This is by far the most rewarding week in all of ISM, not including the week of Final Presentation Night. The thing about other classes is that because we're doing continual testing and quizzing, there's not a single day that feels like as much of an accomplishment as turning in Final Product does with ISM. After working for months, final hitting the "submit" button is so exciting and feels like a weight has been lifted. That's really the difficult thing to describe about ISM, even to my friends, is that although I enjoy all the work I'm doing and I am genuinely passionate about the research I've pursued, the difficulty and expectations of the course still make it burdensome at times. The final aspects of the past week have included recording the audio after finalizing the script with my mentors, and putting together all the pictures and slides I wanted to include. Even that wasn't too bad after having already compiled the pieces I wanted to put in, but, as with anything, it was still something I had to focus on and get done. I've learned so much since this Final Product started, something I described a lot in the Set-Up and Completion Summary. It's been a great year and now I get to start making all the preparations for Final Presentation Night.
This week I've completed a lot of the final aspects of my Final Product, but instead of talking more about that in this week's blog, I'd instead like to focus on Shona's reelection campaign. One thing that I do somewhat regret with my Final Product is that because I drilled down into local control so much, I didn't have the opportunity to go in depth with other parts of local government. That's not to say I haven't seen those different aspects through mentor visits and observational opportunities, but with actual products and synthesizing material, it's been mostly kept to local control. Campaigning is one side of being a representative that I definitely knew had to be a big part of the job, but didn't realize until watching Shona this year just how much of a focus it was. Shona's dedication to meeting new people and willingness to be out at the polls every day shows the commitment it takes to serve in a capacity like hers. It's such a unique part of the job because most other careers don't have an aspect where daily you have to interact with strangers to vie for their support. Moving forward it will be interesting to watch as the rest of the campaign unfolds and how that impacts the future of Frisco.
This week I've done a lot for my Final Product. It's crazy to me that I'll be giving my speech for Final Product and the end of the year in class in two days. It seems like this semester has really flown by and I can't believe that Final Product will be due in two weeks, Final Presentation Night in two after that, and then school is over two weeks from then. Over the long weekend I spent a lot of time working on my Final Product video, but I understand now that I need to pivot to my Final Presentation Night speech. The good thing about the speech is that because we've been building up to it all year, the foundation is already there and the bulk of the content has already been put together. Still, I'd like to finish up Final Product enough to the point where I can include my explanations of it thoroughly in my speech, even if final touches haven't yet been made. Moving forward I need to remember to get everything else in order, from my preparations of my suit to the re-caps and reflections of my Final Product. Hopefully I really finish it by the end of this week, so I can shift my full attention to preparing for Final Presentation Night.
This week I’m going to be gone on Wednesday and Thursday for a college preview overnight at Williams College. On the one hand, I’m so excited to go back to Massachusetts and get a taste of the life I’ll be living for the next four years, but for ISM and school, it’s a pretty inconvenient time for me. My goal is to get enough of my final product done before I leave so that by the time I come back, I can send my first cut of the video to my mentors at the end of the four-day weekend. Speaking to Shona and Will, they really stress the importance of just getting stuff done, which I think is a great lesson to learn, and one I struggle with a lot. I tend to get so wrapped up in other classes and and other parts of the ISM, that I lose focus and then am paralyzed by everything I feel like I need to get done. My goal for today and this upcoming week is to get to a place with my Final Product where I don’t feel guilty studying for my AP exams because I don’t think I have enough done with ISM to allocate the time.
Now that I'm in the final month before Final Product is due, the pressure is really on for me to complete everything to a high level on time. Especially with Prom this weekend and increasingly stressful AP exam prep, my goal is to have my video completely outlined and the beginnings of filming done by the end of this week. With other projects, I find that if I can make small deadlines for myself it helps me get things done, as opposed to the looming stress of broadly "finishing Final Product in the next month". After talking to my mentors last Thursday, I think I have a better idea of how to outline the video. In general, I do feel like I'm a little behind from where my calendar says I should be at this point, but thankfully with the extra weeks I put in toward the end to just finalize and polish, I'm hoping it won't be a problem. Looking forward to these next few days, I intend to finish my outline and ideally even begin to film parts for the video before skip day on Friday and Prom on Saturday. I forgot how busy the end of the year gets, so it's important that I keep that in mind with these last two months of ISM.
This past week Monday was really fun because I was able to sit in on the Frisco City Chamber forum. After learning about the election from Shona's point of view and seeing all the signs across town, it was interesting to me to finally be able to hear from the people themselves and put a face to a name. It surprised me how much of a difference there was between reading about their platforms and stances online in comparison to actually hearing them talk in public about their priorities for Frisco. There were three sections of the the forum, the Collin College Board of Trustees, the Frisco ISD Board of Trustees, and the City Council seats. Because I've been studying city council the most, that was definitely the part that I enjoyed the most of the forum. Overall, I think I took a lot away from that evening about stage and public presence and the importance of it in relation to running for office. A lot of the people, based almost solely on their confidence and eloquence, swayed me to or from their side and favor. It's definitely a skill that I've been able to hone from ISM and I'm glad to see how that could potentially help me in a career where I run for office.
This past week was really exciting because I got the chance to speak with two people working in Frisco to hear how local control fits into their work. On Wednesday I met with John Classe of the Frisco ISD Board of Trustees and had the opportunity to hear about the impact financial legislation at the state level has on school districts locally. After speaking with Will and Shona, I had this idea that school finance in Frisco is something that needs to get better, and that stance was largely reflected in what Mr. Classe had to say too. He pointed out that the property tax cap wouldn't do much to change FISD but is still something to keep and eye on moving forward. My conversation on Thursday with Nell Lange of the City Manager's office was interesting too, because it was clear talking to her how all the advocating Will and Shona are doing will have real implications in the city. Sometimes because my mentors are in more of a representative capacity, there aren't always concrete challenges they're facing, but in speaking with Ms. Lange, it was easy to see how the state cap to really impact Frisco. Overall it was a really interesting week and will help continue to guide my Final Product moving forward.
It's honestly crazy to me that spring break is already over. It feels like not too long ago that senior year begun, and now it's practically unanimously understood that we're in the homestretch. Unfortunately for me, there's still so much to do, so I definitely can't check out yet. Over the break, I really worked to prepare for my final product through planning interviews and conversations with other sides of the local control debate. Coming back to school, I realize now that I've spent so much time doing research and trying to understand local control that I haven't really slowed down to assess how all this information will fit into the project itself. In other words, it's time to get busy structuring this video. Because I want it to be really high-quality (like an informational Vox video is along the lines of what I'd like to create), it's important that I don't leave it until the last minute. Over the break I really tried to look into different video options and how I'm actually going to put it together. It will be interesting to see with my upcoming interviews how what I learn from other professionals in the field will change the content that I'm going to try to include in the video itself. Overall it's been a nice break, but I have come away seeing how much I need to buckle down for the sake of putting together the best Final Product I can.
I'm really glad that I got to meet with my mentors so early this week (or late in the last week) because it's going to give me the opportunity to focus the last bits of research I want to do and begin crafting the video portion of my Final Product. Talking to my mentors not only helped clarify a few things that their expertise was great for, but also guided where I need to go from here. I think the important things that I should be doing over the next few days is getting some drafted questions out to the professionals that I want to interview for my project and then actually begin scheduling those interviews. Already at my mentor visit today, I was able to ask Shona about potential people on the other side of the local control debate who would be willing to talk to me about my project. I hope that their insight will not only shed some light on the "other" side of the argument, but will also eliminate bias from my work. In other news, I'm looking forward to some of the next few observational visits I'll be able to go on because now that Shona's campaign is in full swing, she has a lot of forums and events in the community that I think will be very interesting to witness.
This week was pretty unexciting as far as ISM goes. I didn't actually go on a mentor visit because President's Day made it hard to coordinate something already into the week. I think that's a good lesson to me that first and foremost I need to prioritize things like meeting with my mentors. If I had been more proactive about getting something on the calendar, I definitely could've learned from them, but as it was the end of the six weeks and it felt like a short one, I was a lazy about getting that together. For the class, it was a pretty relaxed few days. Because of the aforementioned shorter week, I didn't get as much done on my project research as I wanted to, but in relation to another lesson I could take from that, it's important for me to remember that every little bit of work helps in the culmination of my project. Sometimes "25 hours" can seem so daunting and that makes me do less because it doesn't feel like half and hour or an hour of work will make much of a difference, but if I maintain some perspective it'll help me stay focused and know that every bit I do is at least better than doing nothing.
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