A Post About Oregon

Hello!

My PLP 8 cohort recently completed a field study in Oregon. How exciting! It was really cool to travel around as a class and learn about all the amazing places we saw.

While we were in Oregon we had an assignment to complete. We had to make a book about all the different places we visited. It had to include photos, videos, drawings and text to describe the experience.

Here is a slide show with the pictures from all our activities. We had a pretty busy trip, so you may be here a while!

For this field study, we had a driving question:

How did you persist and manage your impulsivity on this field study in order to question, think, and work interdependently to complete your project and enjoy yourself?

So, to answer the question:

Persistence
I was persistent on this field study in a couple of different situations. A great example that kept popping up throughout the trip were quests. Quests are like big scavenger hunts where you make your way through a town following a set of clues to find the end, where you achieve bragging rights. My quest group struggled a lot at the beginning, and sometimes thought of just giving up and heading back to our base. But when we persisted, we were able to make it to the end of two of the quests.  I’m proud that we kept going even when we were discouraged and couldn’t figure out a clue. Another demonstration of persistence for me was when I was building an R.O.V. with my group. We had trouble fitting the parts together, and protecting the propellers. We kept at it, and made a great, easily maneuvered R.O.V. that met the challenge of picking up items from the bottom of a tank. I think that I did a pretty good job demonstrating persistence throughout this trip.

Managing Impulsivity
I did fine when managing my impulsivity on this field study. I’m not usually a super impulsive person on principal, so this wasn’t too much of a problem for me. I do struggle with one aspect of impulsivity control though: a lot of the time in groups I have to resist the urge to take over and boss everyone around. I only figured this out about myself about a year ago, and I’ve been working on it ever since. We had a lot of group work on this trip, so I had many opportunities to practice. For example, while my group was building and R.O.V., I wanted to take over and be the dictator of the entire project, but I let others work on it as well. Same with quests: I resisted the impulse to run off by myself, and instead worked with my group. It actually is a lot better that way: everyone has something to contribute, and after all, teamwork makes the dream work!

Question, Think, and Work Interdependently
I must admit that I’m not a huge fan of group projects. I do try to include people and share my own ideas when I am working on them, though. Of the many group projects that we did, the one where I think that I worked the best with my group was one that I haven’t mentioned yet: the crab races in our ‘Speedy Science’ workshop at the Hatfield Marine Science Center. I worked with Kate, Indira, and Erin to test out whether green crabs or purple crabs were faster. (Hint: it was the purple crabs.) We all shared ideas, and everyone adopted different roles during the experiment,  with Indira timing, Erin filming, and Kate and me placing crabs on the racetrack. We made a great team, and our project went well! It always pays off to listen to and appreciate everyone’s ideas and comments.

Whew! That was a big driving question.

Well, that’s it for me! I think I’ll go to sleep now. Goodnight!

Cheers,

Evelyn 👩🏽‍🦱