Think, think, think!

A big mistake I’ve made was I made a decision earlier than I should have; I hadn’t really thought things through well enough. I picked the first capstone product idea I had. I had picked a topic for my product that hit too close to home for comfort, but I wasn’t fully aware of it, although I did know at the time I should think it through a little bit more, but I thought if I pushed myself hard enough I could do the project easily. Boy, was I wrong. As I started writing during the summer, I realized: my heart wasn’t in it and that I was having much more trouble than the product was worth. I I really didn’t want to do this for a product. I decided as I was having trouble searching for the words to write about a very emotional time for me, that I wasn’t quite ready to share with the world what I had been through. I wasn’t even ready to fully admit to myself that I had been through it, and to have to relive it.

I contacted my panel once school started and had to come up with a new plan, a new contract, and start everything over from scratch. I try to find something that I could do before my deadline fell and I potentially failed and couldn’t graduate on time. I thought and I thought and eventually, by talking to one of my panel members, Mr. Maher. Although he teaches history, he’s more involved with his students than most teachers it seems. Since he does drama, directing and sometimes preforming too, he gets to know all of the kids well. He had had me in class before and he knew what work i was capable of and my strengths and weaknesses, as well as what I liked doing. Because he knows me we were able to find a project that would fit me perfectly. I would read and review 15 books! I was in love with the idea, especially since it was a topic I was comfortable with and it included my two strongest skills: reading and writing. He then talked to the other two panel members I have. There’s Mrs. Rose, a sweet teacher who cares deeply about her students and always tries to be involved and personally get to know each of them, even though she has at least a hundred at all times. And then there’s Mrs Robbins, I think I like her the best, she’s always funny and down to Earth, but she is also closer to my age than the other teachers so she knows and remembers exactly how high school was, which makes her an amazing teacher.

Once I found the perfect idea I could work with I created the new contract and action plan of how to execute my product and what the product actually entails. my product we decided would be a website that I build and having a review template and notes over the books I read and review. Mrs. Rose, who always wears gym sweats and a simple tee shirt and talks animatedly and is always very involved and engaged with everything she does, loved that I had found something with just the same amount of work, but still would be easy for me to do. Mrs. Robbins, the French teacher that loves me and everyone in the small class of six I have with her, was happy that I had found something I was completely comfortable doing and that I had thought to reach out for help. While this time, I was able to figure out and fix things before it was too late, next time I might not get so lucky I’ll always remember now that I have to always think things through before I start doing them, and as an impulsive person this is going to be really hard, but it’s something that I really need to work on. Because it means less work in the longrun.