Closing Day Reflections

This year, our group has been through a lot of planning, learning, and growing. The year is at an end, and it's time to start thinking about how we can improve even more next year in order to make our goal a success. Each member of our group has posted a quick summary of the most important things we've learned and been through this year. Please enjoy and stay tuned for the second interview which, without fail, will be up by the end of this week.

Alaina

This year, on my project OPERATION SPLAT, my group has accomplished much in terms of research, contacting a plethora of people, and starting the interview process with some soldiers of the Korean War and Afghanistan War. Our goals are slowly but surely getting reached, and progress is being made. Our biggest and most common obstacles we have faced this year are that sponsors or potential contacts do not take us seriously nor did they return our emails. We do our best to come across as professionally as possible, but many people think we are kind of a joke. I wish one of the workshops at the beginning of the year had been on how to professionally present ourselves. Some of the workshops were not as helpful as the teachers had hoped. I would have liked to meet with our panels and gotten out plan approved earlier in the year and be set in our plan sooner, as opposed to having some of the workshops. I felt a little unprepared for the massive task that was before me. Many of the workshops were repetitive in their message "teamwork is important" and "be involved in social media", and I understand that those ideas are very important but I feel that other topics like financial advising and sponsor management   would have been more useful. also, some of the speakers were  slightly eccentric in their presentation and their message was lost to the crowd.
     In addition, I feel that our service learning panel was intimidating. Although we had very nice people and great teachers ready to help us, we were terrified of being judged and felt a huge need for ultra-professionalism and the utmost amount of confidence, when in reality we were a little lost, confused, and afraid . Once we were in the sessions, we were able to be more comfortable and were able to ask for help and we received a lot of amazing and useful advice.
     Next year, when it is our turn to present to the juniors, sophomores, and freshman, I hope that 1) we can tell them about our success we had at our fundraiser and the fun we had, 2) we had lots of interviews that helped tell the stories of the brave men and women who have served our country, and 3) I learned about organization of four very different and very strong personalities and how we were able to come together and create a great project.
     This year has been short, but has been a great start to our project and I am excited to continue my project over the summer and all through next year.

Briton

     So far for our service learning project we have done most of our goals for this

year. We have contacted different companies about being sponsors for the event and made some business decisions for the fundraiser. We are making contact with Hollywood Sports Park now about holding our fundraiser at their facility. With most of the companies not able to respond to us in 2012, we are hoping to hear from them later in 2013. Our service learning panel at Sage Hill has helped us a lot in the process of making critical decisions for our fundraiser. We would listen to what our panel members would say then we would work off of their comments. The panel members did an amazing job with working alongside us for the many months we worked on this project.

     I feel that most of the workshops we did earlier in the year were very helpful, but

a few were not. I was able to take from one of the workshops the ability to be a "lone nut" and to start something new. I feel like that the workshops have to be more designed  in giving students the understandings of a business perspective.

     When I am a senior and it is my turn to stand up in front of everyone at Sage and

tell my experience in this project, I would like to say three things about what I accomplished for the two years working on our project. The first thing would be that I have conquered my inability of writing to strangers with the full confidents needed. The second thing would be that I made connections with different companies that would be able to help me in the future. The third thing I would be happy about would be that our fundraiser was a big success.

Stephanie

     So far this year, we have started a blog, contacted sponsors for our event, and obtained two interviews.  We are currently hard at work on making the event become a reality this coming January.  We are using the two interviews we conducted with an Iraq War veteran and Korean War veteran to raise awareness about returning and/or wounded veterans.  Our goals are still the same, but now, having done the research and the personal interviews, we are more motivated than ever to accomplish them.

     The biggest things we have accomplished this year are the interviews.  It is a lot of work to contact all the necessary people and to build trust before finally getting an interview.  Now that we are more used to the process, I expect getting interviews will go much smoother.

     Our big fundraiser event has proved to be quite a challenge because many of the people we've tried to contact don't take us seriously, most likely because we are high school students.  Many of the potential sponsors we emailed never responded back, but we have secured some sponsors that for sure will not back down on their offer to work with us.  In planning our event, one problem we had was reserving a date with Hollywood Sports Park because they usually prefer notification only one month in advance, rather that almost a whole year before.  We had to be rather persistent with out emails and personally gaining the favour of the manager.  Concerning the interview we had with Iraq veteran Michael Schlitz, our difficulty with that was figuring out how to make our schedules work through the different times zones.  Often times, when we are so busy contacting people, or arranging dates and trips, we tend to work without breaks or even food for long periods of time.  On top of that, it is difficult to find time to update and post on our blog, but at the end of the day, letting the stories of our work that day flow onto the keyboard and seeing it displayed at the top of our blog page is very rewarding.

     Our Service Learning Panel did give some good suggestion in terms of what to research or how we can build trust and relationships with the people we are working with.  Sometimes, they can be quite intimidating however.  It seems like they expect a lot from us and that we get a lot done by the end of the one day we meet with them a month, when our kind of project isn't something that will show immediate results.  A lot of what we do is to build up and prepare for the big event during January of next year, so until then, most of what we can do is keep reaching out to people who are interested and doing more interviews.

The workshops we attended at the beginning of the year to help us start our projects doesn't seem that relevant to our group.  Learning how to start and run a blog was very useful, and the activity using balloons to build the tallest free-standing structure helped us with the idea of taking initiatives and teamwork.  Other than those though, the other workshops didn't help us with anything.  I believe we could afford to cut back on some of the inspirational speakers because it feels like we get more than enough of those during school assemblies.  My group and I all agree that we really could have used those first three months to make more progress without having to feel rushed.

     Next year, when we present our project as seniors, I want to be able to say that we influenced people, inspired others, and have done something meaningful in providing a chance for veterans and normal civilians to interact in a fun environment.

Emily

     This year has been a huge success in regards to research and planning. The start too this project was abstruse; we weren't exactly sure what we were doing. We knew we loved paintball and we wanted to use that love to help out veterans. We found wounded warriors, and we were ecstatic to work with them. We thought we had it all worked out and all we needed to do was put it together.
     However, looking back, I see that we didn't really understand our mission until our phone interview with Michael, a wounded soldier who recently went into his 70th reconstructive surgery. After hearing the pain he's gone through, and the difficulties he faces every day, I realize how much character and willpower that soldiers have. There is a lot of misleading information about soldiers out there, and in today's modern there are a lot of people who are against military action and blame the soldiers for bad things that happen. Our new goal is to educate people about who our soldiers really are and what they go through every single day in order to protect the people that they love.
     The biggest obstacle was starting the project and getting in=t kicked off. Our project is unique; it revolves around an event that is really far in the future. It's been difficult finding people who are willing to buy in on our project when the event is so far away. A huge achievement was pairing with Extreme Pros Paintball to pull the event together. They're experienced and can show us how to throw a memorable event. We plan to visit and talk during the summer and/or the beginning of next year. 
   Another obstacle, for me in particular, has been getting the videos done and uploaded on a set schedule. Its hard to be disciplined enough and find the time to edit for an hour every day and get the videos done. From now on I'm forcing myself to just sit down when I get home and work for at least half an hour so I can get the videos out. I'm excited to show the videos so I can share the message with my service learning panel and with the rest of the student body at Sage.
     Having a panel has been very helpful. They give great advice and I'm glad we have somebody to bounce ideas off of for our project. They help us organize and keep us pushing forward. However, I would have liked to meet with the panel earlier, rather than halfway through the year. We spent so long doing team building exercises and I would rather spend time with my service learning panel helping them understand the purpose behind our project. That way, we would be acquainted quicker and we would he able to work faster and more efficiently. 
     Some of the workshops were helpful, but it felt like we were wasting time. A lot of kids figured out what they wanted to do quickly, but we still had to go to see speakers during service learning days where time is short. If possible, it would be better to have the workshop assemblies as grade level meetings during X block, that way we would be able to work on our project and go to workshops and hear inspiring stories.
     Our group has come a long way, and we have learned a lot this year. The biggest accomplishments we've had this year were learning to work as a company and seeing a different side to the American military. At the beginning of the year, we didn't know how to send a sponsorship email, make professional requests to important contacts, or make a business call. This year we've been forced to deal with our weaknesses and turn them into strengths. Through practice, our whole group feels much more confident with contacting important people.  We were then able to use our newfound skills to find contacts for people who worked in military relief programs such as wounded warriors and the VFW. Another accomplishment was learning how to interview soldiers, so they can tell their stories and share what their life is like. I think our group better understands what it's like to be a soldier, and the difficulties they are forced to go through after hearing stories directly from soldiers. This group started with a main goal based on our passion for paintball. I now see that it's shifted to a love for veterans and their work. We will use our passion for paintball to bring people together so that people can get a glimpse of what it's like to be a soldier. I can't wait to see what next year brings and I can't wait for our project.