Senior Spring Project

Senior Spring Project has started similarly to how I would’ve initially thought. Compared to the years of school that we have already gone through, it’s much more laid back, and there are many more aspects to be in control of; however, where certain issues have disappeared, others have risen. 

Woodworking has continued as it was supposed to, and the freedom from other classes has definitely helped me enjoy the class a lot more and given me time to focus on my project. I am working on a laptop stand, and I am just now figuring out how I am going to incorporate electricity into my project. There haven’t been any large issues, and I am also beginning to think about what I should create next. 

Art History, similarly, has continued as normal, and I love the freedom that we will be receiving with our final presentations, where we can choose any item in the MFA. Recently, I chose to present on the Zen Garden, and I am looking forward to it. The scheduling was probably the most difficult to fit into SSP, as the class blocks were the most rigid. 

Short film and storytelling has probably had the most difficulty with accomplishing what we set out to do. Instead of being able to dive into our project, of course, we’ve had a learning curve that we have needed to engage with. This means that we are still experimenting with how we want to tell our stories and what types of videos we want to create. After research and multiple meetings, we have made good progress. At first, we started just making a video in the North End, focusing on the color red, then color-grading it. Now, we are moving on to hopefully make a video about pens and their utility as an everyday object. 

Strength and Conditioning began with a rocky start since the scheduling was unclear. Fortunately, I was able to talk with the coach and return to my original hours, so nothing has had to change. There is a space between my Art History block and Strength block on Monday, which is a little awkward and not ideal, but I have developed a solid strength and conditioning schedule, including cardio outside of school.

Chinese Cultural Immersion has gone off to a great start. We have eaten lots of good food, and while we are aiming to stay with Chinese food, we are still finding a large variety in the types that we consume. We have also learned games such as Mahjong, which we will hopefully continue playing over the next couple of weeks. We have figured out our rotation and plan on changing weekly so that we can all host one day of eating and learning.

Volunteering at the Charles River Museum is going well. I was able to redesign the water wheel, which I created over the summer, and I have met with a few of the staff to figure out how the display would physically mount onto a wall. Since then, I have begun 3D printing the final product and hope to begin putting it together soon. After lots of research, I’m glad that it is coming together. 

Class meeting has had some highs and lows. I think that the difficulty of getting food, bringing it, and remembering a computer, etc., has been quite difficult. The wifi has been a large issue, so it has been difficult to actually partake in any activities that occur, and I hope that going forward, there are more outside-of-class opportunities presented during class meetings for grade bonding. 

Vanguard meetings are brief, and we have jumped into the graduation issue. It is going well, and soon we will be sending out forms to gather public ideas for the class superlatives. 

Finally, I’ve been pleasantly surprised by Cultural Cooking. I thought it wouldn’t be very efficient and a little disorganized; however, it has been one of my top experiences in SSP so far. In the first week, we made DIY pasta at Jonathan’s house. This included not only making sauce and cooking the pasta, but we also actually made the pasta dough and rolled out our pasta. Similarly, during the second week at my house, we created dumpling wrappers, dumplings, and spring rolls. It has been great to try out different recipes and get more involved with the cooking from our respective families. I’m also looking forward to every single week coming up. 

I don’t see any large challenges currently; the only task that has been slightly difficult is getting around. While I work on my license in the background, I have carpooled with friends and gotten picked up/dropped off during my parents' and Grandmother’s commutes, so while difficult, this hasn’t been impossible. I think I could have planned this a little bit differently when I was creating my schedule. Many days have me coming in in the morning and the afternoon, which can feel a bit pointless. 

Other than that, I think my planning process went well, as I am doing some extremely fun activities and have enjoyed SSP thus far. I didn’t choose to officially join any seminars; however, I have been participating in the Beatles seminar, which takes place late at night at school on Tuesday. This seminar has been interesting because I have always listened to a bit of The Beatles, but now I am beginning to understand where they truly come from and hear hundreds of songs from them that I have never thought to listen to before. I have also really enjoyed the pacing of this course because we simply go through an era of the Beatles each week, which results in us learning about the more famous and ‘better’ albums later on.

Overall, my star moments of SSP have been using a large 3D printer at my museum volunteering, something I was always scared to do in the past but am currently being encouraged to learn, finishing the functional side of my laptop stand, which I was actually able to use and try out, and creating a homemade vodka sauce for my own Tagliatelle pasta during cultural cooking. All of these situations have introduced me to push a little further than I typically would have, and are creating amazing final products. 

On the side, I’ve found lots of time for shows and reading my book. I am reading The Obelisk Gate, and have established a reading schedule for it so that I can enjoy it throughout SSP while I also read other books. It is the next book in a series that we read in English during the fall trimester, and though I haven’t gotten too far yet, I’m really intrigued by the mystery that the author is perpetuating, especially since the power system and government are still basically a complete mystery.