Carpe Diem
Seize the day; Live life to the fullest!
Reflection
Tanzania Kabir Parisa
1. It is a group project so we all mainly worked together, even on individual works we all helped each other out. So initially when we were supposed to submit the ETP proposal, we all discussed the ideas in person, I actively participated and gave a lot of ideas and topics. I’m more like the person who edits all the writing. After everyone is done with their work, I always do the last checking and edit out things and add more words to make it seem more organized and so that the transition from one idea to another seems smooth. And I think editing is a very important part, because the writer will not be easily spot the faults in their own writing, but a fresh pair of eyes will be able to recognize the faults in no time,
which is why i always do a final reading on everyone's work and edit things, with their permission of course! I contacted a lot of people, called them up and sent them emails regarding our projects and if we can volunteer and interview them. With my own ideas I made a Google doc on our group’s email regarding the presentation day activities. I made a list of things that can be done, I described each of my ideas and also attached images so that everyone gets a clear enough idea. I did this from far ahead just so we do not have to stress out much and can just chose one from the list. It was my idea to do the kindness survey because due to some poor time management, we had no time to do other big projects, so we did a survey instead, to use it as a data collector and determine how kind people are at Taylor’s university. I submitted a photograph of my mother and father, then wrote a paragraph about each of them in the website. I participated in the animal shelter visit, actually we all participated and contributed equally, I helped filmed a time-lapse video of the group to include in the video. Sometimes helped in deciding images or colours for the website. I spread out the father’s day survey like wild fire! I at least made 15-20 people complete the survey. For the kindness survey, I personally roamed around campus and asked random people at Taylor’s to do the survey.
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2. This project requires a lot of work, time and dedication, it has lots of different sides that needs to be covered and hence came along problems with it. The first problem was that our project topic is not specific, kindness can be a lot of things but we have to focus our project into something specific otherwise it would look everything’s all over the place. The next problem was that the place we wanted to visit replied late and we fell short of time. Then came the Hari Raya break in the middle, so there was really less time to finish the website after school started again. So time management was a very big issue that everyone faced, including me.
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3. For our ‘kindness project’ we chose a common methods of kindness which are volunteering works and just being kind in a day to day life in both attitude and action. The places we wanted to visit originally had to be cancelled and so we had to then work with some backup plans, example the kindness survey and interview. We all pulled ourselves through and tried our best to finish up the website, because we all are doing different parts of the website, without one another it's all incomplete.
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4. Of course I enjoyed the project! I could go to an animal shelter and play with dogs, how it can get better than this! And thanks to my teammates, they made the project fun. The planning and the visions we had and ideas we came up with together were phenomenal. It was a long journey, seemed like a never ending one, but we made it till the end.
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5. The TGC I acquired at first is thinking critically and creatively. The activities that reflect this is how we narrowed down our vast topic and how we managed to get contents for our website. Because kindness can mean so many things and it is impossible to cover all the possibilities, we tried our best to make it about family and friends and even strangers, there is a separate mother’s day and father’s day webpage, a video shows we interviewed some people where they talk about kindness.
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The second TGC that I acquired is how to define and analyse problems to arrive at effective solutions. The activities that reflect this is how my team and I managed to come up with backup plans after our original idea for the project couldn’t work out, examples are the kindness survey and also the interview we took of our friends and family regarding kindness.
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The third TGC I acquired is how to communicate appropriately in various settings and modes. The activities that made me acquire this knowledge is the different situations My team and i had to go through during the project, from planning to executing the ideas, and from having fun in discussions to being strict and disciplined to get things done at last minute. The place we visited and the random acts of kindness, all demanded different attitudes from us and I believe we delivered it right.