprofession.my.canva.site/