Ideas for Improvement

          For this class, I learned about Entrepreneurship. I think it has been very informative so far. I found this class very helpful and I look forward to learning more. During this class we took a couple of personality tests. One of the tests we took was called the Big Five. This one measures your personality over five different areas that spelled out the word ocean. Ocean stood for openness, conscientiousness,  extroversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism. We also took one called 16 personalities. This one was also known as the Myers Briggs. I remember I got "ENTJ" for my results.

            For a service project, we had to choose and analyze an aspect of GCE that could use some improvement. I chose the subject of Field Experiences which are out-of-school opportunities that we take every Wednesday to experience a real life aspect of what we’re learning about in class. I interviewed five people for this. Some were teachers, some were staff and some were fellow students. I questioned them on the safety and security of the field experiences. I also questioned them on their opinions of how well this actually relates back to class. And then finally I asked them what improvements they would make on the field experiences themselves. Overall I think all the responses varied significantly. I chose these particular people to interview because I knew their responses would be very different. I did this so I could get a broad opinion on the subject and it worked out quite well.


            Another thing we learned in class was SWOT. This stands for strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. In identifying those characteristics relating to us, I would first have to say the strength that we have is the level of connectivity shown in our class meetings. I think we can rely on each other a lot. Some weaknesses we have are getting too distracted by things and people around us. I am not singling anyone out obviously! I am just saying that when downtown, it's easy to lose track of where you’re going if distracted. Some opportunities that we can take to our full advantage are the connections with the FE hosts that we already have. Also, Kim mentioned something about a bus and how she’s looking into it. I know price-wise it might not be the most realistic idea, but it's an opportunity to Chicago. And finally threats. I think our biggest threat truly is our budget. I know that doesn't sound great, but I think it’s the most realistic.

          A commons is described as a public space for everyone to use and share. An example of this is the Thomson Center. After some FEs, we would come here to have lunch and just hang out. We went to We Work. This is a cool workspace anyone can come to and have a space to work with colleagues. Also spaces can be rented for private meetings. Another cool space I saw is Be Office Urban Workspaces. It's downtown and it looks as if we can go there. I think this will be good if we use this as a space to work while we wait for the next FE to begin.

          One of the smart goals we have is the realistic aspect of the cost. Again, mostly the problem here is the cost of everything. The school just bought a new building and I am pretty sure that we don't have the budget for a bus or rental service.

          While in class we discussed the five levels of Maslow‘s Hierarchy. I am going to include my own version of Maslow‘s Hierarchy but with the FE information put in.

Rules
          The Rules of the FE’s are already set up and non-negotiable. I think that we should be able to meet the class at the FE sight if we can get there. Sometimes it's just a lot closer to go right from your house to the sight instead of going all the way to school and back out.

Esteem
          Sometimes the school has events were they invite the FE partners. I think that we should get the FE partners to sponsor the school and for a price they can get their business advertised around the new space. This is how that company donated the D- Lab and it was a great idea.

Love & Belonging
          The school has relationships with specific FE places. I would say keep reaching out. It is always good to have a solid place to know you're welcome -- such as the Gene Siskel film Center or the Goodman Theater.

Safety
          We don't have much control here to be honest. It's hard to do manage because it is Chicago and anything can happen. I will talk to Kim to see if there are some sort of security procedures we could practice. Having a guard is too much frankly. I would say just remind people how to act and to avoid any confrontations on the CTA or wherever. The adults provide information and some level of security about what to do if there is an emergency issue.



Physiological
          FEs are pretty accommodating when it comes to eating. If we get back late to school from a morning FE, we don't have enough time to eat. I think a way to improve this is to have a vote among the group as to whether we want to have lunch downtown or go back to GCE. I know for some of Sharron's FEs we have eaten at the Thompson Center. Sometimes last year we would get back late and that would affect our lunch time by taking 20 minutes off of it. This year the school has been much more lenient towards getting back later and giving us time so I think that is a good step in the right direction.


Sources

Interviews

A.C,L, 2020 

C.B, 2020 

D.S ,2020

K.C, 2020 

“Free Personality Test.” 16Personalities, 2011, www.16personalities.com/free-personality-test.

“Listen to Music.” SoundCloud, 2020, soundcloud.com/discover.

Mcleod, Saul. “Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs.” Simply Psychology, Simply Psychology, 21 May 2018, www.simplypsychology.org/maslow.html.

Reflection of week

This week I worked at Beyond Design I have learned a lot. I found it to be very informative. I learned about how helpful and effective brainstorming is. This first week we spend most of our time brainstorming the problem and tackle at it from different angles.  This helped us work towards our goals by showing us exactly what we have to do. With the help of my peers and my boss michael I think we can really make something cool.

Simple but Effective

For my class “Econ” we focused a lot on older views of the way the industry and how it works. For the second unit we focused on a book called doughnut economics. This book focuses on more socialistic view of economy. That means everyone is working for each other instead of a more capitalist view which is more about working for yourself. An example of one of her big beliefs ins the doughnut cart that she thinks shows all big problems and shows the issue of over doing it. For this Action Project we were told to make a logo for our own economic principle. Our class had two field experiences as well. One to the Capital One bank we learned about credit and how to be smart when using a credit card and values of items. I feel they are more traditional than the other. The other FE we went on was to a shared workspace. This is kind of an interesting idea in my opinion. A man named Garr talked to us about a circular economy and how much money is wasted by not reusing items. I think he said something like 500 million. Which is a crazy to be missing out out these opportunities. I don't really like the idea of a circular economy everyone has to follow and use as a template for their business but I think they are very smart to do what their doing.







“How to be successful” (OL 2019)





Description




This image I created encapsulates my ideas about how the economy should work. I think it always starts out with a good idea that’s why I put the light bulb to symbolize an idea. Space next to need some money to start up a company or an idea. Also you need to invest a lot of time and energy into the dream you have. The last image shows a man climbing up the stairs towards a trophy to me this represents getting a good foot forward toward success. I chose this image of the man going up the stairs on purpose because it is a single person not a group of people just a single person‘s work who him or her to this place.




Response/Context/Argument




In the book the radical of donut economics Rayworth talks a lot about about making the economy more community-based. “Depicting rational economic man as an isolated individual – unaffected by the choices of others – proved highly convenient for modelling the economy, but it was long questioned even from within the discipline” this was a quote from Kate Raworth's book. I don't think this is kind of putting all these people in a generalization and I dont think thats a good way to ever look at something. I do not think the government should put laws on things like how much money we can have. Personally I am a free-market capitalist. I think the government should minimize its effect in the marketplace. I think it should be as simple as “Hey do you want this piece of bread” “yes that looks great and I’m quite hungry”. “Great that’s only 2 dollars”. I don’t want the government to come in and be like well actually the bread crust is technically made by these people so a portion of that is going to have to go to the bread maker and then a little to the supervisor of the bread factory. I hope you understand my bread analogy. But overall I genuinely think people acting in their self interest is the most efficient way to make a powerful economy. I understand some people think it is out outdated idea. I don’t agree. I think if the government still managed things like social work and outreach programs it would still be effective. I just think the government should leave businesses alone. I want to quote PragerU and agree with this statement. "Capitalism is the only economic system that rewards people for helping others before they help themselves. The market fosters empathy and benevolence by rewarding those who create goods and services that benefit others in society." Overall I think the idea of free market capitalism is fair and just. You can make a company while being dirt poor and have it skyrocket and be wildly successful and I think that is amazing.PragerU . This is a link to the site that has a video and a small article which I find very insightful.





Sources




Chappelow, Jim. “Free Market Definition.” Investopedia, Investopedia, 14 Sept. 2019, www.investopedia.com/terms/f/freemarket.asp.




Doughnut Economics, Kate Raworth



Glider, George. “Why Capitalism Works.” PragerU, 10 Mar. 2014, www.prageru.com/video/why-capitalism-works/.



Smythe, james. “Why Communism ALWAYS Fails - Kept Simple for the General Reader.” News24, 26 Aug. 2014,




Reflection



I really had fun with this project personally I liked the visualizing of making my own logo and liked talking about a cause that I believe to be true. I think my design was simple but effective just like free market capitalism.

The Man in Black

For this class journalism we have been focusing on how to interview people. For my Action Project we had to choose an impactful voice of the twentieth century. We also had to get a podcast style recording of the conversation talking about this person we choose. I choose johnny cash because I think that seeing helped a lot of people with his music and sometimes it's the misrepresented people who he fought for and I liked that.

[00:00:01.830] - OL
Thank you. CL for joining me.


[00:00:06.760] - OL
About this interview for Johnny Cash.


[00:00:09.310] - CL
Glad to be here.


[00:00:11.050] - OL
his interview is about johnny cash because I think he was an influential person of the 20th century. And I think he. Was very impactful on a lot of people. Now a few questions.

[00:00:23.820] - CL
Go ahead.


[00:00:25.220] - OL
What do you think. What do you know about Johnny Cash ?


[00:00:29.290] - CL
Well I know that he's a country singer icon who started out bluegrass. What do you think of his style of songs. Well it's country. Slash bluegrass. He had his origins in an extremely pure country. And then he moved into a little more extruded sound when he got to Nashville. Of the Grand Ole Opry influenced him a lot. It became more studio effect on his vocals for example he stayed pretty pure with that he had a good deep rich voice.


[00:01:05.260] - CL
He really popularized the driving rhythm kind of a railroad beat that he did just with his own guitar. So he started out just using his own guitar as a rhythm instrument. And that drove that railroad kind of beat that.


[00:01:33.850] - OL
Why do you think he dressed in black all the time ?


[00:01:36.340] - CL
That's a good question. If it was a a crossover because black was not a popular country music theme back then it was more it was a beatnik. 50s to early 60s signature to be all in black and darker and it was a good symbolism for that the darker side of his music and then then he became known as the man in black and then he couldn't change. So who knows at the end if he wanted to wear black or not he really had to because he was the man in black. the way I feel about a lot of things.


[00:02:15.170]  Johnny cash
 So this is the way I feel about a lot of things. This is called the Man in Black.


[00:02:18.000] - OL
Why do you suppose he had a drug problem.


[00:02:21.420] - CL
Well a lot of people in the music industry.Play around drugs a lot. Many many people. Kurt Cobain lots of people a mama cast lots of people on drug music. Use drugs in the music industry. So. That isn't that surprising. He also had a very personally had a very troubled past. He had apparently had some anger problems and he. Did alcohol as well. And he just felt alienated from society.


[00:02:57.090] - OL
What type of people do you think relate the best to him ?


[00:03:00.370] - CL
Disenfranchised people. The the people who relate because that's to him. Started to be left out of American society back in the day right after the war during World War Two you could be a poor rural person and still like step into society go in the army and save the country and all that. Once they came back. The 50s were pretty good economically but when the crash came in 57' rural America just kind of became the forgotten stepchild of American society. No nobody in power talked about.


[00:03:40.540] - CL
Poor rural people as being of any importance at all. And he spoke to them.


[00:03:47.770] - Johnny cash
"You stay the hell away from me ya hear".


[00:03:49.660] - CL
It's kind of the American dream that you can crash and be a phoenix and rise up again. And he inspired that and people like no matter how low you get. If you just get a grip on yourself you can rise up out of the ashes. So he appeals to a lot of people. OK. Thank you for meeting with me about this. My pleasure. It was very informative.


[00:04:11.200] - OL
Good afternoon. Yes. Thank you for joining me. Thank you. Quick question. If you don't mind about Johnny Cash . What do you know about him and his legacy ?


[00:04:21.940] - DS
So I think he's left a.Very famous legacy. Now if that works. But. Yeah I think he's influenced many people and continues to influence them to this day. I think a lot of people look up to what he was and kind of aspire to be. Yeah I think that's kind of the big things.


[00:04:46.410] - OL
Thank you.

Refection 
This action project took about 3 or 4 hours for me to do. The interviews where the easy part for me. I am really unfamiliar with audio editing software and I had to get the hang of it. Then my audio got deleted so I had to redo all the audio.

With this podcast I wanted to see if anyone knew anything about the country singer Johnny Cash. I choose the audio from the song Folsom Prison Blues for when CL was talking about the railroad beat I knew that would be perfect.

I knew who I wanted to choose for the interview the day it was assigned. I wanted the opinion of a younger audience (being DS) and I wanted the opinion of an older one knowing that he grew up with his music this being (CL)

I recommend trying to find a space without echo. It was hard to find anywhere in my house without this echo and the final product is edited to try to lessen it but it was still there a little.

I would recommend not using Beautiful Editor. I say this because you can't do certain things with it. For example saving your work is very hard to figure out. Also I couldn't drag multiple audio sample at once which made it very annoying at some points. If I were to do this project again I would for sure use Garageband.

The script was a challenge for me. I was time consuming and I didn't really see a point to doing it but I got through it and it is accurate. I did use the help from a website to get the exact timing of conversions.

Meaning of life AP

For my class Journalism we have been learning about photography and how it shapes people opinions of a certain view or opinion of something. For example we were told to choose a photo that we found meaningful through ever decade up to year two thousand. I found it interesting how a lot of people had different photos so that meant that these different things stood out more in time to specially them. For this Action Project we were told to take a photo of a subject then interview them about what they thought the meaning of life is.

.............................................................................................................................................................





“I believe the meaning of life is to find something you enjoy and try to pursue it as much as possible while maintaining a realistic lifestyle based around it. For example, I really like to fish so when I purchased another property in Indiana I want to make sure that there is some body of water on it. There is a great property but there is no water on it so I put a lot of time into making a new one. I went so far as to hire contractors of the heavy machinery to dig out these large sections of land that I thought would be good and it ended up being perfect.”



OL 2019 “Old Man Fishing”

This person believes that this is the meaning of life. I know that he really enjoys fishing, and I know it’s a real achievable thing for him to do every couple weekends. I’m not trying to say that fishing is his meaning of life ; I’m just saying if he truly believes that is to find a goal and pursue it. I think he’s done a good job of it because I know all the work that he’s done to have this place so that he could go and fish and kayak and other nature related things. I kind of agree with his meaning of life statement because I think it’s a good idea to find a goal and set your course to that goal, and I just can’t be blindly wondering and without drive. I always think it’s important to have anymore even if you don’t know what yet says smaller ones and build up to one big one.

I think this image released the five senses. Sight: you see a man fishing, and you can see what looks to be a storm coming in the background. It gives you a sense of being in rain or shine this person will pursue his activity. Auditorily, you might be hearing or things such as water hitting on the brake wall. You can see in the image that some of the water in the lake is already kind of spinning and crashing already, so you have a good audio sense of that without even hearing it.

At this time of the year there’s not many people out there it’s a real spot in the summer forever and bring the boat out but at this time of year everyone put their boat away so it’s almost dead silent on the lake. Somethings you can smell are most likely someone burning their chop down wood because when it starts getting cold a lot of folks do that around there and always hits you. Again this changes depending on the season, for example in summertime you smell barbecues and boats exhaust which isn’t a bad thing I’m just saying it alternates depending on time. No obvious and if you can't feel anything through this image because it’s an image but you can get a real sense of wind hitting you . it’s starting to get colder out maybe some water and splash up and hit your leg or something, it's not hard to imagine these things but again you just can’t physically feel something through an image. I really don’t know what it would taste I couldn’t picture any taste happening during this task.

This is an image of my father fishing. This was taken in Walkerton, Indiana next to a lake. This was. taken on Friday October 18th. I tried to capture this image using a slow shutter speed, and I tried to focus on the subject and not so much the background. It was a pretty dark day, so I had to make sure that the subject wasn’t too dark in the photo, but I didn’t have to use flash or anything it turned out fine. If I were to change one thing about this photograph I would probably change the camera I was using. I always use an iPhone camera, but I wish I had one of those actual good cameras, but iPhones are pretty good. It would just be a lot more easy to affect the shutter speed and aperture through a more high end camera. Another thing I wish I kind of thought about more was the rule of thirds. I could’ve lined it up better, but I was more focused on the focus and the Aperture. I spent some time messing around with some of the adjustment settings in the photo app on iPhone, and I achieved kind of what I was trying to. I was trying to make the background seem darker and keep the subject kind of brightly lit, but I don’t know if it’s that easy to see or not. I also wanted the background trees to be more colorful while trying to make the lake in the clouds match. I wanted the main attraction of the photo to be the clouds then see the subject then the water and then It all kind of blends together. I think instantly most I will get drawn to the clouds because it’s an interesting color that not many see every day.

AP #1 For Econ

For my first senior year class at GCE Lab school we are learning about money and how it works. We talked about opportunity cost and we talked about supply and demand. Out of all classes I think this relates to real world interactions the most. I can see that in the future all of theses topics like compound interest. Which I think is a good idea to teach about real things like this.

   

	Entry	Mid	Senior
2018	66,970	114,200	287,000
2019	70988.2	121052	295610
2020	75247.492	128315.12	313346.6
2021	79762.34152	136014.0272	332147.396
2022	84548.08201	144174.8688	352076.2398
2023	89620.96693	152825.361	373200.8141
2024	94998.22495	161994.8826	395592.863
2025	100698.1184	171714.5756	419328.4348
2026	106740.0056	182017.4501	444488.1409
2027	113144.4059	192938.4971	471157.4293
2028	119933.0702	204514.8069	499426.8751
2029	127129.0545	216785.6954	529392.4876
2030	134756.7977	229792.8371	561156.0368
2031	142842.2056	243580.4073	594825.399
2032	151412.7379	258195.2317	630514.923
2033	160497.5022	273686.9457	668345.8184
2034	170127.3523	290108.1624	708446.5675
2035	180334.9935	307514.6521	750953.3615
2036	191155.0931	325965.5313	796010.5632
2037	202624.3987	345523.4631	843771.197
2038	214781.8626	366254.8709	894397.4688
2039	227668.7743	388230.1632	948061.3169
2040	241328.9008	411523.973	1004944.996
2041	255808.6348	436215.4114	1065241.696
2042	271157.1529	462388.336	1129156.197
2043	287426.5821	490131.6362	1196905.569
2044	304672.177	519539.5344	1268719.903
2045	322952.5076	550711.9064	1344843.098
2046	342329.6581	583754.6208	1425533.684
2047	362869.4376	618779.8981	1511065.705
2048	384641.6039	655906.6919	1601729.647
2049	407720.1001	695261.0935	1697833.426
2050	432183.3061	736976.7591	1799703.431
2051	458114.3045	781195.3646	1907685.637
2052	485601.1627	828067.0865	2022146.775
2053	514737.2325	877751.1117	2143475.582
2054	545621.4664	930416.1784	2272084.117
2055	578358.7544	986241.1491	2408409.164
2056	613060.2797	1045415.618	2552913.713
2057	649843.8965	1108140.555	2706088.536
2058	688834.5302	1174628.988	2868453.848
2059	730164.6021	1245106.728	3040561.079
2060	773974.4782	1319813.131	3222994.744
2061	820412.9469	1399001.919	3416374.429
2062	869637.7237	1482942.034	3621356.895
2063	921815.9871	1571918.556	3838638.308
2064	977124.9463	1666233.67	4068956.607
2065	1035752.443	1766207.69	4313094.003
2066	1097897.59	1872180.151	4571879.643
2067	1163771.445	1984510.961	4846192.422
2068	1233597.732	2103581.618	5136963.967
2069	1307613.596	2229796.515	5445181.805
2070	1386070.411	2363584.306	5771892.714
2071	1469234.636	2505399.365	6118206.276

Lincoln yard is seeing stars AP #1

Something that is happening around Lincoln Park is the Lincoln Yards. This is a big project that is being constructed by the group Sterling Bay.Their idea also behind this project not only creating a new Chicago but also bring jobs to their area. The agenda given to supporters noted Sterling Bay’s intention to create more than 10,000 construction jobs in addition to 24,000 permanent jobs, according to the company. Another thing to remember is at the moment the land is mostly industrial or vacant. If Sterling Bay builds Lincoln Yards it will become, some of the most valuable residential    and commercial property in the city. Property owners there would be paying tens of millions of dollars in property taxes.

A person that was interviewed wants to be known as CL and he happened to be affected by this project going on. The first interview was with an individual who wishes to go by CL. Three questions were asked to Pat and CL they are same three questions and there view opposed each other which was intended.  First ,(OL) ”Do you think this is a realistic project ?”. (CL) “Yes, I think it is although I do think it will take a lot longer than they planned on. I was building a two story house and the projected timing on completion was a year and a half but it ended up becoming three.”

(OL) Do you think it will create jobs ?” (CL)”Yes I do think it will create many jobs this is a huge project and I know they will be looking for a lot of people who have backgrounds in constitution.”

(OL)” Do you think this will affect your day to day life ?” Already Stanley’s is a food store that sold fresh fruits and vegetables from has closed. A quote from the owners were " we saw the writing on the wall and elected to close it now" so honestly I wouldn’t be too surprised if other smaller businesses might close down which is unfortunate but just a reality of capitalism.”

Next, Pat who lives about 3 minutes from that area so near his neighborhood he had some good opinions on the matter. (OL)”Do you think this is a realistic project ?” (Pat)”No, I honestly think this will go the same way as the spire building downtown. This was a project by Shelbourne Development Group. It was planned to be a 1,865 foot building supposed to be started in 2007 and done in 2012 and the project went bankrupt unfortunately cool idea though.”(OL) “Do you think it will create jobs ?” (Pat)”It would for sure create jobs for construction workers if they deals go through but you also have to think about when the project ends then you have 10,000 people without work.” (OL) “Do you think this will affect your day to day life ?” (Pat)” Yes it would, I go over there to get food at Trader Joe's and all I can see there if there was this new development is a lot of traffic. Also some of the roads back there are not super well paved.”

The reason the Lincoln Yard project has many mixed opinions. Some think that it is a good job making opportunity and good way to gentrify the old factory area. Others think that the money given to the company from the government is not smart and should be spent in other places. The fact is that the government will make so much money from the taxes of the places that it has a chance of making the cash back. To be honest, this is a huge project and there are many hidden expenses when building things. Some small issues that can possibly take hundreds of thousands of dollars.

This project amazing idea and it will change Chicago forever. This because other big companies like sterling bay will see this massive project and then think maybe they can do the same in another vacant area. Like everything there clearly is some opposition from racially related issues to just not wanting change this can be overcome though.

(image of lincoln yards) 

Koziarz, Jay. “How the $5B Lincoln Yards Megaproject Will Transform Chicago's North Branch.” Curbed Chicago, Curbed Chicago, 19 July 2018, chicago.curbed.com/2018/7/19/17576244/lincoln-yards-development-sterling-bay-details.