Hello blog! Been a while. I’m back with a post about the trip I went on a little while ago, all the way down in New Mexico! This trip was a history based field study, but there was just as much fun as learning.

This post will be focused on the stuff we don’t normally talk about too much when it comes to field studies, which is exciting! Let’s get right into it.

What did we do?

Before I get into the behind the scenes of the trip, let me tell you a little bit about the trip. Our main focus was the Manhattan Project, so we went to places like Los Alamos, the Trinity Site, multiple nuclear history museums, and many more amazing places with amazing opportunities. For the arts/culture side of it, we went to Meow Wolf, and the spectacular International Balloon Fiesta! 

The Behind the Scenes!

We’ve been asked to discuss this driving question,

“How did you think flexibly to create, imagine, and innovate while taking responsible risks to complete your project and enjoy yourself?”

Which I think is a great question as it’s a side of Field Studies we don’t necessarily focus on normally. I’m going to go through a few examples that I think highlight this driving question for me personally. 

THE INTERVIEWS

Interviewing has always been something that F R E A K S me out. It’s known by everyone in my class and we are all used to it. I’ve always gotten over my fear enough to conduct about 1-2 interviews a trip, but I never enjoyed it. I normally discuss this topic in all my field study blog posts as its a reoccurring issue but something changed this trip. This trip, I took responsible risks (risks for me at least!) by asking for more interviews than I necessarily needed. I recorded 3 interviews for my project, but talked to many more people than this, for the only reason of getting over this fear.

It isn’t the actual recording or interviewing part that freaks me out, its the fear of going up to someone I’ve never met and hoping they are open to me talking to me/record them. So, this trip I thought long and hard about these fears and decided they weren’t going to hold back the knowledge I could be learning by talking to people on this trip. This was a ONCE in a lifetime trip, so why not take advantage of that and learn as much as I can?

So, why is this important you ask? By the middle of the trip, I actually started enjoying talking to random people. It went from being a scary chore I needed to do for my project, to an enjoyable conversation. I started looking at it in a new perspective and focused on the fact these people WANT to talk to us, and WANT to share what they know. They have so much knowledge that I don’t have, its self  sabotaging to not talk to them, just because I’m scared. I’m very proud of these interviews as it is a artifact of my growth and overcoming fear. 

THE VIDEO 

Every trip I always take lots of videos, but never really do anything with them. But, it was different this trip. I wanted to create more than just the assigned project. So, I took videos of everything I could. It isn’t a factual video focused on the Manhattan Project, its more on the activities, and the people who participated. I wanted to highlight my favourite part of the trips, but… with a little history in it.

The beginning of the video is the intro of a song that samples Oppenheimer’s famous speech titled “The Decision to Drop the Bomb.” I wasn’t going to add anything history based into the short video, but this speech was constantly running through my head no matter what we were doing so I felt I needed to include it. The thing that fascinates me the most about the whole Manhattan project is the decision to drop it, and the impacts, which is what the speech is about. So, heres the video. It’s short, but thats just my personal editing style when its not a school project video! 

OVERALL

I felt a strong sense of creativity, curiosity, and joy during this trip and I hope my photos and videos highlight that. I was proud of myself this trip for not letting my fears take over, and for the fact I could run on little sleep and still pay attention and enjoy the days! I also am glad I took so many photos and videos, as that’s my passion when it comes to these trips. For the next trip I would like to focus a little more on the prep pre-trip as I felt my prep was weak. It all ended up working out, but I think a little more preparation would have helped me out a little more.

Thanks to the teachers for planning and taking us on this trip, it was genuinely mind blowing.