To The Stars, To The Stones

As kids we are taught that sharing is caring. This is mainly an epidemic used with situations including toys or making a child share their candy with other sticky-fingered children. Yet years later it can still be used in situations of work and projects. 

On a recent trip to Albuquerque, sharing and flexibility was an aspect we became accustomed to on a daily basis. Even the most planned out project needs tweaks and quick solutions, and so it was our work to find solutions to our problems related to our projects. 

During our Albuquerque trip, we created a book talking about the Manhattan Project and how the creation of the atomic bomb changed the world in a historically significant way. While creating this book, there were many things we planned before we left on the trip, including layout and most of the writing/informative text. However, as goes with all projects, nothing ever goes 100% to plan. Then it all turn to quick problem solving skills and flexible thinking.

An example of this Flexible Thinking™ is our classes use of interviews, and how we shared them. It’s very common when you have 16 people doing the same project for there to be overlapping interview questions. As such, our teachers recommended we collaborate on interviews to make it easier for interviewees so they wouldn’t have to answer the same question a million times. Before they recommended this, a few of us were already doing this using our flexible thinking skills to save time and camera space.

In the end, our class actually ended up sharing a lot of information and images, because even with great planning, sometimes someone else just got that much better of a shot.

On top of the assigned work, I always like to find time for the things I enjoy recreationally, and it’s been one of my goals for many years to incorporate my interests into my school work. To accomplish this, when we go on school trips I will often make a video tracking the places we go and some of the stuff we do there.

I was determined to make a great video for this trip too, because it’s something I really enjoy doing. The video for the Albuquerque trip ended up being 2 minutes long, included clips from almost everywhere we went, and was accompanied by some lo-if background music.

The video I ended up making was not what I had originally planned for, but I liked it none the less. I did the best I could with the resources I have to create videos. I am looking forward to downloading and testing some new editing sites (I usually just use iMovie which is great, but I would like to expand my choices) and maybe making my own music next time. 

Personally things like interviews and asking questions are outside of my comfort zone, so finding ways to overcome my challenges with that to get the information I needed was pretty cool, and I look forward to expanding on that in the future and breaking my comfort zone even more in the near future.

Overall, the trip was fantastic. We saw some amazing sights, talked to some fantastic people, and created some excellent content both within our assigned projects and within our own interests.