At 5:00AM, my dad gets up to go to work in North Vancouver every day, right beside the brewery! What a lucky guy. Once he says goodbye to his beautiful and precious daughter he zooms away in either his sports car, or in his SUV. Once he arrives at work, he says hello to no one, because he gets there first. 

The very first thing he does is open up his computer, and make a double espresso and reviews all the emails he’s gotten overnight, because someone is emailing at 1AM, and 2AM, and 3AM…

After he does that, he goes to check out a building at 7-9AM to do a BG review. He basically just reviews buildings to find problems and solutions to those problems so their buildings don’t explode. Depending on what he’s doing, he’ll check the structure of the building for signs of building distress, or inspecting for any water damage or concrete damage. After checking everything out, my dad writes a report and sends it in to the building problems.

On a more fun note, my dad once looked at a building where the elevator stopped working. And instead of going down, like how they usually fall in movies, it fell up. And smooshed like an accordion. 

Another time, a building in Toronto exploded, and my dad had to help EMS workers go into the building and show them where it was safe so they could collect the bodies. Unfortunately, it was a gas explosion.

Another time, my dad had to investigate why a building’s roof collapsed. Luckily, no one was actually hurt in that one. But there was a woman who was sitting on the roof at the time, and she got buried in dirt. Luckily she was okay!

Now; moral of the story, engineering, though it doesn’t sound super exciting.. actually is a very thrilling and exciting job to have at times! It is tough, but it is rewarding. I have done work at my dads job before, and in my personal experience it wasn’t too amazing because I was just cleaning windows, so it really depends on what you do. 

My dad, Brennan Vollering, founded Sense engineering in 2014 with his work buddy, Ted Denniston. They have been running this engineering company since then, setting up locations in multiple other provinces and cities. But what does the average structural engineer do in his day? This Bring Your Kid to Work Day presentation will show you everything that he does in just a single project.

To show you what he does at his work, I’ve put up a slideshow! Here it is:

In one of our PLP classes, we were given a week to remake a short horror film, called run. The link to the original movie is right here! It’s only about a minute and 30 seconds long.

Anyway, onto why I made this post in the first place… the remake! We were given the task to remake the short movie run, with minimal filming knowledge and experience… and if im being honest, it was very fun. Though I hadn’t done much in the first phase of the filming and editing, I did help in the second. BUT, we are also not talking about the remake of the remake (which we did do!). We are talking about the regular old remake.

Now, for the beginning of our remake, it was a Wednesday. We were ordered just the day before to bring costumes and props, to make the film look as similar as possible to the original. I wasn’t an actor in the first section of filming, in fact, I was supposed to be filming, but that role was quickly taken from me by another person in my group. Shame!

The next day, on Thursday, I wasn’t in class. I had to stay home that day due to medical difficulties. Fortunately, I am better now… not really but I’m getting there- but I wasn’t able to help edit or film the rest of the video. Big bummer. Anywho, I was there for the next week of filming! Which was the remake of the remake.. but that’s not this blog’s subject!

Thank you for reading this short summarization of my remake video!

Hello! Welcome to the second part of my Alberta trip posts! If you came from the first post, welcome back! If you just got here, GO BACK AND READ THE FIRST ONE!!

Anywho. While my first Alberta blog post was about the videos I made, this one is about my book! And you’re probably wondering: “You made a BOOK?!” And my answer is yes! Not officially published in book stores, but we’re getting there! My 25+ page long book is about what i did on the Alberta trip, and how i documented almost everything I did. Before reading, I suggest you read my book!

Now that you’ve read my book, and know what I am talking about, its time to talk about it.

The first few pages, (Specifically pages 1-9) Are generally introduction pages, about what geography means and what made and makes the west. Fun fact, I actually messed up the page of contents, and I have 29 pages, not 27. So please ignore that.

For the next-next few pages, it talks about the places I went to (The next 15 pages)

When I started these parts of the book, it was day 2 of the trip. When I finished? About 2 weeks after. This book took a very long time to complete this book, just so you know. SO YOUD BETTER ENJOY IT!!!! These pages were supposed to have 1 picture on the picture parts, but I added multiple. So… I was practically exceeding! Practically…

and for the last pages, 25 through 28, there were my videos. My trip videos, to be exact. And if you already read my last blog post, you’d know that I had already talked about my trip videos! And if I hadn’t told you yet, I’m going to tell you now, that the videos were my favourite part about the trip. It wasn’t the Golden skybridge, nor any of the other fun places we went to… (aside from the hot springs by that huge mountain. That was the best, but worst feeling in my life when I first went there.) The videos were extremely fun for me, and I could honestly talk about them all day, but I need to finish this post, so…

And, to answer the driving question… how has the west shaped who we are? Well, in my book, there are lots of examples of this. From the people to the mountains, I could  only choose one thing, and that thing… is trains. Trains were a very important way to transport not only people, but goods and services all around Canada. It was quick, at least, it was quicker than anything else they had at the time, and it was.. simple?
The railway system was also a big part of Alberta’s history, due to the railway system pretty much making Alberta what it is today. Cool, right?

Now, the end of my blog post. As I’m sitting in bed writing this, I’m rethinking of everything that happened during my Alberta trip. Would I have rather stayed home? At the time, yes, but now I realize that this trip was important. Not only important for my learning, but also important for my legs. Because I really need exercise. And I got to do it! My back and my legs hurt for most of the trip but at least I was fit, right?

Hello! Welcome back to my blog, and if you’ve never been here before, hello! I am Hazel, and this is my blog.

The beginning of this year was tough. The toughest part was definitely travelling to Alberta. I was scared of leaving my family for such a long time, even though it was only for a week. But, i am typing this now, so I’m obviously alive and well. Enough rambling, lets get on with the trip, shall we?

As soon as we made it to our first stop, we got to work. Our first stop was.. Two valley gap. The ghost town! Definitely one of my favourite stops out of the many. The first thing we were required to do was look around the town. Get our bearing before we had to do our first video; our silent video! Our silent video was probably the second most fun for me (and my group, since this was a group video). Our silent video was about a murder in a bank, and its a comedy! I will share it soon…

The silent video took about an hour or so the finish filming, and after that, we went inside of our hotel… it was a spooky hotel, thats fro sure. We had nachos and salsa, and i went to bed happy…

The second video we worked on was our investigative video. You’re probably thinking, “wait… what is that?” Well, im going to tell you!

While we were at Alberta, we were supposed to take interviews. We were supposed to interview people, basically on why they came to Alberta! I am not the best at interviewing people, so I got some help… but I did end up doing both my interviews.

One of my interviews was done in the Columbia ice fields, and the second was done in the Revelstoke Railway Museum. I was supposed to do an interview at the golden skybridge, but plans were altered.

And, of course, my final video… my favourite video! My fun tiktok video! My TikTok video definitely took the most drawing effort, but I’m really happy with how it turned out. While people were filing themselves doing dances, I just… took selfies of myself! I didn’t work on my TikTok video for the entire time, aside from taking photos. And when I got home, I began to draw! That’s right! One of my videos includes DRAWING!!! Because I DRAW and I AM AN ARTIST!!! How cool is that??
Anyway. My TikTok video was definitely the most loved by my teachers, I even got an exceeding grade… check it out!

And there we have it. My videos… all very cool, and very creative videos… I have one question for you now! Which one was your favourite?

Keep an eye out for my second blog post about Alberta! It should be coming out by Tuesday next week…

As the school year comes to an end, I have a lot to reflect on. This was my first year of high school, the only year in which I did not know what to expect. During the year, I learned more and more as time went on and expectations changed.

What are you most proud of and why?

While writing online for a lot of other projects and work, i developed my own hobby for writing my own stories. I was also very proud of my Middle Ages project, that was actually my favourite project from last year. 

Where did you see the most growth?

I got more comfortable and learned a bunch of new apps i hadn’t even heard of before. It’s allowed me to broaden my horizons and lets me present my work better. It also allows me to get more creative. I am also a way more comfortable sharing my work with adults, though still not so much with my peers. 

What skills would you like to work on next year?

I would like to get better at summarizing all my notes. I do well at note taking, but they are always long and dont usually get to the point quick enough. I would also love to be able to talk to my peers better.

The work that didn’t go well for you, what can you learn from that?

Even though i got the best grade on it, i did not like my imme system characters drawings and writing. I got a rainbow on it but i do not think i deserved that, because it was sketchy and I didn’t even try that hard on the writing. 

What frustrates you most in school?

Not being able to understand work even after its been explained to me time and time again. I also get annoyed by not understanding something everyone else seems to understand. I also get annoyed by not knowing what to write when I’m typing out a blog post.

I know that I have a good work ethic because I care about the quality of my work so much that it stresses me out. I also believe that I have good work habits because I start my work as soon as I receive it. I complete my work on time and take the time to do revisions as well before I submit it. The way I allocate time during my projects allows me to revise, take suggestions and finish on time. 

During the spring exhibition, we were told to answer one question.

“How does advertising persuade, sell, and influence society?”

Hello! And welcome back to my blog! Today, I’ll be telling you all about what I did, and what happened during the spring exhibition! It’ll be fun

So, you might’ve read what was at the top of the page. It’s true, that was the question we were trying to answer throughout the entire exhibition. Now, why were we trying to answer that question? Because it was the baseline of our entire project, of course!

You see, everyone in plp 8 was intended to go to Oregon so they could interview a company and create an ad based off their work. The company specified what they’d want in the ad, such as font, colour, and visuals. So that you, the student/interviewer could get everything spot on in the advertisement. Buuut, for me, it wasn’t the same.

I actually didn’t go to Oregon. It was just bad timing- it was my birthday on one of the weeks and a few other things were actually happening at the time. So, I didn’t interview a company with a group. I did it by myself.

I did a company here in Vancouver. And I, Hazel, do not know anyone personally who owns a business. Well, aside from my dad. So I ended up doing his engineering company! He’s owned it since like 2015, so he’s likely the first person I should be asking.

After interviewing my dad, I started working on his advertisement. This is how it started out:

It’s not amazing, right? I took this off Google maps on a seemingly rainy day so it doesn’t look like a very friendly place, it looks pretty serious. (Which it is but it also isn’t at times)

Now, my lovely lovely teacher gave me some pointers. And after that I decided to just do it over again because honestly this image is atrocious to look at. Here’s my first final:

Pretty nice, right? I kept the image and the general idea but I still had ways to go from here. I had to add shadows, a phone number, an address and even a little gradient behind them so we could see better! And so I did

There were two other revisions between these, but they’re all pretty much the same and uploading takes a little so.. no point. But still, this is 100x better than what I started off with. It was grey and sad and the text was also sad, and now it’s bright and happy and the text is less eye burning to look at! Amazing improvements.

After I finished my ad, it was time for exhibition. I was alone in a group, since I was actually the only person who didn’t go to Oregon. I had to prepare by myself, with a bit of help from another staff member. I had to get food, decorations, advertising things! And so I did, and it looked pretty awesome.

I mean come on, for one person setting everything up this is top tier! I actually put out some Lindor and doughnuts later but that isn’t in the photo since a bunch of kids kept taking them before the exhibition even started. 10 minutes before starting, I threw out a kids lollipop he stuck onto my canvas holder ( I know exactly who it was, by the way. I’m not saying names though ) and met my parents! They were the first people there, they’d actually came early. I was absolutely touched!

Anywho, I went back to my table and stood. Stood for 5 hours. It was great, I met a bunch of amazing people and drank some amazing drinks, but I’ll tell you; my back and calves were broken by the three hour mark. I couldn’t walk around, I couldn’t even sit. I was in a group alone and I was in total agony for half of the exhibition. But I had to pursue. If I didn’t, I’d probably fall on the floor and never get up again. I’d also get a bad grade!

At the very end of the exhibition, I packed a little early and zoomed out the door. I was not sticking around to help everyone else clean up their messes, I was in a group alone, you can clean with 3 other people. I got permission to leave, by the way. I ran in the car and me and my parents rushed out of the parking lot, never to be seen again.

I’m kidding, by the way, I am sitting in class writing this now. Not for long…. Mwehehehhehehe

NOW, to answer the driving question.
How does advertising persuade, sell, and influence society?

It all takes… technique. And knowing who you’re selling to.
Knowing how to create a persuasive ad is important, but what’s even more important is knowing who you’re selling to. Then, you can really get your ad right on the point!
Now, do I know how to create an advertisement? Absolutely not, at least not a moving one. But did I learn a lot about advertising and how media influences people to buy things today? Yes. I did.

“AAAAAHHHH!”

Oh no! Atom is flying through the air! I hope he lands safely…

Atom fell on his face. He was in the middle of nowhere, away from all his neutron friends!! He was so spooked that he didn’t know what to do!

”My friends! They must be missing me…”

So, without a second thought, Atom went on his way to find his friends. I hope he can get to them safely!

Hello and welcome back to my blog! This post is going to be a little different, since it is about coding (kind of)!

For the last few weeks of school, we’ve been learning a lot about science. So, my teacher put my entire class to the test and made us make a game. Based around SCIENCE! (Mainly solids and liquids n that sort of stuff)

Now, for this game, we were primarily using scratch to code. And as a lot of you may know, scratch is kind of a pain in the arse. Coding wise and.. saving wise. And after a lot of hard work and dedication to my game, my page reloaded and i lost all my progress. and the worst part was that this was at the VERY end of the project. I was crushed, so sad that I couldn’t even do anything for the rest of the day. So, out of pity, my science teacher told me i could just make a poster because she’d already seen my game and knew how hard i worked on it. So, i accepted and made a poster.

Pretty nice, right? I think so too.

Now, while I was (and still am) sad about losing my progress on over a week of work, I’m pretty proud of the work i did. Even though all proof of my work has been burned to ashes i know that my teacher and a few other people saw, and were really impressed. And to those people who were excited to see the finished product, i am sorry. Because i do not have it.

Hello! Welcome to my blog! Today i will be chatting about my Colonization project, a project which includes a video, some information and a few other interesting things i can’t think of off the top of my head! Let’s goooo

Now, the first thing we did for this project was choose our people to focus on. The indigenous people, the poor French men, the rich French men, the fil du roix, and the missionaries. I was chosen to do the Poor men. Wasn’t my first choice, i wanted to be rich men but its pretty close so it doesn’t really matter.

Now, i did a lot of research on the French men of New France! But this included doing research on some other parties, mainly the rich French men (since they had the closest ties to the French poor men). I mainly did research on who was involved, what was basically what happened, and their viewpoint after a few years of new Frances existence.

Next, we talked about the consequences of colonization. You may already know this already, but there were a lot of consequences to colonization. It was especially bad for the indigenous peoples. They were effected greatly from the French men coming to New France, in good and bad ways (but mainly bad).

here are a few more examples of what I’ve been doing for the past few weeks.

Due to the colonization of Canada, there are a lot less indeginous people than there would be had it never been colonized. All of Canada would likely be indeginous people, but due to the fact most of the earlier generation indigenous people had… died, they are lesser seen then they ordinarily would be ( had their land not been blatantly taken ). It was a good thing for many of the Europeans, due to the fact they were getting new opportunities for work, but it was kind of bad for the rich men of France, due to the fact that the poor men wer asking so much to work ( but the rich men were also kind of making more, so it’s a good and bad kind of thing ).

The poor Europeans of France had a tough time living in New France at first, but after a while of trading and “befriending” the indigenous peoples, they got the hang of it. The main problem that the poor French men had, though, was the problem of how cold it was in New France. It was cold, and they hadn’t assumed the climate was any different. This is what caused many of the poor men’s deaths in New France.

 Not all was bad for the rich French men, though. They didn’t have to do any labor, and all they had to do was pay their workers. The missionaries were having a field day in New France, due to how many non-Christians there were. Once more schools were built in New France ( a way in a future ) they were pretty much everywhere. You couldn’t take a walk in the park without seeing at least 2 missionaries. But, though this was very good for the Europeans, it wasn’t so great to their indeginous neighbours. When the fille du roi came to New France, their life was hard. They weren’t sure who or where they were going to be stuck with. In t`he long run, they did do their jobs successfully, starting families and living. In fact, some fille du roi families are still alive today in Canada! So the fille du roi did their jobs pretty well.

Hello again! I’m Hazel, and welcome to my blog post. Today I’ll be talking about what I did in science class. You may be asking, what did you do? Well I’m telling you now so hold your horses!

We did lots so far in science, but the most best and memorable part for me was my Poster. These posters were made to educate younger kids about germs, and the importance of washing their hands, vaccinating, and not being gross in general. Now, a lot of people’s posters had lighter colours, and a more friendly tone. Well, my poster is different. I went for a scare tactic instead, using darker colours and a less friendly tone. This wasn’t intended to really “scare” kids, it was to convince them to wash their hands and cover their mouth. I feel like I did it really well, too.

My favourite thing about my poster is how much detail I put into it. I don’t usually try 100% on my drawing projects for school, but I did this time. I wanted it to look better than everyone else’s so that it could really stand out. Though, one thing I would change is the slogan on the poster. I don’t know if you’d really call it a slogan, it’s just the text on the poster. Anyway, I feel like it doesn’t fit the poster that well. But, I didn’t have time to think about the text on the poster because we were already running out of time. But, that’s my only problem with the poster. Other than that, I love it.

Well, that’s it! Thank you for reading my blog post and I’ll be back in 2 weeks.

Hello and welcome back to my blog! Today I’ll be talking about my travelogue, a new assignment be been working on for a while now. Let’s start!
First thing we did in class was learn about the Vikings, natural explorers and raiders. This was to prepare for our final product of writing a historically accurate story by doing research.

The travelogue is a little book that consists of 5 or more images, with a story with less than 300 words. I did it on Christopher Columbus, but the person writing the book was just a crew member on one of the 3 ships he directed.
I really enjoyed the drawing and writing parts of this assignment. I like creative assignments so this was perfect for me. I wasn’t really a fan of the group work in this assignment, though. I prefer to work alone instead of with others.