Hey, hi, and hello. Welcome back to my blog where not all those who wander are lost (J.R.R Tolkien). This is a PGP post in which I’m going to review our PGP Careers class and the project we did. Since it’s been so long since I’ve done a post about PGP let me re-explain it. PGP stands for Personal Growth Plan. At the beginning of this course we worked on things that would help us in our job/post secondary pathways like building up our resumes, looking at how to apply for scholarships, and creating transition plans. Now with any PLP class we always work through projects given that we are a Project Based Learning Program. Our project for this course was to read a self-improvement book and create an artifact to answer the driving question: What do I need to know to move forward with lifelong learning and active citizenship? Before I go into answering this driving question with my artifact I want to talk a bit about my post secondary plan I made at the beginning of this course and how I’m doing now.

Before the beginning of this school year I had a general understanding of what I wanted to do after high school then I decided what universities to apply to. I want to go down the theatre production path of costume, prop, and set design. When deciding on what Universities to apply to I not only looked at the program but also the campus and it’s location as I want to stay closer to home. My university application process was definitely not what I expected. When my brother went through his application process he just sent the application of his resume and answered questions in essay format, then he would just wait a few months to hear back. Whereas for my application process I applied and after a couple weeks hear back to send in my portfolio, resume, cover letter, and to schedule an interview. My brother and I are going down different career paths which explains the different application processes yet I didn’t expect it to be such a difference. I have now been accepted by 2 out of the 3 universities I’ve applied to.

Now back to the PGP project. The self-improvement book I chose to read was ‘The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck’ by Mark Manson. This book is unlike any self-help book. The approach Mark takes in this book is out of the box and allows readers to take a different look at life and how to organize your life. The target audience is definitely young adults and adults who don’t enjoy the stereotype self-improvement book. The main thesis of this book is to seek meaning through what is important in life and take control over your values. In this book Mark talks about how if you feel you are not the one in control of your values they are not good values. He also talks a lot about seeking meaning in life and to care (give a F*ck) about what is truly important to you and your values and to not care (not give a F*ck) about the little things in life that pass you by and don’t matter in the long run. He is constantly encouraging readers to be honest with themselves, and to recognize the areas of their lives they can improve. Mark talks a lot about his personal experience in this book and connects it to his advice as he lives by his book. One main thing that stood out for me in this book was the Disappointment Panda. The Disappointment Panda is a Panda that goes around to peoples doors to tell them the brutal truth in order for them to accept reality, embrace the negative, and improve to being a better person. 

After reading our self-improvement books we were tasked with creating an artifact that both connects to our book and answers the driving question. While reading this book I took note of many quotes that I found inspirational, interesting, and honestly true. I wanted to be able to share what I learned from this book through my final project but couldn’t think of the how. “Do or do not, there is no how” is one of the quotes from the book so I did just that. I didn’t question the how I just did. I decided to combine my two favorite parts of the book, the Panda and the quotes, in order to share my knowledge. After my pitch of this idea was accepted I started planning out my artifact. My artifact was a disappointment panda with quotes from the book on it’s hat so that the visitors at our exhibition could take a quote and gain the knowledge I did.

The exhibition was open to any students but more specifically the rest of our grade 12 class as this project was for our careers course. I think the exhibition went really well and many visitors found my artifact interesting and the quotes inspiring. After creating my artifact and reading my book, my answer to the Driving Question: What do I need to know to move forward with lifelong learning and active citizenship? is I need to know where in life to place my values and where to find meaning. I need to know what my values are and if they are self controlled or need to be altered. I need to accept the negative more and search the positive less. In conclusion I did enjoy the resurrection of PGP as I felt it helped me to improve more than it had in the past. There are many things I learned that I want to improve on but I’ll talk more about that in my upcoming M-POLs post.