Prossess Paper
Throughout the Capstone process, I had a lot of difficulty in deciding what to do and produce. I knew I wanted to learn something, but I didn’t quite know what. At first I wanted to do something political, and then I wanted to do something with Earth and the environment. My first few ideas were broadly dealing with anti-intellectualism and the decreasing value of truth in politics, and then I wanted to work on different ways to decrease the amount of trash I produce in order to jump start my life goal of producing next to no waste. I had trouble coming up with a product for both, but especially for the latter, and as much inquiry as I was using I couldn’t for the life of me think of something I could stay interested in throughout the year.
At the end of 2017, I made a promise to myself that I would read as much as I could at the start of 2018 and always have a book on hand, as I loved reading. I particularly got into non-fiction, which was unlike what I usually read before. By the time I came up with my final capstone idea, I had already read close to 15 books. It was several months into 2018 and the capstone deadline was fast approaching. I had officially given up on my trash reducing idea when I was admitted into the hospital at the end of March, and spent some of the time during the month I was out of school trying to come up with a new idea. Eventually and surprisingly quickly, I landed on the idea of picking 10 of the books I read and writing reviews of them on a blog.
I’ve always enjoyed reading and have considered sometimes what it would be like to review books, to think about why I like some and why I don’t like others, and is there a particular topic I’m actually interested in? At the end of 2017 I had compiled a list of 27 books to read, going through my bookshelf of books I bought long ago but have yet to read, as well as going on the Barnes & Noble website and scrolling through different genres I wanted to explore: politics, history, historical fiction, life science. Additionally, I approached my mentor, at first inadvertently, and then actively, for book suggestions. I especially took the suggestions of books he suggested when I was not specifically asking for them. I ended up reviewing two of these books: The Righteous Mind and Stamped from the Beginning. I did run into the problem of finding a way to meet the presentation requirement of the Capstone, and since I was quite busy making doctors appointments after my hospital stay and could not think of a doable way to do this part of the Capstone in person while also catching up with the school work I missed. I decided to put the reviews of the books on a custom blog. In each review, I not only shared my general thoughts of the books but I reflected on how well I understood the book, if it were non-fiction, and asked myself why I liked the book as much as I did or didn’t.
To create the blog I used the free website builder Weebly.com. The main page is the blog piece, and contains all ten books reviews. There is also an about page with my capstone abstract, and a press (or presentation) page which contains this process paper and the accompanying slides.
Other resources I used include: Barnes & Noble, my mentor, Kindle, viewing other book reviews throughout the internet.
There are a lot of things I would do differently if I did this Capstone over again. Specifically, I would have picked something to do much earlier, and begin brainstorming ideas much earlier. I definitely would have utilized the summer for this, and come up with an idea that truly appears to have taken the school year. Perhaps I would have been able to do the trash reducing idea as I could have had more time to change my wasteful lifestyle had I gotten the idea earlier. However, given my inevitable indecisiveness I’m proud I have something that does involve something I genuinely enjoy and love doing: reading. I am proud for having followed through with my promise to myself to read continuously through this half of 2018, and I’m especially proud that I was able to read particularly difficult books for me in a much shorter time span than I normally would have not even a year before today. Not only have I learned a great deal from the books themselves, but I learned that there are a lot more minutes, a lot more hours in the day that I have time to read than I ever thought before. I learned to manage my time well enough to include time to do this valuable hobby of mine, and, particularly recently, to still be able to read even when I was focusing intensing on my physical and mental health. In fact, I would be lying to myself if I said that reading did not play a role in my growth throughout not just this year but all my years of high school.
I am not sure how SLA is a better place because I was a student here. When I first got here in freshman year, I already thought SLA was an amazing place, and I still think so, but I don’t know exactly how I contributed. I do know that SLA contributed to my own growth and made me a better person, both to myself and others and in general. Without SLA I would not be reading as much as I do today, and I would not be thinking the way I do today. I hope this is the same for all future students.