The last week of on-site work for my Senior Project was relatively uneventful, but it sure was emotional for me. I had a ton of fun, and I cannot believe it is over so soon. If I have time over the summer, I definitely want to try and volunteer there more.
I worked really hard to finish the section of the catalog that I had been in charge of, and I am proud to say I was able to complete the “Artifacts” category before I left. Although the archives could get more objects in that category at any time, I would have been unsatisfied if I did not at least catalog all the current items. Here is a picture of all the items together on the shelf!
The PAM Artifacts shelf
Then, I watched my mentor while she digitized some photographic negatives. It was pretty cool to watch the machine scan the items and the photograph would show up in surprisingly good quality on the computer screen. However, we found that one of the negatives was cut in half! We had to figure out a way to put it together without putting any adhesives directly on it, so we settled with creating a frame out of buffered boards to sandwich the photo between. It was inspired by the outer cover of a slide.
One of the photo negatives that Ms. Aspen digitizedThe scanner doing its workThe photo negative that was cut in halfThe finished solution
Now, I think it is finally time to mention a very important part of my Senior Project: the final product. I have not talked about it in my blog posts because I had been struggling with deciding on what it would be. But, I finally came to a conclusion that both expresses my experiences at the Phoenix Art Museum and stays true to myself.
If you want to find out what it is, come see my presentation on May 17th! I hope everyone will be pleasantly surprised with what I came up with!
With that, I will now be concluding my final Senior Project blog post. Every other post started with the same energetic greeting so I believe it is now fitting to say…
Hey everyone, and welcome to my final blog post for my senior project.
It’s been a lot of fun exploring aviation over the past few months, and it was even better getting the chance to share my journey with you all. Throughout this project, I’ve learned not only how to fly planes, but also a great deal about the aviation industry as a whole.
Even though my project has come to a close, I still intend to keep my passion for aviation alive—whether it’s through flight simulators or by taking more lessons at Leopard Aviation. I truly enjoyed every second of this experience, and with everything I’ve learned, I have so much to take away from it.
My senior project presentation is at 10 a.m. on May 17th, and I’d love for you to come watch! I’ll be sharing the many topics I explored during my project, as well as the insights I’ve gained along the way. I hope you can make it—it’s going to be a great time!
It’s been an incredible ride these past three months, and I can’t thank you enough for flying with me.
Today, I want to share my future plans for aviation. While I have thoroughly enjoyed diving into aviation during this project, I don’t plan to continue flying in the future after the conclusion of my project. As college approaches, pursuing aviation and earning my private pilot’s license just doesn’t fit into my schedule. Although I still want to keep my passion for aviation alive, I intend to pursue it purely as a hobby.
Throughout my project, I’ve explored many different aspects of aviation. From learning how to actually fly a plane to receiving invaluable advice from professionals, this project has taught me a lot and given me much to take with me into college and my future career. I also wanted to develop other important skills during this project, such as forming connections and reaching out to people I didn’t previously know—and as this project comes to a close, I can confidently say that I’ve gained those skills.
This project has been a joy to complete, and I can’t wait to share it with you during my presentation on May 17th.
Thank you all so much to those who were here to read my posts and engage with me in my pursuit of learning. It was a rough couple weeks to start, almost as varied as the spinal column, but in the end I was able to fit all of the bones, being stuff I learned about forensics and anthropology, as well as videomaking, into what I hope is a cohesive project that will be able to be utilized in a classroom for when other people may want to get in to the subject. In 2 weeks, on the 17th, I will be presenting both the final video as well as a presentation about the project overall, so I encourage you to come out and see it if you have invested any time in my doings! Thanks for sticking around and I hope to see you on the 17th!
It’s been a hell of a ride these last few months, and now it’s all coming to an end. I’ve been keeping up with my work, and also doing a couple of new things too! For example, I took a trip down to the Astronomy Association of Arizona in Buckeye recently, and they were kind enough to give me an automatic telescope and a camera to use with it. To hear more about that, and the other juicy details of my entire project, you should come check out my presentation on Saturday, May 17th, 2025 in MPR2. It’ll be a good time, and you can hear about my peer’s projects too, and they are almost as cool as mine! To give you a little taste of what I’ll be doing, I’ll take you on a journey through the Universe with my own photos. One of those photos is attached below, and I edited it myself in Adobe Lightroom (I just like editing photos). I hope I’ll see you all there, and thanks for going along on my odyssey with me.
So, it’s been ten full weeks? I think now I can say this: “It’s a bird! It’s a plane! It’s …” Actually probably not now either. My comic’s only just beginning, and 3 chapters isn’t going to be enough!
But there is something else I want to say. Thank you to everyone who’s been with me reading these blog posts for these past two months. I’ve been through all kinds of situations (all of them very time-consuming) when creating this story, but I believe it’s all been worth it to let you guys experience it firsthand. I’m sure some of you all have a character, or even a chapter that you found pretty interesting (even if you hated the story). So with all of that said, I’m inviting you all to come see my project presentation at BASIS Mesa on Saturday May 17! I hope to see you guys there!
Now let’s get back to the story. Chapter 3 (Choice) is out now down below! As a small warning, there is one part that is slightly graphic, but I hope you still find the story a good read. Unfortunately I couldn’t finish the cover just yet. However, I’m going to have a cover reveal during the presentation. I’ll see you guys once more soon!
Welcome back, readers, to my final blog post! This past week, I’ve been working on my slideshow for this project, and it’s been going well. There’s not much to update about, because, quite frankly, I haven’t been doing too much. Thank you guys so much for staying interested in this very erratic project, and although my posts haven’t been consistent, I got them all out!
If you want to see my presentation and experience my journey in person, make sure to go to BASIS Mesa on May 17 and check out some of my other friends’ presentations as well!
Hello everyone, and welcome to the final blog post on this project!
Since the last post, the board has been completed along with the pieces. To finish the board, I needed to cut deeper into the pins of the dovetails. After lining the interior board with the frame, I made marks to indicate how far I needed to cut. From there, it was just a matter of caution to avoid mistakes. Having come this far, a mistake was the last thing I wanted, but thankfully, everything went smoothly. Seeing the frame fit the checkered board felt great—it truly started coming together.
At that point, all that remained was gluing. A simple task on the surface, but in practice, it was slow and methodical. I took it day by day—quite literally. One day, I glued one side, clamped it, cleaned any excess glue, and left it to dry. Then I repeated the process for the next few days. And just like that, the board was done.
With the board complete, the final pieces remained: a queen, a king, four bishops, and four knights. First came the queen, followed by the bishops, then the king, and finally the knights. To my surprise, the piece I thought would be the hardest turned out to be the easiest to make. I had been expecting tons of trouble with the knights—issues in forming the piece or keeping everything intact—but none of that happened.
All I did was roll out a large piece of clay and cut out the shape of a knight. Once I had one, I had all four, as I could simply trace the shape to make the others. The hardest part wasn’t the physical crafting but deciding on their design. After some deliberation, I chose to keep them simple to ensure consistency across all four knights. Surprisingly, this section of clay-making was the smoothest part yet. With references in hand and the design finalized, the knights turned out to be an unexpected time saver. The biggest challenge since the last post? Cleaning up after working with clay!
Now that everything is complete, the only thing left to do is show you what it looks like all together. But instead of me showing you, why not see it for yourself at the senior project presentations on Saturday, May 17th? You’ll get a condensed version of everything I did, and maybe even play a quick game of chess.
Thank you all for tuning into these weekly blog posts and supporting me on this journey of creation. I hope to see you on the 17th! But if I don’t, thank you for your time.
Hello for one last time, faithful audience members!
This week title is my favorite lyric from the show Mary Poppins (which I referenced in the title for my project) from the song “Anything Can Happen.” Mary Poppins is a story of finding ways to face challenges, relive your youth, and create magic and fun, and that’s certainly what happened for me throughout this process.
First things first, I reformatted the script. I decided to make the spoken lines, song lyrics, stage directions, and sound cues in different fonts, so that they won’t get confused! Then came cleaning up anything that looked messy. “Actor’s Choice” sections were then thrown into the script as tips that actors can use to personalize the show! If you remember, it was one of my original goals to have actors make choices in the script, so I was very happy to add these in. I took after Breona’s fun-themed lyric sheets from Spookytown camp, and I added a themed picture to the top of each scene too!
Now came adding the stuff in the script that is not the show itself. I added a title cover and a small summary of the show in the front! I also added a section to help actors read the script. I broke down each term I marked on a page, and I even made the definitions for each term the same font as they are in the script. I then included a summary of the personality and/or story for every character, so that any actor who uses the script can imagine their personality. I then added that vocab section I mentioned right before the script starts.
I read through the whole show by myself one time which was quite exhausting to get a final time check, and the show came out to be around 30 minutes! It may be faster or slower depending on the actors reading it, but that is the time I hoped to achieve! It’s short, so it doesn’t drag on for the actors or audience, but it still packs a great story!
After this, I printed the script, and I bound the pages. I have to say, I love how professional these look now that they are put into the folders!
I also made a playlist with all the karaoke tracks and sound effects that I will be using in the show! For the karaoke tracks, I tried my best to find ones with guide melodies as they are easier to sing along to. I searched through several versions of sound effects and set change instrumental music to find the perfect sounds. Eventually, the playlist was finished, and this is what I will use in the readthrough! Here is the link to that playlist: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PL4AseswvK5MtrEcP8rDKP_sSidWW1i42z&si=SkOmzpmIskpJq1Jv.
Now here comes what I’ll be doing post-this blog. First, I will finalize my director’s section which will give tips and tricks on how to direct this show or any show with kids. In doing this, I am reading some articles and sections of books on child development! I’m an iffy reader, so I was hesitant about having to read anything at first, but it really helps me put being a director and an educator into perspective. I will provide some examples here:
I’ve also read some other articles on children’s theater and the impact of theater to put more into perspective again. I found this one on how theater can impact one’s social skills (https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/17533015.2022.2130947), and it brought back Erving Goffman who created the dramaturgical model we read in AP Language and Sociology! Goffman’s theory always intrigued me as a theater kid, so this was great to see brought back. Another was an excerpt from an article on how children’s theater should be included while studying children’s literature as theater is important in developing analytical and literacy skills (https://muse.jhu.edu/article/482344/summary ). While my show will never and should not be considered a great, classic children’s literature work, the article brought me back to some messages I discuss in Back to the Theater!
Starting tomorrow are rehearsals for the big readthrough! I threw out a wide net for recruits, and I got WAY more than expected. There will be about 22 kids participating in this readthrough, and we only have 5 days to block it! Thankfully, the show is pretty short, and I know these kids are very dependable. I’ve worked with all of them before! I’m very excited to be a director for these people one last time, and I know that they are going to rock performing my creation! The readthrough will be performed on Friday, May 16 at 7 PM at the BASIS Mesa theater. It would be great to have everybody check it out! My final product is officially the script, but the readthrough is just going to bring extra life to this project!
If you want to see me talk more about the director’s section and the readthrough, you have to attend the Senior Project Presentations from 10 AM-2 PM two Saturday’s from now on May 17! I along with all the other senior project makers will be doing a final presentation on our journeys from the past few months. Please come out to see what this has all culminated to; it’s going to be awesome.
Thank you to everyone for supporting and staying for the creation of my show! There were many fun quests along the way, and there were also many times I felt very down. I am very excited to start these final steps in the readthrough, and I hope you come see me talk about the final product in a few Saturdays. After all these weeks of crafting, I hope my musical can bring a smile upon young actors’ faces and achieve my goal of introducing theater as a friend early on. I hope it brings a smile upon your guys’ faces too!
“Go on chase your dreams, you won’t regret it. Anything can happen if you let it.”
Take two weeks until final presentations.
Adding fun pictures and changing fonts!The front cover of the officially bound script!Parts of the “How to Read This Script” and “Character Description” sections.A scene in the bound script. There’s an “Actor’s Choice” section here too!
Hi everyone! Welcome to what will be my last blog post.
Time has flew by throughout my project and I can’t thank everyone enough for the support shown throughout my blog posts and episode releases. I hope that I have helped someone, whether that be students or adults, in learning about the diversity of careers that exist. My main goal since the beginning of the senior project was to help provide people, especially high school students, resources that may not have been as easily accessible to me throughout high school.
Since this is a goodbye post, I will keep it short. However, there are some fun milestones I have made throughout my podcasting journey that I would quickly like to share.
Besides the United States, the country that streamed my podcast the most happens to be Ireland.
My podcast has been able to reach roughly 150 people.
Around 70% of my podcast listeners used the platform Spotify.
My sociology teacher once asked the question “Who am I?” If you want to hear the answer, you will have to see my presentation in person. I really hope you can check out my senior project presentation on May 17th. There are some really interesting projects other seniors have been working on as well, so it would be great to see you show up and listen to my presentation along with the presentations my fellow peers have worked on.
To end it off, I have one last career-related cartoon quote from the show Handy Manny.
“Success doesn’t come overnight. You’ve got to work for it.”
