Power, Privilege, & The Pur$e
Power, Privilege, and The Pur$e is an integrated Math and Humanities project, based around socioeconomics. Throughout the course of a few months, the entire 11th grade class studied social inequities in our society. Everything from the glass ceiling, to affirmative action, to Islamophobia, to racism, all the way to the wage gap and in between. At first I started off having no clue about the existence of these social injustices. And I wasn't the only one who didn't have an opinion. Later as I read more articles and excerpts, I began to realize how almost all of these inequities affect me, whether directly or indirectly.
The main purpose of this project was to bring awareness of these issues that impact our friends and families, that often get overlooked. But that wasn't just enough to learn about it in school. So our 11th grade class decided to host a symposium. A community forum for the public to hear our take on these topics while also giving them a platform to have a voice. As I learned more and more about these issues, especially ones that I felt a connection to, like how women are considered incompetent for STEM careers or how affirmative action helps disadvantaged minorities in college admissions, momentum began to pick up. I started to have opinions on these topics. And even though I wasn't ready to always share my own ideas, I was astound and proud to showcase my peers opinions. So immediately in the start of planning our symposium, I just knew I had to be on the media team.
Luckily, my teachers selected me to be a part of the media team. Our role was to share our event to others through various forms of media. It was our job to create logos and flyers, to design a website, startup Twitter & Instagram accounts, and even invite people through email. When I realized that I could combine both my two passions for connecting with the community and design, I knew I had to take on a big role in the media team. So I became the media team coordinator, by supervising the social media accounts and designing both the flyer and the website. I had a joy working with my team of ten. Although we had no experience working together, I noticed early on the potential and talents each person had. And I tried to utilize them. I had beautiful photographers taking portraits and stills for documentation. I had some gifted artists working on designing a logo and t-shirts. I even had a very tech-savy teammate that sorted out all the media equipment and even figured out how to live stream the event (although we did not actually live stream the event). I think that since we all had different thought processes and didn't have the same work ethics we had a bunch of setbacks in the process of the project, but things worked out very well the night of the symposium.
The main purpose of this project was to bring awareness of these issues that impact our friends and families, that often get overlooked. But that wasn't just enough to learn about it in school. So our 11th grade class decided to host a symposium. A community forum for the public to hear our take on these topics while also giving them a platform to have a voice. As I learned more and more about these issues, especially ones that I felt a connection to, like how women are considered incompetent for STEM careers or how affirmative action helps disadvantaged minorities in college admissions, momentum began to pick up. I started to have opinions on these topics. And even though I wasn't ready to always share my own ideas, I was astound and proud to showcase my peers opinions. So immediately in the start of planning our symposium, I just knew I had to be on the media team.
Luckily, my teachers selected me to be a part of the media team. Our role was to share our event to others through various forms of media. It was our job to create logos and flyers, to design a website, startup Twitter & Instagram accounts, and even invite people through email. When I realized that I could combine both my two passions for connecting with the community and design, I knew I had to take on a big role in the media team. So I became the media team coordinator, by supervising the social media accounts and designing both the flyer and the website. I had a joy working with my team of ten. Although we had no experience working together, I noticed early on the potential and talents each person had. And I tried to utilize them. I had beautiful photographers taking portraits and stills for documentation. I had some gifted artists working on designing a logo and t-shirts. I even had a very tech-savy teammate that sorted out all the media equipment and even figured out how to live stream the event (although we did not actually live stream the event). I think that since we all had different thought processes and didn't have the same work ethics we had a bunch of setbacks in the process of the project, but things worked out very well the night of the symposium.
I also enjoyed collaborating a lot with the fundraising and event organizer teams. During the day of the symposium at school, I frantically ran around going through a checklist that we had all the media team equipment packed and charged, then after that I jumped into other roles to help people with their responsibilities where I could. I packed cars up with tables, easels, and food. I also helped people prepare speeches and practice their opening statements.
Towards the later part of the morning, I helped Thomas, our designated printer, to edit the event program and print posters and get them to people to glue them onto poster boards.
During the afternoon, I was sent early to the venue with three other students to set up. I had not expected to have stepped into the role of an event organizer until the day of. The three of us worked with the managers of Vista Community Clinic, to set the event up in sections, as it was a fully functioning clinic at the time, and we had a small time frame to set up. After the second group of students arrived, I was very surprised to see how everyone worked together. About eight students worked together to move things to the right locations and repair things broken during transportation, all without any supervision or direction from an adult. It was quite a great scene to see a group of students communicating so well, and not complaining if someone took charge and gave them orders.
During the symposium night, I took still photos as documentation for two panels. I was assigned to stay in the same room with my partner who would be filming the entirety of the panel sessions. However, five minutes into the first session I noticed he was not there, and later found out that he was not going to show up. Unfortunately, I had not been prepared to videotape, so I had no tripod. I knew it was important to get some video of the panels, so I decided to hand-held film the most important and heated parts of the discussion. While I worried if I had enough battery for both sessions (I had two fully charged ones), in the first fifteen minutes of the second session my once-empty 16GB memory card ran out of space. In order to continue taking photos and videos I had to upload the files to my computer. However this took too long, so I uploaded half of the content and then continued to take stills and video of the event. Even though things didn't always work out with the media team, I always was able to find a solution and pull through.
Through the project I learned a lot about working with people who don't function the same way as me. And all though I've had to work with difficult groups in the past, it's always a new and good experience to collaborate with people you don't normally work with. However, I think overall I learned more about myself and my strengths and weaknesses throughout the project. I learned that having an opinion and changing your opinion isn't exactly a bad thing. I usually feel uncomfortable expressing my opinions and intimidated by others who seem to have more background knowledge on the things that we are discussing, but I realized it's okay to form an opinion based on what you know and be open minded to things when new knowledge arises. I also learned that it's okay to try new things if you have an interest in them. I'm not normally good with running social media content or photography, but since I had an interest in it and was passionate about designing the website, I got to practice it and still learned a lot from it. The photos were not very good but at least I got the experience to use a DSLR camera. I also realized that even though I'm not always comfortable with vocal communication, there were ways for me to use my voice in the project. For example, I wrote the opening speech of the event for my friend who would be welcoming the audience. I was able to use design to communicate the event through the flyer I made and the website. I even got to send out the invitation emails and call local news outlets to cover our event. I was even astound when I saw the amount of people who turned up, because of how many people we invited. Even through all the struggles and hard work, I had so much fun planning and carrying out a symposium, and I would love to do it again.
Towards the later part of the morning, I helped Thomas, our designated printer, to edit the event program and print posters and get them to people to glue them onto poster boards.
During the afternoon, I was sent early to the venue with three other students to set up. I had not expected to have stepped into the role of an event organizer until the day of. The three of us worked with the managers of Vista Community Clinic, to set the event up in sections, as it was a fully functioning clinic at the time, and we had a small time frame to set up. After the second group of students arrived, I was very surprised to see how everyone worked together. About eight students worked together to move things to the right locations and repair things broken during transportation, all without any supervision or direction from an adult. It was quite a great scene to see a group of students communicating so well, and not complaining if someone took charge and gave them orders.
During the symposium night, I took still photos as documentation for two panels. I was assigned to stay in the same room with my partner who would be filming the entirety of the panel sessions. However, five minutes into the first session I noticed he was not there, and later found out that he was not going to show up. Unfortunately, I had not been prepared to videotape, so I had no tripod. I knew it was important to get some video of the panels, so I decided to hand-held film the most important and heated parts of the discussion. While I worried if I had enough battery for both sessions (I had two fully charged ones), in the first fifteen minutes of the second session my once-empty 16GB memory card ran out of space. In order to continue taking photos and videos I had to upload the files to my computer. However this took too long, so I uploaded half of the content and then continued to take stills and video of the event. Even though things didn't always work out with the media team, I always was able to find a solution and pull through.
Through the project I learned a lot about working with people who don't function the same way as me. And all though I've had to work with difficult groups in the past, it's always a new and good experience to collaborate with people you don't normally work with. However, I think overall I learned more about myself and my strengths and weaknesses throughout the project. I learned that having an opinion and changing your opinion isn't exactly a bad thing. I usually feel uncomfortable expressing my opinions and intimidated by others who seem to have more background knowledge on the things that we are discussing, but I realized it's okay to form an opinion based on what you know and be open minded to things when new knowledge arises. I also learned that it's okay to try new things if you have an interest in them. I'm not normally good with running social media content or photography, but since I had an interest in it and was passionate about designing the website, I got to practice it and still learned a lot from it. The photos were not very good but at least I got the experience to use a DSLR camera. I also realized that even though I'm not always comfortable with vocal communication, there were ways for me to use my voice in the project. For example, I wrote the opening speech of the event for my friend who would be welcoming the audience. I was able to use design to communicate the event through the flyer I made and the website. I even got to send out the invitation emails and call local news outlets to cover our event. I was even astound when I saw the amount of people who turned up, because of how many people we invited. Even through all the struggles and hard work, I had so much fun planning and carrying out a symposium, and I would love to do it again.
A few photos I took from the night of the symposium.