Rising voices-Adolescent stories

Project Overview
During the project we studied a whole lot about Adolescence, Adolescent Psychology, and how Adolescent Brains Develop. This project was a story recorded by the students and put into podcasts. it also required a visual element to represent our story's. And this is how mine turned out.

My Story

Draft 1 Link

Draft 2 Link

Visual, Artist Statement, and Podcast

Final draft

Artist statement
My visual piece is an album cover of a song I really connected with during this camping trip. This song gave me an incredible feeling. Driving in the car blasting this song. It was a connected and intertwined feeling. I felt a very strong connection with nature, my friends, and my surroundings. The process wasn't hard and I immediately knew that I was going to choose this piece of art. I made a little rough draft to make sure it would look good. And for the final piece I super sized it and made it more detailed. I used only colored pencils and a black crayon. I feel like it turned out great.

Here's the link to my podcast.

​My Reflection

Question 1:
One of our main goals at AHS is to prepare you for the 21st century. Using the image to the right, which 21st century skill do you feel you grew in the most during this project?

Communication, throughout this project I had to do a lot of teamwork and communication was extremely crucial. I was in the exhibition planning team and we had to figure out almost everything about the exhibition. My team had to communicate with all of the other groups and solve problems more than anyone.

Question 2:
If you could go back, what would you do differently? What would you refine? (Be specific)

​I would get my work done quicker and not slack. I would format my paragraph better and not stress about it too much. I was too focused on stress that I couldn't get my work done. I would refine the visual piece and get it done before the day that its due.

Question 3:
What are you most proud of? This could be from any element of the project, test taking skills, team and collaborative work, your story, recording your story or what you contributed to the exhibition. Explain why you are proud.

​I'm most proud of my visual piece. I got it done in a rush but I'm still super happy how it turned out. I really enjoyed making it and I'm happy that I was able to do so good for how short of a time it took. I was worried that the colors wouldn't be right but they turned out perfect

A kid's 17th birthday. Not mine but someone very close to me. An age of maturation and independence that carves a man and makes him stand tall and stoic. And that's just what my friend did when this totally epic camping trip went haywire. Let's start this with a positive. I had been waiting for this trip for a while. It was with a few of my friends and our plan was  to go camping in Moab utah. But the plans got messed up from the beginning. On the day we were supposed to leave we were so uncoordinated. None of us knew where eachother were and no one was answering their phone. We were going to leave at 10 in the morning. That definitely didn't happen. Scuffling around going to 3 different houses to round up our group we finally got on the road at around 2:30 in the afternoon. At last we were having fun. The car I was in was blaring good music. We had the windows down wind blowing and it was just great. An amazing car ride. Until we got to moab. I switched cars with others from our group. And we were going to find a camp spot in this crazy looking canyon. The views were beautiful but the campsites were packed. We were looking for a spot for about 30 minutes when all of a sudden we heard that another group that was coming broke down in Monticello. Almost 2 hours away from Moab. so we all stopped at a bummy run down gas station and tried to get service. So our plan was to meet them and find the closest camping spot we could. We all drove an hour to get them and it took another hour and a half to find a spot. It was 9:30 at this point and we were all out of gas at a random spot in the middle of the Canyonlands. We were exhausted and stressed. But we made it. We set up camp at this spot but it was so dark out at this point that we don't even know where we are. The rest of that night was super fun and relaxing. We were too tired to make a fire that night but we were all warm enough. This was my favorite night of the weekend. Once we were all going to bed me and two others decided to just sleep under the stars. So I went with it and stargazed till I fell asleep. That morning was the best part of the trip in my opinion. I woke up first right before the sun rose and me and one of my friends hiked up this big sandstone rock and watched the sunrise before anyone else woke up. It was super cool to see all of the surrounding mountains. Over all that night we made it to a little wash called hamburger rock and that's where we set up camp. But the rest of the morning was hectic. Since we had hardly any gas we were afraid that we couldn't get out of this camping spot. So we started the car and the gas meter was below the empty mark. We saw that there was a gas station about 20 miles away so we tried for it. The  gas meter was flickering up and down on the way but somehow we made it. And this little gas station was ghetto. It was someone's house that he made into a convenient store but the inside was super cool. This man working there, I'm assuming it was his house too, was such a nice guy. He had 3 cats hanging out in his store and a huge cat tower in the corner. Other than that this little rural gas station was selling a gallon of gas for 10 dollars. So we blew 40 dollars to get back into the town of moab to fill up at a normal gas station. The rest of that day was super fun. We split up into little groups and went off to do our own thing. Who knows what everyone else did but me and my group had a great time. After we filled up at moab we kinda just started to drive. We found this big hill full of super soft sand and we decided to see what was up. The 3 others that were with me had mountain bikes so they decided to hike up with their bikes and ride down as fast as they could which definitely was the best idea. I didn't have a bike so I decided to film them and it was sick. After they rode down they came up and we started playing around in the sand like little kids getting sand everywhere. Afterwards we decided to go swim in the colorado river which passes right through moab. There was this sweet boat put in with a beach so we jumped in and washed ourselves off. The drive to get there was the most beautiful ride I have ever been on. And this little beach was in a canyon which looked like two huge walls surrounding us. The colors were breathtaking. The reds, oranges and yellows were unreal. Once we were done swimming we went back to the car and sat down for a while and had a picnic in the middle of the parking lot of this little boat put in. We made sandwiches and had some snacks. It was the most wholesome heartfelt experience of my life. Three of my best friends were having fun and hanging out. It was such a refreshing feeling. I don't think I could ever forget that moment. Now after all of this we want to meet up with everyone else and find a better camping spot. It's about 4:30 in the afternoon at this point so we want to get to a new spot sooner rather than later. It takes a little time but we all meet and everyone decides to go hit this trail on their bikes. But I didn't have one so I stayed back and waited by the cars. Honestly it was pretty nice just having some alone time to sit back and collect my thoughts. After about an hour and a half they get back and we go on a hunt for a new spot. Lucky for us this bike trail was right next to this landmark called Bartlett's Wash. We didn't want any more trouble that night so we decided to go for it and we looked in there and we found a dope flat rock that we could fit all 3 cars on and a big bonfire type fire pit. We built a fire and just relaxed the rest of the night. We got a killer view of the sunset over some canyons and mountains and the clouds were just perfect that night