Throughout this past month my classmates and I have been taken into the Star Wars universe. We have been learning, writing, watching and creating a project exhibition all about Star Wars. It all started with the process of creating our inquiry questions, we brainstormed what seemed like millions of possible inquiry questions that we could build and create a project on. After lots of critique from my teachers and friends I got the perfect question which fit my interests as well. My inquiry question was “How Does Power Affect Us,” I wanted to compare real life mental power to Star Wars mental power. Through research I found that I could take what I thought was a simple project question to so many different levels involving the psychology behind how the littlest things we do and say can affect people in ways we don’t even think about!

I’ve learned a ton of things about psychology during this project. Someone who helped me with my project an enormous amount was a man named Adam Galinsky. Adam Galinsky is a social psychologist who has done a lot of research on decision making, negotiations, leadership, and most importantly, power. He got his Ph.D. from Princeton University in Social Psychology and his B.A. from Harvard University. He is now currently working as a Professor of Business at Columbia Business School. For this project in particular I had made an effort to reach out to Adam and try to get in contact with him over the phone and through email, however I never did get the opportunity. His research, articles, therorys, and ted talk video all helped me with my project, even if I didn’t get to speak with him directly.

Once I got my inquiry question approved by my teacher, I immediately started brainstorming possible ideas for a project I could build and create. In the end I decided to make a big project display board showing all the research I did with pictures and 3D figures. I knew something was missing so I decided to use an experiment Adam Galinsky created as something to draw people in.

During this project we new that at the end we were going to have a night where family, friends, and the community is welcome to come and explore our projects and ask us questions. It turned out to be really interesting and fun, once everyone had there project ideas in place the teachers split the class in two. The Dark Side and The Light Side, like in Star Wars, they did it based on our project inquiry questions. At school we made our classroom into the light Side and across the hall we made our school library into the dark side. Once the two groups were created the teachers put us into even smaller groups. They made different categories and put a few kids in each section according to their questions, my section was philosophy.

Watch Short Video Of My Project Here ⬇️

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Everyone in the exhibition had to create and bring some sort of Star Wars themed food, I brought Yoda brains, A.K.A jello. We also transformed our school library into the Dark Side and had a walk through maze of projects for people to walk around. In the library we turned off all the lights so it fit the Star Wars theme and had red lights shining.

 

Some challenges I faced while doing my project was that I had to learn the night of how much explanation people wanted on my project. Some people only wanted a quick explanation of my project but others wanted me to go into detailed so I figured out from how engaged the person was, how much of an explanation they wanted.
Another big challenge I faced while doing my project was that my display board got ruined less than a week before the exhibition and I had to redo it. I knew what I had to do so I worked hard and finished a project that I was very proud to stand by on the night of the exhibition.

Overall the exhibition was a success and everyone worked hard on their projects, the rooms and with each other. I look forward to creating another big exhibition project later this year.

Video Of Adam Galinsky on Ted Talks, Click Link Here!

 

BYE😄