Hi again! It’s finally winter break, but before it started PLP 10 was hard at work on Winter Exhibition 2024. Our project was called “Marketing Me”, and its driving question was :
How might I present my passions, strengths, and learning to the world?
We worked on many different things to answer this, focusing on the curricular competency of analyzing: I can analyze ideas and supported conclusions, making decisions about preferred career pathways. This project also focused on the big idea: career and life decisions reflect choices based on exploring, planning, reflecting, adapting and deciding to find purpose and balance. I showed my understanding of these concepts in multiple ways across this project.

One of the first things we did in this project was write down our values. I found this so helpful for the later parts of the project. It made me think about the different career pathways I’m interested in. I know I’m dedicated, nurturing, curious, and open-minded. I care about learning and then using that knowledge to make the world a better place. This led me to realize that I am well fitted to my current intended career, which is to be an RN (registered nurse) or a psychiatrist. I have looked at both of these careers in detail as part of prepping for exhibitions.  I know that both of these will let me keep learning for my whole life, push me and let me help people.

One of the events that really helped me with this project, that wasn’t even a part of this project was the VGH health care open house. I got to talk to many professionals about their jobs and to representatives from different universities. Through talking to all of these people I got to explore a lot of options and I’m so glad I did because the preparation of that made this project a thousand times easier.

But what did we do? In this project, we made business cards, and resumes (which felt kind of like infographics about ourselves) and had one-on-one interviews with eh teacher.
My most successful part was the one-on-one interview. I was really invested in it and prepared a lot, which meant I was ready the day of. I found it easy to connect in the conversation because my teachers had taken psych at UBC, which is my dream degree.
I also really enjoyed making business cards. I started by thinking of personal traits I wanted to convey and settled on a cat as a representation of that. They are curious yet cautious, and I don’t care what you dog lovers have to say they can be so friendly and loving! I also included a QR to my blog on the back because I want to differentiate my card from other people’s. You can take a look here.

An assignment that I think confused almost every student, was the resume. This was mostly because it didn’t feel like a resume. However, once I got the concept I really enjoyed this assignment. I enjoyed getting to use colour and it felt really great to get all of my accomplishments on paper.  One of the big challenges in this assignment was condensing everything down to around 7 sections. These resumes were designed to be skimmed and cause the person reading it to want to ask questions which meant they had to be brief. According to the rule of 7 memory, the human brain can only hold about 7 things in its short-term memory at a time so we had to make sure there were only around 7 elements.
This is mine:

Finally, we made it to exhibition. I am so proud of what I created for exhibition this year. In every aspect of exhibition, I improved and grew from what I’ve done in previous years. One of the biggest differences is the amount of prep work I did. In previous years exhibitions have always been a push to the last minute (cough couch metaphor machines cough). This year it wasn’t. I managed my time effectively to have everything ready and polished day of.  I looked at my schedule the week before so I could map out when I could work on my booth. I also planned out my booth based on what materials I already had and could reuse afterwards (because the amount of paper and materials that get thrown away every year at these things makes me so sad).

All of this shows how I’m fulfilling my VMV, especially in the self-regulation section which has been one of my biggest challenges pretty much ever. I reached out for support when I needed it (thanks Dad for the last-minute baking!), managed my stress and set healthy boundaries by still prioritizing “me time” in the week leading up to exhibitions. Who knew I could minimize my stress and still have a super successful product!?
Here’s what I created for exhibitions. The map in the middle is the careers I’m considering and what the path is to them, and the little text boxes are things I do for my mental health (creative hobbies, socializing, going outside and exercising). I put blueberry energy balls on the table (very good for you) and added many extra details for people to ask about.

(I have tried to fix the orientation it refuses to flip sorry!)See you next time!
Neko