Blog 24: Last Presentation Reflection

(1) Positive Statement

What are you most proud of in your block presentation and/or your senior project? Why?

• Over the course of my block presentation, I got the chance to see my audience get as passionate about Urban Farming as I came to be over the course of my senior project.  This passion for a more sustainable future is what inspired me this past year and is what I shall instill in my future academic career in college and beyond. This passion started as a curiosity to learn the makings of a hands on approach to environmental and social activism, and this curiosity is what I am most proud of, curiosity present in both the foundation of my senior project and in the interest I was able to spark in the attention of my audience during my block presentation.  This shared curiosity in a better future and how to make one possible has inspired me to do good in the world, and to collaborate with those of like hopes to establish a true “brotherhood of man”.  I expect this shared kind of curiosity to offer me an exciting roller coaster worth the ride, and such a viewpoint is beyond valuable when you consider how much good it can accomplish.

(2) Questions to Consider

a. What assessment would you give yourself on your block presentation?  Use the component contract to defend that assessment.

• I definitely think I deserve an AE grade on my block presentation, given that I exceeded the requirements listed on the component contract while keeping true to the passion with which I conducted my senior project.  I was able to maintain guidance of my audience in understanding my senior topic in a way that was relevant to how they lived and prospered within a community setting.  In this way, I, at all times, maintained eye contact and a clear voice that commanded attention.  I also was sure to cite each answer’s sources after presenting each one of these pillars in support of my essential question’s worth.  Facts were also presented in a way that was interactive and engaging, and ample examples from real-life scenarios and my own personal experience with the topic while at mentorship and in interviews were dished out.  In addition, my activity was well-planned out and extremely hands-on, and exemplified how well I connected with my audience - given that we were united towards a common purpose in using similar scientific methodology.  My hook was also able to direct my audience attention towards my topic’s adaptability to about any type of environment and how much it should “make sense” them - through giving a back story to the fruit rolls and organic oranges they ate.

AE    P       AP    CR    NC

b. What assessment would you give yourself on your overall senior project? Use the component contract to defend that assessment.

• I believe I deserve at least an AE given the extreme attention to detail that I conducted my senior project with.  Each component was addressed in a way that appealed to the potential of Urban Farming to a community’s prosperity, and each component was treated as an opportunity to address confusion that had arisen in my quest to understand my topic’s philosophy-turned-practice.  To this end, my first independent component involved the making of a fully functioning aquaponics garden to understand the inner workings of one of the many forms of Urban Farming that makes the idea so cosmopolitan.  My second independent component ambitiously sought to experience the social impacts of Urban Farming in establishing a school community garden overseen by Hope Club.  Expeditions into the unknown, like these independent components, combined with a strong backing of research that included mounds of articles and two read books enabled me to experiment with with application of Urban Farming. I was not afraid in offering whatever resources I had at my disposal so that my senior project could be tackled with the ambition and devotion it deserved.

AE    P       AP    CR    NC

(3) What worked for you in your senior project?

• Once again, I accredit my interviews as having helped me get up close and personal with Urban Farming and what it could provide the definition of a community and the satisfaction of its people.  These conversations with experts in the field made me realize there was more to life and living than learning from an article or its kin, the textbook.  They opened my senses to the art of “learning-on-the-job” and sustainable activism, the movement behind the newfound novelty of Urban Farming.  This novelty is what gravitated me towards the topic in the first place, and this novelty became the thing I aimed to dispel in my audience - given that it is more of a practical than magical call to action.  My interviewees allowed me to view Urban Farming as making a statement, and doing so for the sake of future generations and the harmony of our Earth.  Talking to these experts in the field, Urban Farming became a thing of substance and something that I could aspire to emulate in my everyday life just as these interviewees had in theirs.   

(4) (What didn't work) If you had a time machine, what would you have done differently to improve your senior project?

• The one thing I would have done differently is to have read my two books (“Farm City” by Novella Carpenter and “Grass, Soil, Hope” by Courtney White) a bit more efficiently, rather than focusing on them throughout the past year or so.  Taking up so much time in reading these wonderful finds was not necessary, and not doing so would have allowed me more wiggle room with which to read from other similarly enlightening sources.  I did however multitask when reading these insightful reads, and so did end up with a variety of sources that I was able to reference.  The means by which I gathered such a variety could have been simplified though; not simplifying life in this way is what I regret most.

(5) Finding Value

How has the senior project been helpful to you in your future endeavors?   Be specific and use examples.

• My love for science was most embodied by my senior project this past year, especially when it came to analyzing the environmental benefits of Urban Farming.  Participating in Caltech’s Community Science Academy this past summer, for a dabbling into science in what would develop as my mentorship, afforded me proper initiation into the fabulous world of biology and chemistry and their wide-reaching applications.  Gathering lab experience was essential in understanding science and how it can be tangoed with.  Lab experience truly did offer me a tangible pleasure in dealing with science in approaching it in such a hands-on sense, and of course seeing how the field could verify the benefits of Urban Farming made it seem more tantalizing than ever.  Where I stand, I want to delve into the wonders of Marine Biology as a researcher, and having conducted a senior project centered around the importance in the health of soil, I have identified what it is that attracts me to independent research: having the chance to research and explore another world.  Whether that world is trapping in carbon as is the case in maintaining the health of soil or under rocking waves, a part of our bigger world is in the process of being better understood and preserved for the benefit of my posterity.  Such pioneering is exciting.  Having the tools, as displayed in a lab setting, I feel enabled to channel this excitement in producing a meaningful outcome similar to that of my block presentation.

Exit Interview

It's all in the presentation...

Content:

(1) What is your essential question, and what are your answers?  What is your best answer and why?

- My essential question is: How can Urban Farming redefine the way a community obtains and consumes food?

- My first answer to this inquiry of mine is realizing the support behind the idea of urban farming, particularly that of its philosophy.  Cathy Morrison, my third interviewee, covered this newfound vigorous attraction to urban farming as having to do with the fact that my senior project topic offers long-term sustainability for a community and the world’s functioning at large.  Such support transforms the values of a community into ones that offer a more wholesome relationship with its environment and social inclusivity.  A community, to this end, learn to appreciate its responsibility to the Earth and each other, as well as progressive policy where profit is sacrificed for the common good.  In this way, our food system is made personable and a guarantee for customer satisfaction, if it is invested in.  My second answer concerns the environmental benefits of urban farming, and how these make urban farming a homage to humanity’s roots in the soil, by maintaining soil health and growing organically, then reaping the rewards of such consciousness.  Such rewards include climate change adaption and prevention and nutrition-longevity.  My third answer concerns the social benefits of urban farming, including those of adequate food security and spurring of education and health.  My best answer is probably my first, since it enables the other two, and allows their potential to be realized as urban farming is made a pathway towards sustainability.

(2) What process did you take to arrive at this answer?

- I arrived mostly thanks to my interviews.  Meeting with my active and able interviewees inspired me to look at the reason for urban farming’s attractiveness to the average community member.  The appeal of urban farming, I discovered was shrouded in mystery simply because the devotion to its principles is so great and impassioned.  Seeing this in something that was very intangible for me and my research, I figured that an answer with just as much ambiguity would be reasonable.  The ambiguity of my first answer is due to the its answering of the ‘why’ when it comes to choosing urban farming as a way of life within a community.  This ambiguity is thus the fire beneath the development of urban farming as a policy, culture, and agricultural future.  This ambiguity is what drives my interviewees in their livelihoods revolved about  and hopes for my project topic.

(3) What problems did you face?  How did you resolve them?

- Two particularly challenging problems temporarily confused me when trying to pin down a ‘best answer’.  First, there came the trouble in deciding what the word ‘best’ implied in regards to urban farming.  My research though clarified a correlation between ‘best’ and the potential of urban farming in changing a community’s functioning.  This relationship was bent on realizing on urban farming provided for a newfound philosophy when it came tp providing food and beyond.  By exceeding expectations, urban farming was the ‘best’ policy safeguarding sustainability in my mind, and so I found peace in pursuing an answer that proved this newfound assertion of mine.  My second roadblock came when trying to find the right setting for urban farming.  There was a time when I simply could not imagine urban farming in a tangible form and what it meant by farming in a city versus farming in a faraway field, if both methods seemingly simply provided food for society.  It turns out that how urban farming is handled and developed within the setting of an urban community is most important when tapping into the idea-turned-practice’s influence within said community.  The notion of bringing farming into the city environment and personalizing man’s relationship with agriculture - and subsequent caring of Earth and what wonders it has to provide - is enhanced by the community that accomplishes in bringing this notion into reality.

(4) What are the two most significant sources you used to answer your essential question and why?

- The two most significant sources, besides those of my interviews, are the books “Farm City”, by Novella Carpenter, and “Grass, Soil, Hope”, by Courtney White.  These books offer a dynamic view of urban farming and insider scoop on its purpose by offering a playful glimpse into the life of an urban farmer through Novella’s piece and an ecological glimpse into the imprint of sustainable farming practices on the Earth.  Such farming practices can be more conveniently be adopted through urban farming that with conventional farming.  With these books on my night table, I now know urban farming as an enlightening pastime and a sustainable practice, and I can now analyze it while practicing it and juggling its wide-reaching benefits.