Adam's Blog

It’s difficult to believe that the Capstone project is over. We’ve been working on it for so long now it inexplicably became a part of my life. As much as the project is intended to assist others, I felt as though I was helped. I learned so much about myself, my community, and the legitimate issues that people struggle with in terms of standardized testing. One of the biggest hurdles that I had to overcome was working with a group. Usually, I prefer to work alone, as I know that all the ideas and all of the work executed to make a project function are my own, and I don’t have to communicate with people or try to blend our ideas. Initially, I was extremely wary and not at all excited to begin the project. The group aspect threw me off, as well as the (at the time) ambiguity of how thorough and successful the project would have to be. I found reassurance later in the fact that this is many of ours’s first community organization project, so it wasn’t expected to be totally perfect. Nonetheless, our group still strove to make it the most effective that it could be. Through my research, I learned a great deal about my community and about the demographics of nearly every public and private secondary institution throughout the tri-county area. Although a majority of this data failed to make it into the final presentation, I still feel as though I gained a broader knowledge of the makeup of my community. Additionally, as I mentioned before, I learned how to pull my weight as a group member rather than as an individual. Together, the group had to divide up workloads in order to get the project done efficiently, and while it was a little difficult at first not having control over every little proceeding, it was ultimately beneficial as we were able to integrate multiple perspectives and take some work off of each other. Over time, I started to become closer to my group; we started to talk about more than just the project, as we were starting to become friends rather than simply “coworkers.” I learned about the dynamism of each group member and how great of people they were. Although our project was subject to skewing based on the sample of participants that answered our survey, we were able to recognize the importance of taking a more direct route in gathering participants to ensure an equally represented demographic body. Otherwise, I am extremely proud of the group and all that we accomplished together, even if it did not necessarily meet the final image that we had in mind when we first started the project. We were very indecisive at first about how we wanted this to look, but eventually, it all came together. I thank all my fellow group members, the Generation of Promise staff, and the entire Generation of Promise class for being supportive and making the ideation and execution of our project possible.

The only interaction with my partners, Dallas and Jacob, was during the Retreat when we were assigned our Best Buddies. Besides exchanging phone numbers, we didn’t communicate until this project. We contacted each other through email and picked a set of questions to go through, sending them back to each other once we had completed them. While it would have been exciting to exchange schools for a day, I still felt like I got to know my partners better. The biggest impression I got from Dallas was his practicality. He has a set plan for life with practical goals, like own a barndominium and make good money. In this sense, we have different aspirations, or rather lack thereof, as I’m indecisive as to what I want to do in my future. He also attested to his competitiveness, citing the tendencies of other people to say how seriously he takes things such as sports and video games, and his drive to win. Another example of Dallas’s perceivable practicality is his statement that he dislikes it when people try to fight fact with opinion. He also stated that he doesn’t really have a place to go and relax, and that the last time he cried from laughing was in sixth grade, which led me to believe that my partner had an elevated sense of maturity than many teenagers our age. The major thing that we both have in common is the aspect of competitiveness. I often find myself bent on trying to be the best on everything I do, which is often in vain and just leads to disappointment. I also found that I had a lot of interests in common with Jacob; probably the top three are our love of Star Wars, our religion, and our view of online school. He discussed how important religion is to him but how he would never push his views on someone else, which is a shared perspective. He also had practical goals, wanting to possibly go into a career involving game design. He described how difficult online school initially was, but how eventually, he settled in. I was never able to fully settle in with online school, as I had a lot of problems staying focused and finding motivation. Being back in-person, I find myself having an easier time with these two aspects. Based on his answers, Jacob exuded a strong drive and a strong foundation upon which he builds his life, through religion as well as his hobbies. On my end, I didn’t really have a problem with sharing things about myself despite Dallas, Jacob and I not knowing each other very well, as I find it cathartic to provide information to people I don’t know as well so that we can establish a baseline of how we view each other. Getting to know my partners enables us to better understand each other’s interests and mindsets so that conversation and friendship may come more easily, as we have things to discuss among ourselves. As previously stated, while it would have been an intriguing experience to visit the school of one of my partners and see how their operations differ from or are similar to mine would have been interesting, I feel as though this activity enabled me to know my partners on a more personal level.

In regards to what I’ve learned about the Detroit and Metro-Detroit area, the most prolific thing that I’ve realized is how important Detroit is in a national and even worldwide aspect. Being home to some of the only museums and art installations of its kind, the variety of lifestyles and cultural facets that have embedded themselves into the city’s psyche, there is an overwhelming amount of awe-inspiring entities within the area. After receiving the virtual tour, I found myself wanting to experience everything that it had to offer, particularly the museums and nature reserves. There has been so much culture and diversity in front of me that I never noticed before the last session. Pertaining to the group sessions with the visitors, I was struck by the atrocities highlighted in Bangladeshi murals that have befallen many nations in the transcontinental Middle East. One of the murals depicted the fear felt by children during bright, clear days, as that would be when American drone strikes would occur. It struck me how something that usually represents happiness, such as a sunny day, could turn into a source of such fear. It caused me to contemplate the disgusting acts that humans inflict upon each other; it’s something that one hears about often in the news, but the humanity of the situation is so much closer at hand than we’d like to imagine it. This is one of many things I’ve noticed myself doing since the program year commenced. I feel increasingly aware of the plight of others, now that I’ve been made conscious of how close hardship lies. As I stated, it’s things that one hears about, but since they don’t live it, it’s hard to imagine. The activity in particular that helped me recognize this was when everyone was separated into groups of levels of privilege based on answers from a survey. Questions involving being trailed around a public space based on one’s race and other things that as a straight, white, middle class male, I don’t have to imagine dealing with. That survey was a rude awakening for me to see the hardship inflicted upon people by other people often for the sole purpose of race or sexual orientation in my own community. As a result of this, I’ve started to engage in outside reading on contentious issues, begun watching videos on theories surrounding these issues, and becoming better overall at taking initiative in understanding problems facing society. I still struggle with taking a position of leadership, asserting myself and finding the inner motivation to be the ally that I desire to be, to actively bring about the change that I want to see. I really want to be able to, I just have to work up the resolve and acquire the information that I need to. I strongly believe that as the program progresses, this will become easier and easier to do. There is so much that we’ve covered in Generation of Promise that I’d love to learn more about, particularly regarding racism, its history, and the theories and conclusions gathered from the topic. I’m strongly looking forward to future sessions and continuing to develop the leadership skills that I require to go about contributing to change.

Writing is such a profound and analogous thing to life. Both require some form of fundamental structure, but are not limited by the boundaries of life’s architecture. Both can follow a linear path, but more often than not go off on a tangent. A straight path can be good; one knows where to go without descending too deeply into the seemingly endless void of thoughts and ideas waiting to be selected and expressed. An infinitive, twisting and winding path makes for a limitless wealth of new information to reap from one’s mind and sow upon the canvas, a treasure that one cannot acquire on the straight path. The frustration of knowing that not everything one wants to express can be translated is invigorating, and creates constant new quests of trying to tap into that knowledge. Those are quests that I strive to complete. I want to experience and absorb as much of the substantial facets that life has to offer, and to delve into its intricacies. I want to remember sensory experiences and keep them stored for myself only. There are two critical issues with this desire: motivation and self-encasement. Regarding the former, I find myself overwhelmed as I unceasingly obsess over gaining experience from off the beaten path. The never-ending stores of information, knowledge, and experience invokes hesitation and sometimes burnout. By the time I work up the gumption, I fear it is too late and that I waited too long; that is a hard thing to get past and move on from, to realize and believe that opportunities will continue to present themselves. In terms of the latter, I find that pondering what I don’t have leads to the obsession that leads to overwhelming. Straying too far off the path leads to loss, however. One loses the ability to articulate what they want, and the tangent becomes a rambling disaster, deviating from the original goal. This is the position in which I tend to find myself. By playing to my strengths and attempting to establish some boundaries off the path, I find myself remembering where I am and what I need to keep track of first and foremost. By doing what I love, I find that those things give me a platform from which I can gain new experiences and unlock new sources of knowledge of the world. The aforementioned structure of life needs to be established as well, beyond the universal biological functions of life. As we move through our lives as individuals, we establish a personal structure through the decisions that we make. Activities that one may choose to participate in can enable them to explore the world around them. For me, the two most important are running and singing. The former enables me to physically explore my surrounding while also exploring my own physical nature. Running with a team serves to enhance the experience. The shared experience of a strenuous workout or race, or just simply going for a run with somebody else makes the experience more memorable and constructs relationships. I do not have to constantly worry about logistics and planning with running, it is just something that I can do and keep getting better at physically, while at the same time establishing important social relationships and gain knowledge of the natural world around me. Such a large portion of my life has revolved around running, it is a necessity for me now; it is something that I need to do lest I feel like my day is incomplete unless I do it. My being yearns for the experiences that I have learned to associate with running. Singing, on the other hand, fulfills the emotional aspect of experience. Most of my best friends and memories come from choir-related experiences; the ability to make music with other people is an immaculate thing. So much can be conveyed or interpreted through music, and being able to create that experience for other people, with other people, is indescribable. Musical experiences can be so strong as to induce tears or swells of joy. The beauty of the unexpected and finding those emotions is unrivaled. It is simply amazing how something so natural like music can evoke so much power in a person. These are the things that help me find those unexpressed feelings, help me find those experiences that awaken within me a new perspective. The way that I want my life is to be on the straight path, but with constant deviations off of it into unexplored regions, while always keeping the path somewhat in sight or memory.