Deviating From The Plan

So I'm wrapping up my Literature Review but my action plan was still in the back of my mind. After talking to my mentor, I just about lost all hope of an international fair taking place any time soon. It just wasn't coming together and I had came to the conclusion that I was just going to have to deviate from the plan and find another action. That was all before I spoke with Ms. Savido. After talking with her, she informed me that the Site Visit that I had done during my internship in March as a good action plan that I should use instead. I was a little shaky about it because I didn't think it would be a good action plan and I didn't have many pictures of what happened. She on the other hand said it would be great for an action plan and I could just go to the office, take pictures of it and explain the workings of the facility. In no time I was in love with the idea and it was great because now my action plan is already finished. I don't have to worry about that anymore and can focus all of my attention now to my electronic portfolio and literature review. Things are starting to look better.

C'mon

Coming into class today I was really groggy and it took me a while to get to work. For the first hour I worked on my paper and realized that one of my paragraphs was about a page long. I couldn't believe this. I didn't know where to break the paragraph up because I made every thing flow with each other so it sounded awkward when a new paragraph tied in with the previous sentence. For now I just left it the way it was and I'll attend to that at a later time. I still hadn't gotten a response back from Matt and time is running out in getting everything together so I contacted my mentor directly and told her that I couldn't get an appointment time with her like she requested. I couldn't continue to wait for Matt to e-mail me back and waste more time and by the time I get home, its after five and the office is closed. Hopefully she gets back to me by the end of the day, if not, tomorrow by the latest because I need to have confirmations and not assumptions.

Jumping Around...

It was a jumpy day for me as I decided what I wanted to work on. I came in today and the first thing I did was sketch out a rough draft of how I wanted the cafeteria to look like. My scaling was a little off but overall the job got done. I estimated to need about 8 college students who have studied abroad to come in and help me. Afterwards, I had my meeting with Mr. Mays and am on track with what I need to get done. I worked on my paper and got a significant amount done. As I was writing, I was getting confused if the sources that go in the paper should still be cited in parentheses if they were already introduced at the beginning of a sentenced. It was a question I didn't get answered but will be sure to clear by tomorrow. Lastly, I worked on my Electronic Portfolio and got searched for the pictures that I will be using for my backgrounds and so forth. I checked my e-mail to see if the sixth grade teacher had contacted me today but she hadn't. I expected her call over the weekend but I didn't receive one nor a message so I'm just waiting for her response. I can't wait to get some ideas down so I can start getting a little more organized for my event. I also checked to see if Matt had contacted me back with setting up a meeting time for me to go over my project with my mentor and it was empty as well. I'm basically waiting for everyone to get back to me with the information I sent them.

Thursday...

Hello Everyone...today was another productive day. I'm just about finished with my outline which is a good thing. All that is left to do is go over it one more time and put the information in the order that I plan to write about it. I really didn't work on anything else besides adding a few more websites to my Webliography that I hadn't put on yet so I could refer to the sources on my Outline. Aside from that, I looked at my e-mail and the sixth grade teacher responded to me and said that she would help me with my outline....great news! Lastly, today I felt like a complete idiot and one would not know that my project was on study abroad. I asked Mr. Mays if London was the country that Paris was located in...Yeah I know that I should have known that answer but for some reason I though it went: Paris, London. But Mr. Mays kindly acknowledged my stupidity and told me that London was in England and Paris is in France. :) I will make sure to not ask questions I should already know the answer to.

No Missing Pieces

Since I had finished re-writing the rubrics yesterday, I focused the majority of my time today on my outline. I know that the outline is the foundation of the paper and I needed to make sure I had crossed my "T"s and dotted all my "I"s. When I looked over my outline, I realized that there was some information on my notes that needed to be on my outline and that there was information on my outline from my notes that didn't really need to be there and I needed to get it all organized. With the whole outline due on Friday, I really buckled down and basically that is all I worked on today. The teacher that I had e-mailed yesterday hadn't gotten back to me so I'm still waiting for her response. I pretty much halted my writing on the Lit Review until after I turn in my outline and then so I will know exactly what I'm putting in my paper and what I'm not. I will probably try to get the anecdote that I started finished however because I don't want the ideas that I had in mind to slip away from me and I'll be stuck again. Afterwards, I'm going to put all the different Roman numerals in order and that way I will really be prepared to finish my Lit Review.

Getting the Rubrics

Today was a productive day. I started off today with re-writing the rubrics since they were going to be due on Friday. I also needed to get them done before I went any further on my paper so I would know what I needed to include in my paper. When I finally finished, it definitely helped me to understand how I should write my paper to get the grade that I'm shooting for.

I also talked with Ms. Savido today and we kind did a quick run through of what I wanted to do with my action plan. There is a possibility that I may have the International Fair during the parent teacher conference day. I had never even thought of getting the parents involved and it was a really good idea. I really need to start getting some information from the interns and mentors from my internship so I know that everyone is on the same page as I am. Right now I have to make something that sort of resembles a blueprint of the cafeteria so I know what I want and where so I can manage the space. It seems as though the some things are starting to fall in place.

Its Monday Again...

So its Monday again and its time to get back to work. Over the weekend I worked on my Outline and finished putting the extra detail in it. I really wanted to move on from my notes so I had to buckle down it get it finished regardless of how sore I was from Teen Quest. It worked out though because I was able to start of my Literature Review. It was hard for me to find a good way to start off my introduction. I really want to engage the reader and make them want to read my paper. I decided on doing an anecdote and put the reader in a study abroad experience and then tie it together with the main focus of the paper. After starting over the paper so many times and finally going through with one of my ideas, I didn't get a great start but I'm glad I got something and have something to go off.

I had my meeting with Mr. Hamilton and told him what I had done and what else needs to be done. I still have to conduct my interview. The interns for the fall semester haven't been selected yet and so the college study abroad student is what I'm still waiting for but I'm am going to try to set up an interview with one of my mentors or another person who works there to get some insight from a mentor's point of view and their perspective what they want their students to experience. In addition, we talked about my action plan. I still have a lot of work to do and time is not on my side. He gave me the e-mail address of a sixth grade teacher who did a world fair with her class and said I should contact her to get some advice. That was the very first thing I did today. I needed to explain who I was, what I was doing, and why I needed her help so after everything was explained, it was a pretty lengthy e-mail and I hope she doesn't mind. However, there was no need to send thousands of e-mails just to keep the length short. The quicker she knows about me and what I'm doing, the better off I will be in the long run.

Some Progress...

Hello everyone. Today I made some progress with my Literature Review. I had to add detail to my outline and thanks to me not reading the directions, I forgot to put my points into complete sentences. As a result, now I am getting real familiar with my notes and outline and pretty soon I will be ready to get moving with my paper. With this in mind, I do plan to do alot of work during the weekend. Also, I e-mailed my mentor and told her some of the specifics of my project that I was having trouble on. If I want to get this show on the road, I'm going to need to get moving and quickly. There is going to be alot of e-mails being sent from me really soon to secure my plan will be a success. I can definitely say that progress is being made. The one aspect of my project that I haven't secured, besides my action plan, is my interview. The college interns at my internship haven't been selected yet at the Study Abroad office so I'm still waiting on that. However, as soon as I get word of their arrival, I'm going to make an appointment to get their insight. This is where I am for now...

TGIF

There really isn't much else to add to the work done this week. I pretty much extracted the information from my websites and tried to put more depth into my notes. I created a system with what I felt was sufficient information, a decent amount of information and an inadequate amount of information regarding my notes. All that is left now for me to do is add whatever information to my outline. I still need to find a book source and conduct the interviews that I plan on making and that information will be included as well. After receiving the Literature Review paper today, I feel as though I'm on schedule now and feel more stable about where I am on my project than I did on Monday. I'll be working over the weekend to make sure I'm completely caught up with everything that way there is no reason for me to have to backtrack on any component of my project.

Getting the Research

In class today, I was busy with finishing up my notes. I found a new method to see what Foundation Questions still needed work and what questions had a substantial amount of information. Most of my attention was set on my last Foundation Question which really had no information on it at all. If I were to rewind back to my last trimester of Grad Project and find out why that question was unanswered, it was probably because I couldn't get any information but planned to extend the research over the break. Well we all know that my plans were altered when it was difficult for me to even sit at a computer. So now I'm hurrying along scrounging up all the information that I need and it seems to be coming altogether. Once the notes are done, I'll have to review my outline and add all of the information that I was missing to make sure that when I write my Literature Review, it will be a detailed paper.

In conjunction with finishing my notes, I plan on going to the library sometime this week so I can get a book source included in my information. I looked on the online catalog but I still have no idea what book I'm going to need. Even more unfortunate, I don't even know what library I'm going to go to. All in all, things are starting to come together and I should be caught up shortly.

First Post in Months

This week is mostly consisting of getting myself organized and retaining all the work that was done during 11th grade. Today I worked on...

• Emailed my intern mentors and got them up to speed on what I was doing so far
• Organized my notes and made a note as to what else needed additional attention
• Updated my webliography

I gave myself a goal for Sunday to be completed all the way up to a updated and detailed outline. At first I was getting discouraged because I wasn't sure if everything would still be where I left it on my H drive but luckily everything was exactly as I had left it. After reviewing all of my work I let out a sigh of relief and after going over the check list, there is very little that still needs to be finished.

I think I am ready to complete the journey laid out in front of me.