“To master the nature of fear, one must become fear before accepting it” -Tom Gandhi Dalai Lama Sushams. If I have learnt one thing during this unit, it is I am good at making nothing into nothing. Ok, now back to the blog post, the past unit that has been taught to me by highly trained library ninja, teacher, traveler and movie addict himself, Mr Hughes.

I can tell you this unit was definitely quite the metaphorical and literal trip for me. We covered so much in such a short amount of time, I thought I would have to duck tape ice packs to my forehead to keep my head from melting in class. Although this unit required all two of my brain cells undivided attention, I had a blast learning about the topics; Cold War, Evolution of military technology, Arms race, Social and Cultural Developments, Consumerism and capitalism, Organized crime, Mass Consumption and Production of Communication and Transportation Technologies, Propaganda in democratic and totalitarian regimes, Role of media in shaping response to international conflicts, Role of television and radio in creating mass culture. Yep all that in a month, I bet you need to cool off from just reading that. The main point of this unit was to prepare the PLP class for our amazing trip to the southwest, I’ll get into that later. Our first assignment was to focus our topic, now this was all about the process of elimination to eventually get towards a driving inquiry questions. Now if you don’t know, I like to do everything with my main man/ partner in crime, Cashel. We were to choose a topic and narrow it down as much as possible till we got to a somewhat reasonable inquiry question.

As seen above you can see our first driving question, Does fear play a role in people’s addictions, and do they realize what they have lost before it’s all gone? Cashel and I were quite proud as we thought this was quite a good question, and so did Ms Willemse for about 1 day, and we were back to square one. But before we could fix it we were onto the next assignment. Nuclear fear! OOOO AHHHHH.

This assignment was extremely tough and required some of my special deep thinking to conquer Mr Hughes’ task. That task was to come up with an answer to the question “How is fear of nuclear/radiation used today to influence/manipulate/affect current events?” and when answering we had to use examples from the movie “The China Syndrome”, “Nuclear Nightmares”, a historical nuclear incident and then relate all that to a current event involving nuclear fear. That’s definitely a task that even the GI joe couldn’t conquer,

if you would like to know more about that you can visit one of my previous blogs. This is were the fun comes in, the trip, my first big PLP trip, one that I came out with many life experiences and memories that will last a life time. There was so much that went on this trip in such a short amount of time it is going to take awhile to debrief, so get comfy. Day 1, time, 4:30 am, status- 3/4 asleep, and the reality just hit me, I’M GOING TO VEGAS BABY!, well after Arizona. We hopped in the plane and flied shortly to Seattle for a quick delay/ everyone book it over to the next terminal. Then the kind of short but sweet flight to Arizona, and touch down (plane landing gif), we made, most importantly lunch time! After the quick salad bar lunch stop we went straight to the Biosphere. Now there was a lot going on in that building, multiple different biomes and most importantly the huge concrete lung.

5 hours later i had probably one of the best burgers in my life, I still don’t know whether it was actually good or I was dying of starvation so it tasted amazing, but still amazing, good find Ms Willemse and Mr Hughes. Day 2, time, 8:00 am, status- almost but not fully awake, breakfast time. Shortly after, we visited one of the coolest museums I’ve ever been to, the Pima Air & Space Museum, so many planes, I just wanted to hop in all of them but that would never happen because something would definitely blow up.

After that experience we visited a Church which was kinda weird because I still don’t know why we did, but hey, there’s nothing wrong with a little church time once in a while. Afterwards probably one of my favourite Mr Hughes moments occurred when the class went for a little hike in the Saguaro National park.

Day 3, time 6:30 am, status- half asleep with only one sock on. The class traveled to the Arizona- Sonora Desert Museum, I had a good time, I got inked.

After that we rushed all the way over to the Titan-II missile Museum, almost missing our tour, I would said we were fashionably late.

The Museum was definitely a crucial part to our question, if we knew what our question was before, luckily we got some footage there still to help Cashel’s and I’s argument stronger. After that we went to the boneyard, I’m not going to lie I was slightly disappointed by the tour and how is was only a bus tour, but hey it’s classified military ground what can you expect. Then some of the boys from PLP got a little bit of action on stage with the hypnotist. Day 4, time, 8:00 am, status- almost fully recovered, but now I can finally say, VEGAS BABY! You know it, we were all on the plane heading to the worst city for a school field trip, although everyone loved it. Like the classic tourists we are, some complementary Vegas Strip sign pictures we’re acquired.

Once more another interesting museum that was crucial to my topic, the Nevada State Museum, most of our facts were derived from here. Have you ever seen Oceans 11, well we did the classic Bellagio fountain picture. Day 5, time 8:30 am, status- alive, partially, another Museum was visited, not as interesting as the other but still entertaining. Then straight to the creepy wax museum.

Finally the last thing of the night, the Neon light museum which I found very entertaining, I did not realize there was so much history to those signs. Day 6, time, 7:30, status- not feeling too good. First thing in the morning we visited the valley of fire to go on a little hike, I can tell you right now this will not end well for me.

It was rather hot, actually too hot, so I took of my t shirt and that was my first mistake. Me being me and the boy shouting out to me saying “hottie hottie with the swimmers body” blew up my ego and I started to show off. Next thing I know, I’ve slipped and scrapped the whole side of my body and had some nasty road rash for the rest of the trip. But I tried my best to suck it up and push on to the next stop, The Hoover Dam. Now I have already been to the Hoover Dam so to me it was just like a flash back, but still interesting once again. Onto probably everyone’s favourite part, Beatles LOVE by Cirque du Soleil.

On the contrary this was not my favourite part as I just previously took a slight tumble and smacked my head, you could imagine I had quite the headache. Now if I can some the performance up briefly, it would have to be me at a huge rave concert and everyone there gets a turn at punching me in the head, I was in a bit of pain during the show. Next day and last day, time, 8:30, status, sore, tired and hungry. But straight off to the mob museum, I actually really enjoyed it as the museums itself was interactive which definitely kept me entertained. Apparently the class was looking rather tired so we had to go back to he hotel for a mandatory nap.

Shortly after though we went to go see the Blue Man Group, now that was a show I would like to see again definitely 8.5/10 from me.

To summarize that trip with a phrase it would be, best school trip you could ever imagine, well done Ms willemse and Mr Hughes. So after my week of. Recovery from that trip the PLP class went back to 110%, our next task was to create and essay using our driving question that Cashel and I still didn’t know but also using examples from the trip. So after a couple hours of productive brain storming/ bouncing ideas from one another we finally came up with the driving question, “Was nuclear deterrence worth the cost?”. Completing this essay, our main arguments were, the cost for building the nuclear arsenal was too high, the nuclear weapons went unused and finally the cost of dismantling the weapons was too high as well.

The essay was approved after some minor tweaks and the finally task was thrown upon us. To create you written essay into a video essay, this confused everyone a little bit but will some explanation everyone grasped the concept. This video essay took a lot of time and was mainly accomplished by trial and error. After a couple solid weeks of hard work this whole unit is summed up in a short 5 minute video, funny how that happens, a months class work and field studies transforms into a short video.

Finally the conclusion of this whole unit. I definitely learnt more in this month than I would in a whole years worth of history class, which would also be much more boring. I have come out this unit with not just only school knowledge, but also many life lessons. This has definitely been one of the most fun classes I’ve ever had in my life and I cannot thank my teachers enough. If you made it this far congratulations.