Sophomore Inspire week With
Adaptive Sports
Sophomore inspire week was honestly a really cool opportunity to get a glance at some real work environment through volunteer work attended by groups of students. The site I personally chose to attend was the Adaptive Sports Association. This is an organization dedicated to assisting those unable to ski under normal circumstances, to try the sport out. I chose this due to a vested interest in the sport, as well as organizations such as adaptive. So basically what the day entailed for each student was that they would show up to adaptive sports in the morning, where they could see which student and instructor they would be with for the day posted up on a whiteboard. From there we would take a look at our student’s file to get an idea of their personality and needs when it comes to improving at skiing, because students would have different instructors each time this was necessary to help keep them improving from one session to the next. From there we would participate in a small group meeting where we could meet our instructors for the day (the people we were helping out.) Finally we would meet our student, who were generally of special needs; and this was the dynamic of all three days we were with adaptive and honestly it was really cool.
Adaptive Sports Slideshow: https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1bdzNp2WaAy45m2HBI_ClWgUtp-illRV9gwS5VbavV8M/edit#slide=id.p
So my takeaways from this project really revolve around the dynamic between me and all of my instructors. Coming into this I really expected to be patronised by the older adults and delegated to menial tasks, so I was really surprised with how professionally they approached me and treated me as an equal. This was honestly super gratifying to me and really motivated me to get super involved and be enthusiastic about the work. So I suppose the lesson I learned here has to do with my ability to work with other people, and my ability to self motivate. I’m quickly learning that work isn’t really gratifying if you don’t have much of a stake in it, for example if I were to work with a group of people where I delegated most of the menial tasks to my group members while I did the important stuff, they’d likely feel less ownership over the overall project and be less content as a result. Maybe to restate this sentiment in a more tidy fashion, I learned how to cooperate and communicate with other people, and a little bit of what I could do to take the lead when working with other people to make a better working environment.
So to write about the time management piece of my sophomore inspire week is rather difficult. That’s because the philosophy of adaptive sports isn’t exactly timely. The thing they hold in highest regard above all else when it comes to teaching these students is to have fun. And so if that means an instructor is going to lay in the snow with a student and talk about imaginary bears, so be it (also true story). Now it’s not like we didn’t have any time management it’s just that it didn’t as directly pertain to our work. Now to set a little bit of context, we were given a lot of freedom to go do what we want once we either got lunch break or finished for the day. So something we had to end up doing is tracking the time during our lunch run to make sure we got back in time. Or in the cases where we had finished for the day, we had to make sure to get back in time to help the staff clean up and catch our shuttle home.
So I suppose the ability from the Youscience thing that I saw in my Inspire week, was my ability of articulation and communication, as well as problem solving. For the most part as we were working with kids, who as kids can be very difficult at times. I had to be patient and be able to articulate to the kids what we wanted to see happen and what they needed to be done. What made this harder is it had to be done in a way that they could not only agree with, but also understand. What noticed is that as we got the hang of this process working with the kids would become significantly easier and more fluid throughout the day. Now the problem solving piece is relatively straight forward, we often would have to hypothesize and experiment to help try and teach the kids to ski. When we would see one thing not working we would need to try something new. There was also the dynamic aspect of as the kids get better they need to do harder stuff and as we ran into harder terrain new problems might arise.
The skills that have been emphasized during our school projects that really transferred over to inspire week were really centered around group cooperation, and a certain amount of resilience and patience. So the group cooperation piece really came in handy with communicating with my instructor so that we could give the student the best experience possible, and therefore we had to be vigilant and talk to our instructor to see how we could best help. As for resilience and patience, at Animas highschool stress centered around projects is sometimes high, and sometimes we have to go through a few failures before we can draft our final working projects. This was actually pretty similar when it comes to trying to find out what works for the needs of our students. For example working on my second day I had a student who was super energetic, but just would not cooperate and was a bit of a terror. However through experimentation we found that he could have fun and begin learning how to ski after we helped guide him with our own ski pole as it would give him a bit of something to grab onto.
So advice for future Sophomore students who hopefully get to experience this. First and foremost do what sounds cool and honestly leave your friend group if you have to. My experience with my Sophomore Inspire kinda dictated that I didn’t really need to be with my friends while I worked, it was much more about interacting with the instructors and students and really flexing my people working skills. Maybe take that with a grain of salt however, as I can’t really speak for what the other opportunities were like. Second word of advice come in thinking of this like an internship, what I noticed was that coming into this I was treated with an unexpected amount of respect and responsibility and thus coming acting like an intern will really help with meeting the expectations associated with that respect and responsibility. So final word of advice be patient and try not to get frustrated with the turn of events, you’re sorta there to work. So this sentiment comes from an experience in my Inspire week. Largely our work only lasted half a school day then we’d get the opportunity to ski the rest of the time; however sometimes there would be 1 or 2 students who would have to work the whole day and this did cause some people to get frustrated. So alls I’m saying is with stuff like this just remember why you’re there, ya know.
Adaptive Sports Slideshow: https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1bdzNp2WaAy45m2HBI_ClWgUtp-illRV9gwS5VbavV8M/edit#slide=id.p
So my takeaways from this project really revolve around the dynamic between me and all of my instructors. Coming into this I really expected to be patronised by the older adults and delegated to menial tasks, so I was really surprised with how professionally they approached me and treated me as an equal. This was honestly super gratifying to me and really motivated me to get super involved and be enthusiastic about the work. So I suppose the lesson I learned here has to do with my ability to work with other people, and my ability to self motivate. I’m quickly learning that work isn’t really gratifying if you don’t have much of a stake in it, for example if I were to work with a group of people where I delegated most of the menial tasks to my group members while I did the important stuff, they’d likely feel less ownership over the overall project and be less content as a result. Maybe to restate this sentiment in a more tidy fashion, I learned how to cooperate and communicate with other people, and a little bit of what I could do to take the lead when working with other people to make a better working environment.
So to write about the time management piece of my sophomore inspire week is rather difficult. That’s because the philosophy of adaptive sports isn’t exactly timely. The thing they hold in highest regard above all else when it comes to teaching these students is to have fun. And so if that means an instructor is going to lay in the snow with a student and talk about imaginary bears, so be it (also true story). Now it’s not like we didn’t have any time management it’s just that it didn’t as directly pertain to our work. Now to set a little bit of context, we were given a lot of freedom to go do what we want once we either got lunch break or finished for the day. So something we had to end up doing is tracking the time during our lunch run to make sure we got back in time. Or in the cases where we had finished for the day, we had to make sure to get back in time to help the staff clean up and catch our shuttle home.
So I suppose the ability from the Youscience thing that I saw in my Inspire week, was my ability of articulation and communication, as well as problem solving. For the most part as we were working with kids, who as kids can be very difficult at times. I had to be patient and be able to articulate to the kids what we wanted to see happen and what they needed to be done. What made this harder is it had to be done in a way that they could not only agree with, but also understand. What noticed is that as we got the hang of this process working with the kids would become significantly easier and more fluid throughout the day. Now the problem solving piece is relatively straight forward, we often would have to hypothesize and experiment to help try and teach the kids to ski. When we would see one thing not working we would need to try something new. There was also the dynamic aspect of as the kids get better they need to do harder stuff and as we ran into harder terrain new problems might arise.
The skills that have been emphasized during our school projects that really transferred over to inspire week were really centered around group cooperation, and a certain amount of resilience and patience. So the group cooperation piece really came in handy with communicating with my instructor so that we could give the student the best experience possible, and therefore we had to be vigilant and talk to our instructor to see how we could best help. As for resilience and patience, at Animas highschool stress centered around projects is sometimes high, and sometimes we have to go through a few failures before we can draft our final working projects. This was actually pretty similar when it comes to trying to find out what works for the needs of our students. For example working on my second day I had a student who was super energetic, but just would not cooperate and was a bit of a terror. However through experimentation we found that he could have fun and begin learning how to ski after we helped guide him with our own ski pole as it would give him a bit of something to grab onto.
So advice for future Sophomore students who hopefully get to experience this. First and foremost do what sounds cool and honestly leave your friend group if you have to. My experience with my Sophomore Inspire kinda dictated that I didn’t really need to be with my friends while I worked, it was much more about interacting with the instructors and students and really flexing my people working skills. Maybe take that with a grain of salt however, as I can’t really speak for what the other opportunities were like. Second word of advice come in thinking of this like an internship, what I noticed was that coming into this I was treated with an unexpected amount of respect and responsibility and thus coming acting like an intern will really help with meeting the expectations associated with that respect and responsibility. So final word of advice be patient and try not to get frustrated with the turn of events, you’re sorta there to work. So this sentiment comes from an experience in my Inspire week. Largely our work only lasted half a school day then we’d get the opportunity to ski the rest of the time; however sometimes there would be 1 or 2 students who would have to work the whole day and this did cause some people to get frustrated. So alls I’m saying is with stuff like this just remember why you’re there, ya know.
Model United Nations Sem 2
Intro
Currently one of the largest threats to the world as a whole, is the global stockpile of nuclear weapons. Hypothetically if every single nuke currently in existence were to explode, it would have enough destructive calamity to destroy the planet multiple times over. This underlying issue is what we were trying to address in the second piece of our MUN. Now one may think “well what if we just get rid of all the nuclear weapons?” Well I soon figured out this isn’t so simple, this is due to how international affairs tie into different countrie’s incentive to cooperate with solving this issue. For example some countries are completely unwilling to cooperate and disassemble their nuclear arsenals unless another country does it first. Or some countries just won’t because they need the power provided by the development of a nuclear arsenal. In short, this issue is complex, which made for any interesting dynamic in the MUN conference because no one wants to die, but nukes can surely provide, so what do we do?
Policy Paper
The People’s Republic of China
Ben Garofalo
Policy Statement:
The People’s Republic of China recognises the threat that the nuclear bomb poses to themselves, and the world as a whole. As such we believe in the non-proliferation with the objective of the eventual disassembly of all existing nuclear weapons.
Problem Description:
Since its creation during WW2, the nuclear bomb has remained as one of the most destructive weapons in existence and as one of the largest threats to humanity as a whole. If the U.S were to drop their strongest nuclear weapon, the B-83, it could kill more than 1-million people within the first 24 hours. If the USSR dropped their strongest weapon it could further kill up to even 7-million people. (Kirk) Furthermore there are currently about 14,000 nuclear weapons in existence, with countries such as the U.S and Russia potentially planning to produce more. At the moment the world is being propped upon the nuclear deterrence theory, that by the assurance of mutual destruction states are incentivised to resort to diplomacy. However this is fickle and relies on the rational thought of all parties involved. China detonated its first nuclear weapon on Oct. 16, 1964. Since then it has developed an estimated 300 nuclear weapons, however it has maintained a no first strike policy. Their primary belief being in diplomacy over warfare and priority placed upon survivability. This is why China believes in the non proliferation and eventual disassembly of all existing nuclear weapons.
Solutions:
We the people’s Republic of China, have resolved ourselves for the eventual complete disintegration of nuclear weapons of mass destruction. To fulfill this purpose we propose the enforcement of the Safe Start program as well as additional investment in means of thorough detection of WMDs. The initial step of this proposition would be to extend the Safe Start program from term based to indefinite. This program should be held applicable to the U.S and Russia initially until their total nuclear arsenals and deployment means are reduced to acceptable levels, judged by associated of the IAEA. At this point the Safe Start program should be applicable to all nuclear weapons states. As for further enforcement of nuclear detection means; we propose that all countries donate a small percent of their GDP to the IAEA organization. Furthermore all countries should open their borders to IAEA representatives to verify the process of disassembly of WMDs. Lastly we propose an annual report from nuclear weapons states verifying the state of their nuclear arsenal to the U.N council.
Citations:
Kirk, A. (2017). How many nukes are in the world and what could they destroy?. [online] The Telegraph. Available at: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/0/many-nukes-world-could-destroy/ [Accessed 30 Jan. 2020].
Nti.org. (2015). Chinese Nuclear Weapons | Development of Nuclear Program in China | NTI. [online] Available at: https://www.nti.org/learn/countries/china/nuclear/ [Accessed 30 Jan. 2020].
Quinn, L. (2019). China’s Stance on Nuclear Arms Control and New START | Arms Control Association. [online] Armscontrol.org. Available at: https://www.armscontrol.org/blog/2019-08-23/chinas-stance-nuclear-arms-control-new-start [Accessed 21 Jan. 2020].
Riqiang, W. (2019). Trilateral arms control initiative: A Chinese perspective - Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. [online] Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. Available at: https://thebulletin.org/2019/09/trilateral-arms-control-initiative-a-chinese-perspective/ [Accessed 21 Jan. 2020].
Resolution
First Committee
Signatories
People’s Republic of China Resolution
The General Assembly,
Realizing that a desire for survival is a trait shared common amongst all given nations on the planet,
Noting with deep concern that the use of the nuclear bomb my only bring calamity and abhorrent loss of life and further damage to the planet lasting years on end,
Aware of the assurance for destruction of all parties involved in the event of nuclear warfare,
Fully believing that a nuclear arsenal provides international leveraging to any nation who possesses one,
Keeping in mind that no nation will easily discard their entire nuclear arsenals so long as the threat of foreign nuclear weapons looms,
Convinced of the necessity for transparency and cooperation from all nations in regards to possession and development of nuclear weapons,
Noting further the necessity for means of verification of nuclear weapons,
a. reinstate the Safe Start Program indefinitely for the U.S and Russia;
b. Enforce this program upon all nuclear powers once the U.S and Russia’s nuclear arsenals are reduced to acceptable levels;
Reflection
The system of the U.N is certainly a complex one and honestly it sometimes isn’t the most proficient. This is actually partially due to the priority placed upon diplomacy; not all countries want the same thing, and so one country’s response to a given issue may not be the same as the best case scenario for another country. This really showed with the nuclear proliferation piece, it was somewhat apparent that conflict arose even when multiple countries want the same ends, but soon find the proposed means to be no good. This means that to really tackle any global issue there’s most likely a compromise somewhere, and the level that countries really need to compromise changes from issue to issue and the stakes with each one. For example with the nuclear proliferation issue, what was potentially at stake was the existence of every country in attendance. No one really wants to die, so it was easy to appeal to the same ends, “reduce or completely get rid of the nukes.” However the compromise emerged in the means, and that's where a lot of the diplomacy, and international relations came into play to try and create a potential solution.
I know I have definitely grown as a delegate throughout this second conference, with an overall increased presence, and growth in my speech writing ability. My speech presented from the first conference was lackluster and probably brought my performance in that conference down quite a bit. However my second speech performance was much stronger with a specific appeal to logos, or the logical outlook with a fairly reasonable issue prompt and proposed solution. The only issue being that I really could’ve elaborated upon my proposed solution with specificity. My specific growth as a learner; I suppose I could argue that I learned a bit when it comes to my ability to appeal a proposal to an audience. A concept I’ve actually learned about in the past is the appeal of pathos, logos, and ethos. The appeal to emotion, logic, and personal investment in the author. Well anyways I was able to practice an appeal to pathos and logos. In my speech I performed to condemn the nuclear bomb using words such as abhorrent, and framing it’s very negative aspects. Where I practiced logos however was relenting by also framing some of the complications in the matter. Such as that WMDAs provide international power on a diplomatic level, likely because no one really wants to ignore someone with the potential to cause that much damage. Anyways what I’m trying to state is maybe I’ve improved my ability to appeal to my peers using my words, something that could likely be very useful to me as a future employee.
Something that actually surprised me in the conference was how much everyone’s end goals really aligned. I kind of expected there to be at least a couple of eccentric countries who were fixated on developing a nuclear arsenal. The closest we ever really got to this was with Russia, but it wasn’t something that was overbearing, they were still alright with non proliferation. So what really changes for me is some of my perspective when it comes to the way I view foreign countries. Of course it’s not like I’m actually meeting the real representatives in this conference, but I think I can begin to perceive these countrie’s philosophies and juxtapose that with my mental image of those countries. For example, my relationship with North korea in this conference; What i had expected to happen was for North Korea to be very eccentric and hard to deal with for my agenda. What ended up happening was that we actually aligned pretty well, our outlooks and fears for the distribution of nuclear weapons was similar and thus we were vying for similar resolutions. This begs a question for me; how much of what I see is clouded by someone else's ideas, and how much of it is really the truth. We can vilify countries all we want, but is that really what they are?
If I could do something a bit differently, I would probably look more extensively upon potential solutions. It was just something that I was somewhat lacking in compared to other students, and it would’ve really been better had I been able to extensively detail an action plan to cover all my necessary bases. This is partially due to me needing to compromise a bit when I agreed to other’s proposed resolutions. But primarily as a more personal thought, I wish I could’ve really written a resolution with a few other students just to get that experience of communicating and formulating a perfect proposed action plan. This would’ve made an additional experience of collaborating, and communicating, as well as compiling knowledge and individual philosophies to make a very interesting dynamic experience during that period of the conference. What this would impact for me is sort the pride I take in this project. I suppose I could state as being that had I worked for more knowledge around solutions so that I could work with my peers to collaborate upon proposing a solution. I would have a real piece of something that is important to the project and is something I can claim partial ownership of.
Currently one of the largest threats to the world as a whole, is the global stockpile of nuclear weapons. Hypothetically if every single nuke currently in existence were to explode, it would have enough destructive calamity to destroy the planet multiple times over. This underlying issue is what we were trying to address in the second piece of our MUN. Now one may think “well what if we just get rid of all the nuclear weapons?” Well I soon figured out this isn’t so simple, this is due to how international affairs tie into different countrie’s incentive to cooperate with solving this issue. For example some countries are completely unwilling to cooperate and disassemble their nuclear arsenals unless another country does it first. Or some countries just won’t because they need the power provided by the development of a nuclear arsenal. In short, this issue is complex, which made for any interesting dynamic in the MUN conference because no one wants to die, but nukes can surely provide, so what do we do?
Policy Paper
The People’s Republic of China
Ben Garofalo
Policy Statement:
The People’s Republic of China recognises the threat that the nuclear bomb poses to themselves, and the world as a whole. As such we believe in the non-proliferation with the objective of the eventual disassembly of all existing nuclear weapons.
Problem Description:
Since its creation during WW2, the nuclear bomb has remained as one of the most destructive weapons in existence and as one of the largest threats to humanity as a whole. If the U.S were to drop their strongest nuclear weapon, the B-83, it could kill more than 1-million people within the first 24 hours. If the USSR dropped their strongest weapon it could further kill up to even 7-million people. (Kirk) Furthermore there are currently about 14,000 nuclear weapons in existence, with countries such as the U.S and Russia potentially planning to produce more. At the moment the world is being propped upon the nuclear deterrence theory, that by the assurance of mutual destruction states are incentivised to resort to diplomacy. However this is fickle and relies on the rational thought of all parties involved. China detonated its first nuclear weapon on Oct. 16, 1964. Since then it has developed an estimated 300 nuclear weapons, however it has maintained a no first strike policy. Their primary belief being in diplomacy over warfare and priority placed upon survivability. This is why China believes in the non proliferation and eventual disassembly of all existing nuclear weapons.
Solutions:
We the people’s Republic of China, have resolved ourselves for the eventual complete disintegration of nuclear weapons of mass destruction. To fulfill this purpose we propose the enforcement of the Safe Start program as well as additional investment in means of thorough detection of WMDs. The initial step of this proposition would be to extend the Safe Start program from term based to indefinite. This program should be held applicable to the U.S and Russia initially until their total nuclear arsenals and deployment means are reduced to acceptable levels, judged by associated of the IAEA. At this point the Safe Start program should be applicable to all nuclear weapons states. As for further enforcement of nuclear detection means; we propose that all countries donate a small percent of their GDP to the IAEA organization. Furthermore all countries should open their borders to IAEA representatives to verify the process of disassembly of WMDs. Lastly we propose an annual report from nuclear weapons states verifying the state of their nuclear arsenal to the U.N council.
Citations:
Kirk, A. (2017). How many nukes are in the world and what could they destroy?. [online] The Telegraph. Available at: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/0/many-nukes-world-could-destroy/ [Accessed 30 Jan. 2020].
Nti.org. (2015). Chinese Nuclear Weapons | Development of Nuclear Program in China | NTI. [online] Available at: https://www.nti.org/learn/countries/china/nuclear/ [Accessed 30 Jan. 2020].
Quinn, L. (2019). China’s Stance on Nuclear Arms Control and New START | Arms Control Association. [online] Armscontrol.org. Available at: https://www.armscontrol.org/blog/2019-08-23/chinas-stance-nuclear-arms-control-new-start [Accessed 21 Jan. 2020].
Riqiang, W. (2019). Trilateral arms control initiative: A Chinese perspective - Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. [online] Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. Available at: https://thebulletin.org/2019/09/trilateral-arms-control-initiative-a-chinese-perspective/ [Accessed 21 Jan. 2020].
Resolution
First Committee
Signatories
People’s Republic of China Resolution
The General Assembly,
Realizing that a desire for survival is a trait shared common amongst all given nations on the planet,
Noting with deep concern that the use of the nuclear bomb my only bring calamity and abhorrent loss of life and further damage to the planet lasting years on end,
Aware of the assurance for destruction of all parties involved in the event of nuclear warfare,
Fully believing that a nuclear arsenal provides international leveraging to any nation who possesses one,
Keeping in mind that no nation will easily discard their entire nuclear arsenals so long as the threat of foreign nuclear weapons looms,
Convinced of the necessity for transparency and cooperation from all nations in regards to possession and development of nuclear weapons,
Noting further the necessity for means of verification of nuclear weapons,
- Reminds that we should prioritize survivability all while pursuing non proliferation and eventual elimination of nuclear weapons;
- Urges that we take action to do this by enforcing a “no first strike” policy, that would create preventative measures for any initial strike using WMD’s;
- Further proclaims we should:
a. reinstate the Safe Start Program indefinitely for the U.S and Russia;
b. Enforce this program upon all nuclear powers once the U.S and Russia’s nuclear arsenals are reduced to acceptable levels;
- Supports the pursuit further means for verification of nuclear weapons:
- By the administering of national reports on this information holding nuclear weapons;
- By investing in advancing detection methods via IEA;
- Further recommends the reinforcement of control and security of fissile material used to make WMDAs.
Reflection
The system of the U.N is certainly a complex one and honestly it sometimes isn’t the most proficient. This is actually partially due to the priority placed upon diplomacy; not all countries want the same thing, and so one country’s response to a given issue may not be the same as the best case scenario for another country. This really showed with the nuclear proliferation piece, it was somewhat apparent that conflict arose even when multiple countries want the same ends, but soon find the proposed means to be no good. This means that to really tackle any global issue there’s most likely a compromise somewhere, and the level that countries really need to compromise changes from issue to issue and the stakes with each one. For example with the nuclear proliferation issue, what was potentially at stake was the existence of every country in attendance. No one really wants to die, so it was easy to appeal to the same ends, “reduce or completely get rid of the nukes.” However the compromise emerged in the means, and that's where a lot of the diplomacy, and international relations came into play to try and create a potential solution.
I know I have definitely grown as a delegate throughout this second conference, with an overall increased presence, and growth in my speech writing ability. My speech presented from the first conference was lackluster and probably brought my performance in that conference down quite a bit. However my second speech performance was much stronger with a specific appeal to logos, or the logical outlook with a fairly reasonable issue prompt and proposed solution. The only issue being that I really could’ve elaborated upon my proposed solution with specificity. My specific growth as a learner; I suppose I could argue that I learned a bit when it comes to my ability to appeal a proposal to an audience. A concept I’ve actually learned about in the past is the appeal of pathos, logos, and ethos. The appeal to emotion, logic, and personal investment in the author. Well anyways I was able to practice an appeal to pathos and logos. In my speech I performed to condemn the nuclear bomb using words such as abhorrent, and framing it’s very negative aspects. Where I practiced logos however was relenting by also framing some of the complications in the matter. Such as that WMDAs provide international power on a diplomatic level, likely because no one really wants to ignore someone with the potential to cause that much damage. Anyways what I’m trying to state is maybe I’ve improved my ability to appeal to my peers using my words, something that could likely be very useful to me as a future employee.
Something that actually surprised me in the conference was how much everyone’s end goals really aligned. I kind of expected there to be at least a couple of eccentric countries who were fixated on developing a nuclear arsenal. The closest we ever really got to this was with Russia, but it wasn’t something that was overbearing, they were still alright with non proliferation. So what really changes for me is some of my perspective when it comes to the way I view foreign countries. Of course it’s not like I’m actually meeting the real representatives in this conference, but I think I can begin to perceive these countrie’s philosophies and juxtapose that with my mental image of those countries. For example, my relationship with North korea in this conference; What i had expected to happen was for North Korea to be very eccentric and hard to deal with for my agenda. What ended up happening was that we actually aligned pretty well, our outlooks and fears for the distribution of nuclear weapons was similar and thus we were vying for similar resolutions. This begs a question for me; how much of what I see is clouded by someone else's ideas, and how much of it is really the truth. We can vilify countries all we want, but is that really what they are?
If I could do something a bit differently, I would probably look more extensively upon potential solutions. It was just something that I was somewhat lacking in compared to other students, and it would’ve really been better had I been able to extensively detail an action plan to cover all my necessary bases. This is partially due to me needing to compromise a bit when I agreed to other’s proposed resolutions. But primarily as a more personal thought, I wish I could’ve really written a resolution with a few other students just to get that experience of communicating and formulating a perfect proposed action plan. This would’ve made an additional experience of collaborating, and communicating, as well as compiling knowledge and individual philosophies to make a very interesting dynamic experience during that period of the conference. What this would impact for me is sort the pride I take in this project. I suppose I could state as being that had I worked for more knowledge around solutions so that I could work with my peers to collaborate upon proposing a solution. I would have a real piece of something that is important to the project and is something I can claim partial ownership of.
Model United Nations Sem 1
Model U.N is a project based around creating a model of international society specifically the U.N. In each Pod students were given a specific country to represent, and such we needed to adopt their opinions and in some cases their behaviors during conference. What conference is, is a conference of the United Nations around international issues and potential solutions found through consensus. In the case of our first conference, we talked about the Venezuela crisis and the political and economic problems driving people to flee the country en masse.
The People’s Republic of China (Policy Paper)
Ben Garofalo
While China does support the rights of Venezuelan refugees, Venezuela has rights as a sovereign and independent nation, and as such the central government and president Nicholas Maduro should be able to move to solve their economic and political crisis without fear of direct foreign intervention.
In recent years Venezuela has faced hardships within their economic and political climates, leading to political confusion and economic difficulties for its citizens. The economic crisis is so dire that Venezuelan citizens are struggling to even buy food for themselves, furthermore things like medical services are beginning to falter and fail entirely due to factors such as Venezuela’s electricity problem, and many doctors leaving the country all together. Researchers say that more than 3 million people have left the country within the recent years, this is due to economic damages among the worst within Latin America {Casey/Gonzales}.Yet even as such, China believes that the issue in Venezuela is very much based domestically and thus should be solved by its people. As the Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson stated, “We have to point out that which political party rules the country is the domestic affair of that country and should be decided by its people. With whom a country will cooperate should also be decided by the country itself.”
In order to help solve the issue in Venezuela, we as China believe that the U.N should take an approach of assisting the Venezuelan government and its people to enforce a standard of stability and development. However given the historic track record of direct foreign intervention by countries such as the U.S {Kinzer}, we should approach this issue as a domestic one for Venezuela and its citizens. As such we as an international society should create an environment so that Venezuela may optimally perform its duty to its citizens of stability and development. Albeit that direct foreign intervention is off the table for China, we believe we can communicate with Nicholas maduro and by extension the Venezuelan government, to provide foreign aid via things such as medical supplies{Onum}. Our overall intent is to provide support by recognizing Nocholas Maduro, and assisting in the objective of recovering Venezuela, fixing the economic crisis, and recreating an overall higher standard of life for venezuelan Citizens.
Ben Garofalo
While China does support the rights of Venezuelan refugees, Venezuela has rights as a sovereign and independent nation, and as such the central government and president Nicholas Maduro should be able to move to solve their economic and political crisis without fear of direct foreign intervention.
In recent years Venezuela has faced hardships within their economic and political climates, leading to political confusion and economic difficulties for its citizens. The economic crisis is so dire that Venezuelan citizens are struggling to even buy food for themselves, furthermore things like medical services are beginning to falter and fail entirely due to factors such as Venezuela’s electricity problem, and many doctors leaving the country all together. Researchers say that more than 3 million people have left the country within the recent years, this is due to economic damages among the worst within Latin America {Casey/Gonzales}.Yet even as such, China believes that the issue in Venezuela is very much based domestically and thus should be solved by its people. As the Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson stated, “We have to point out that which political party rules the country is the domestic affair of that country and should be decided by its people. With whom a country will cooperate should also be decided by the country itself.”
In order to help solve the issue in Venezuela, we as China believe that the U.N should take an approach of assisting the Venezuelan government and its people to enforce a standard of stability and development. However given the historic track record of direct foreign intervention by countries such as the U.S {Kinzer}, we should approach this issue as a domestic one for Venezuela and its citizens. As such we as an international society should create an environment so that Venezuela may optimally perform its duty to its citizens of stability and development. Albeit that direct foreign intervention is off the table for China, we believe we can communicate with Nicholas maduro and by extension the Venezuelan government, to provide foreign aid via things such as medical supplies{Onum}. Our overall intent is to provide support by recognizing Nocholas Maduro, and assisting in the objective of recovering Venezuela, fixing the economic crisis, and recreating an overall higher standard of life for venezuelan Citizens.
MUN Reflection
My highlight for this project was definitely collaborating with classmates who held a similar disposition to the presented issues. I really enjoyed talking with my “allies” on a given course of actions and what we wanted to see happen. A more specific example would be when we were trying to leverage resolution 1-C to be something more favorable for our countries’ opinions, given that this was the most neutral resolution and thus the most likely to be voted. Essentially what were trying to do was to make amendments to this resolution so that we might accomplish more of our objectives, which was essentially to directly support Venezuela and its government. I think the reason I liked this piece so much was because it felt sort of like a game, I had allies and enemies and my allies and I were trying to prevent the opposing opinion from getting what they wanted while vying for our objectives. This also made it so that it just wasn’t my individual responsibility to represent my opinion, the actions and statements of my allies also had bearing on the representation of our overall standpoint.
Honestly I’ve grown quite a bit during this project, with the first MUN conference behind me I think it’s shaping up to be one of the most interesting and fun projects I’ve done at Animas. Coming into the project I sorta felt uncertain as to what a MUN conference would shape up to be with me and my classmates, but I didn’t feel too disappointed upon the end of our first conference. Over the course of this project I have gained a lot of knowledge of how international society works, and just what the U.N is and what it tries to do. I’ve learned about conflict and solution, and the importance of consensus when it comes to acting upon a problem. Furthermore I learned of the personal interests and philosophies of other countries and how that plays into their role in the U.N and furthermore how the U.N might handle a given issue. Despite my procrastination and sometimes mediocre work, I’ve actually found this project to be quite interesting and am looking forward to seeing how the next conference might go down.
In truth I wasn’t much prepared for this conference, which was especially apparent on the first day of conference. I felt like I couldn’t follow the conversation well and got lost easily, at the moment it somehow felt like I wasn’t very well versed with anything and thus lost a lot of my confidence to speak in the moment. Additionally I didn’t have a printed speech, which made me 100x more nervous to actually do my speech, and in the end I resorted to using my phone to read my speech off. This proved detrimental as soon as I lost my place in the speech and didn’t care to take a silent minute to search for it again. my overall sentiment upon the end of 3rd period was something along the lines of “thank god, I was nowhere near ready for this.” I feel like I was able to get my feet under me in the second day of conferencing and actually ended up enjoying it a lot, but that first round of conference was really something stressful for me.
Some mistakes I made in the first MUN conference included being underprepared with my speech and overall knowledge, not speaking enough/not having enough presence in the conversation, and not advocating for my ideas well enough. As such in the next conference I want to hold sort of a position as a key player for whatever opinion I’m advocating in favour of by improving on the aforementioned faults, kind of similar to what August had done in the first conference. Firstly I plan on having a better speech that’s better articulated and as something that’s not exclusively viable. I noticed certain countries’ opinions excluded that of others and thus resulted in any amendments or resolutions proposed by aforementioned countries not passing. Secondly I want to have a better knowledge basis that will help me follow the conversation much better, and possibly even have nasty retorts to statements made by opposing countries. Finally the last part is just representing my side better, in the last MUN I messed up when it came to just what I wanted to happen with a proposed amendment and thus likely caused it not to pass, which was pretty disappointing for me and my allies at the moment.
My highlight for this project was definitely collaborating with classmates who held a similar disposition to the presented issues. I really enjoyed talking with my “allies” on a given course of actions and what we wanted to see happen. A more specific example would be when we were trying to leverage resolution 1-C to be something more favorable for our countries’ opinions, given that this was the most neutral resolution and thus the most likely to be voted. Essentially what were trying to do was to make amendments to this resolution so that we might accomplish more of our objectives, which was essentially to directly support Venezuela and its government. I think the reason I liked this piece so much was because it felt sort of like a game, I had allies and enemies and my allies and I were trying to prevent the opposing opinion from getting what they wanted while vying for our objectives. This also made it so that it just wasn’t my individual responsibility to represent my opinion, the actions and statements of my allies also had bearing on the representation of our overall standpoint.
Honestly I’ve grown quite a bit during this project, with the first MUN conference behind me I think it’s shaping up to be one of the most interesting and fun projects I’ve done at Animas. Coming into the project I sorta felt uncertain as to what a MUN conference would shape up to be with me and my classmates, but I didn’t feel too disappointed upon the end of our first conference. Over the course of this project I have gained a lot of knowledge of how international society works, and just what the U.N is and what it tries to do. I’ve learned about conflict and solution, and the importance of consensus when it comes to acting upon a problem. Furthermore I learned of the personal interests and philosophies of other countries and how that plays into their role in the U.N and furthermore how the U.N might handle a given issue. Despite my procrastination and sometimes mediocre work, I’ve actually found this project to be quite interesting and am looking forward to seeing how the next conference might go down.
In truth I wasn’t much prepared for this conference, which was especially apparent on the first day of conference. I felt like I couldn’t follow the conversation well and got lost easily, at the moment it somehow felt like I wasn’t very well versed with anything and thus lost a lot of my confidence to speak in the moment. Additionally I didn’t have a printed speech, which made me 100x more nervous to actually do my speech, and in the end I resorted to using my phone to read my speech off. This proved detrimental as soon as I lost my place in the speech and didn’t care to take a silent minute to search for it again. my overall sentiment upon the end of 3rd period was something along the lines of “thank god, I was nowhere near ready for this.” I feel like I was able to get my feet under me in the second day of conferencing and actually ended up enjoying it a lot, but that first round of conference was really something stressful for me.
Some mistakes I made in the first MUN conference included being underprepared with my speech and overall knowledge, not speaking enough/not having enough presence in the conversation, and not advocating for my ideas well enough. As such in the next conference I want to hold sort of a position as a key player for whatever opinion I’m advocating in favour of by improving on the aforementioned faults, kind of similar to what August had done in the first conference. Firstly I plan on having a better speech that’s better articulated and as something that’s not exclusively viable. I noticed certain countries’ opinions excluded that of others and thus resulted in any amendments or resolutions proposed by aforementioned countries not passing. Secondly I want to have a better knowledge basis that will help me follow the conversation much better, and possibly even have nasty retorts to statements made by opposing countries. Finally the last part is just representing my side better, in the last MUN I messed up when it came to just what I wanted to happen with a proposed amendment and thus likely caused it not to pass, which was pretty disappointing for me and my allies at the moment.
The Adolescence project
The adolescence project was very much based around the questions of what adolescence is, and what it does. In order to discover some of the answers to these questions we read multiple texts, theories, and even a small novel with which we used the accumulated knowledge to help write an essay. These essays were based upon interviews we held with an adult subject (someone over the age of 30) and their adolescent experience, which we then connected back to the learned concepts throughout this project. The final piece of this project was to create a photographic portrait of our interviewee which we felt represented their self.
Interview With Jane Doe (Interview Essay)
Light Disclaimer: My interview subject wished to remain somewhat anonymous given that they shared some rather very personal information about their adolescent experience.
“I think all adolescents struggle, but I think had things been different I would have struggled much less than I did, I look back at my adolescence as not being a positive time in my life.” This was the quoted response from an interview with a Jane Doe. So the question emerges, just what was her adolescence? The answer in short. It was shit. The answer in a slightly less short, her adolescence was wrought with hardship and difficulty due to a mixture of the normal teenage difficulty (eg the world fucking ending) as well as rough home environment with a practically absent father, perpetually stressed mother, and two older brothers one of whom was a really shitty influence, and person overall. So all this begs the question, who was Jane Doe’s adolescent self? And why is that important now?
Disassociation, isolation, loneliness, these are just some of the many words associated with adolescence, yet they strike as especially poignant in a young adolescent Jane. The cruel irony being that our young Jane was surrounded by people, peers and family alike; Yet that just made it sting all the more. She was largely overlooked in her family, partially due to the aforementioned reasons, but also due to her spite of their expectations. “I was expected to be what my parents wanted me to be; a pretty, obedient child who played organized sports and got good grades.” yet “an animal loving, independent thinking mountain child wasn’t what they had in mind.” in essence her relationship with family was...disassociated her family’s expectation of her identity and her actual identity were two very different things.. As for her relationship with her peers, “My friends were all fairly lost and struggling as well, we didn’t have activities that we shared. We all just kinda hung around and didn’t do a whole lot, so were all kinda lost and looking for something to make us feel fulfilled.” In essence a lot of Jane’s connection with her peers was ironically in the fact that they all felt quite confused about themselves and their identities, or in other words it was a group of lonely people.
“I didn’t have any important figures that’s the problem.” This was Jane’s first response to inquiry about important figures during her adolescence. A major factor of adolescence is the concept of interdependence; defined as the period between the independence of an adult, and the dependance on kids common with children. What we can understand about Jane is that she was in a situation in which she didn’t have any adult figures to look up to. Within the concept of interdependence she was too independent; thus as a result she had felt isolated and alone. “I didn’t love myself or feel as if I deserved to be loved, my parents were busy so I got very little individual attention.”
“I am a strong independent person living the life I always dreamed of.” If you were to ask Jane who she is right now at this very moment, her response would be something along these lines. Although her adolescent experience was definitively a struggle, Jane has always kept her sights on the distant horizon, always maintaining what she wanted it to look like. “The dream of what I wanted in life has remained constant, it’s always been a rural and outdoorsy lifestyle, and that has never changed.” Despite her adolescence being a rough one , Jane believes that those experiences only served her to be a better person “I think a lot of my struggles through my adolescence have made me a stronger person and given me more empathy for others.
Light Disclaimer: My interview subject wished to remain somewhat anonymous given that they shared some rather very personal information about their adolescent experience.
“I think all adolescents struggle, but I think had things been different I would have struggled much less than I did, I look back at my adolescence as not being a positive time in my life.” This was the quoted response from an interview with a Jane Doe. So the question emerges, just what was her adolescence? The answer in short. It was shit. The answer in a slightly less short, her adolescence was wrought with hardship and difficulty due to a mixture of the normal teenage difficulty (eg the world fucking ending) as well as rough home environment with a practically absent father, perpetually stressed mother, and two older brothers one of whom was a really shitty influence, and person overall. So all this begs the question, who was Jane Doe’s adolescent self? And why is that important now?
Disassociation, isolation, loneliness, these are just some of the many words associated with adolescence, yet they strike as especially poignant in a young adolescent Jane. The cruel irony being that our young Jane was surrounded by people, peers and family alike; Yet that just made it sting all the more. She was largely overlooked in her family, partially due to the aforementioned reasons, but also due to her spite of their expectations. “I was expected to be what my parents wanted me to be; a pretty, obedient child who played organized sports and got good grades.” yet “an animal loving, independent thinking mountain child wasn’t what they had in mind.” in essence her relationship with family was...disassociated her family’s expectation of her identity and her actual identity were two very different things.. As for her relationship with her peers, “My friends were all fairly lost and struggling as well, we didn’t have activities that we shared. We all just kinda hung around and didn’t do a whole lot, so were all kinda lost and looking for something to make us feel fulfilled.” In essence a lot of Jane’s connection with her peers was ironically in the fact that they all felt quite confused about themselves and their identities, or in other words it was a group of lonely people.
“I didn’t have any important figures that’s the problem.” This was Jane’s first response to inquiry about important figures during her adolescence. A major factor of adolescence is the concept of interdependence; defined as the period between the independence of an adult, and the dependance on kids common with children. What we can understand about Jane is that she was in a situation in which she didn’t have any adult figures to look up to. Within the concept of interdependence she was too independent; thus as a result she had felt isolated and alone. “I didn’t love myself or feel as if I deserved to be loved, my parents were busy so I got very little individual attention.”
“I am a strong independent person living the life I always dreamed of.” If you were to ask Jane who she is right now at this very moment, her response would be something along these lines. Although her adolescent experience was definitively a struggle, Jane has always kept her sights on the distant horizon, always maintaining what she wanted it to look like. “The dream of what I wanted in life has remained constant, it’s always been a rural and outdoorsy lifestyle, and that has never changed.” Despite her adolescence being a rough one , Jane believes that those experiences only served her to be a better person “I think a lot of my struggles through my adolescence have made me a stronger person and given me more empathy for others.
Reflection
My personal work on this project hasn’t been my best, so if I were to name the thing I’ve been the most proud of throughout this project it would be the class’ ability to refine. In at least three different cases, I believe my peers and I were in a position where we needed critique something given so that it may be better in the next iteration. For starters our critiques on each other’s papers , these went in depth and we were able to give our classmates in depth suggestions for improving the overall quality of their paper rather than just petty things like grammatical errors. Also the difference in the quality of our Socratic seminars, our first seminar didn’t go amazing with a lot of the class not participating, however after we refined into second one I believe there was a drastic improvement.
For this project I had decided to interview my mom. This turned out to be the most difficult part of this project for me, as it was hard to approach my essay subjectively. For example, the dynamic between her adolescence and mine would create an interesting essay and it’s what I had wanted to write about originally. However once I started writing I really realized that the way she views herself and her adolescence made things difficult. And really the way I view myself, vs the way I view her and her adolescence; All of this combined to make an overall very biased first draft that didn’t have anything interesting to say. If I were to do something like this again I would definitely do it with someone who’s a bit more distant from myself so that I can approach their words more subjectively, making the overall essay worth more.
So what’s the most important thing I learned in this project? Or in what I believe to be better terms; What from this project will I realistically take with me into my future? Welp to be frank there’s not much, a lot of the things I learned from my classwork just reaffirmed what is to be expected about the teenage experience for me. So instead I’d say I learned I need to differentiate when it is appropriate to be subjective vs not. For instance if I’m talking about my experience from my point of view then I don’t need to be subjective, it is what it is. However if I try to write an analytical essay about my experience, that just won’t work as everything will be conflicted with my own biases. I experienced this when I had initially decided to try to compare and contrast my mother and I’s adolescent experiences. This ended up being problematic when I found my bias towards myself and her affected the way I looked at different details.
So how would I rate myself throughout this project? Well according to the rubrik I’d likely fit somewhere around a 7-8. My use of class time during periods of note taking and class activities was good overall. Even when I was to discuss with my classmates on something, I think I could communicate productively and get stuff done and overall I think I did well staying on task with the structured class time. The piece I saw difficulty with was being productive with my essay throughout class, because I had a hard time writing my essay during class I honestly instead chose to procrastinate on my work, with the intention of working on it at home. Now while I did follow through with that somewhat, my essay would’ve likely turned out better had I found a way to work more productively during class.
My personal work on this project hasn’t been my best, so if I were to name the thing I’ve been the most proud of throughout this project it would be the class’ ability to refine. In at least three different cases, I believe my peers and I were in a position where we needed critique something given so that it may be better in the next iteration. For starters our critiques on each other’s papers , these went in depth and we were able to give our classmates in depth suggestions for improving the overall quality of their paper rather than just petty things like grammatical errors. Also the difference in the quality of our Socratic seminars, our first seminar didn’t go amazing with a lot of the class not participating, however after we refined into second one I believe there was a drastic improvement.
For this project I had decided to interview my mom. This turned out to be the most difficult part of this project for me, as it was hard to approach my essay subjectively. For example, the dynamic between her adolescence and mine would create an interesting essay and it’s what I had wanted to write about originally. However once I started writing I really realized that the way she views herself and her adolescence made things difficult. And really the way I view myself, vs the way I view her and her adolescence; All of this combined to make an overall very biased first draft that didn’t have anything interesting to say. If I were to do something like this again I would definitely do it with someone who’s a bit more distant from myself so that I can approach their words more subjectively, making the overall essay worth more.
So what’s the most important thing I learned in this project? Or in what I believe to be better terms; What from this project will I realistically take with me into my future? Welp to be frank there’s not much, a lot of the things I learned from my classwork just reaffirmed what is to be expected about the teenage experience for me. So instead I’d say I learned I need to differentiate when it is appropriate to be subjective vs not. For instance if I’m talking about my experience from my point of view then I don’t need to be subjective, it is what it is. However if I try to write an analytical essay about my experience, that just won’t work as everything will be conflicted with my own biases. I experienced this when I had initially decided to try to compare and contrast my mother and I’s adolescent experiences. This ended up being problematic when I found my bias towards myself and her affected the way I looked at different details.
So how would I rate myself throughout this project? Well according to the rubrik I’d likely fit somewhere around a 7-8. My use of class time during periods of note taking and class activities was good overall. Even when I was to discuss with my classmates on something, I think I could communicate productively and get stuff done and overall I think I did well staying on task with the structured class time. The piece I saw difficulty with was being productive with my essay throughout class, because I had a hard time writing my essay during class I honestly instead chose to procrastinate on my work, with the intention of working on it at home. Now while I did follow through with that somewhat, my essay would’ve likely turned out better had I found a way to work more productively during class.