During this final week of senior projects, my group and I set out to finish trying to polish the cosmetic aspects of our second car. To do this we first did a final clean and then we attempted to install the rest of the headliner and fix the pieces that we had put in previously. This was not overly successful as we tried to incorporate two different fabrics into one to make the headliner appear a little more artistic than simply a single solid color like just about all cars but ran into some problem connecting the pieces. None the less we still believe it is an improvement over the old shredded and torn brown fabric that we had to tear the rest off of the roof. As for fixing the greatly sun damaged and chipped paint all over the car we decided to paint the entire car a yellow to help cover the old paint. This did prove slightly challenging though as the yellow we chose is quite light and the original color of blue is quite dark which means that in spots the blue still shines through. Despite this, I thing that it looks significantly better than the old destroyed paint and thus am happy with the results.
For my goals I believe that I have made pretty substantial progress towards them as first of all I have learned several things about how to diagnose some basic problems on an older car relatively quickly and with accuracy at least with the help of some googling. I've also learned a good amount perform some of the maintenance that is usually required of cars every few thousand miles or so. Although not much has changed this week on the front of learning the second hand market of cars but over the course of the project I was able to learn a lot since we had to communicate with several people to set up times where we could look at or show a car. With that we also had to know what to look for when trying to buy a car to see if it is reasonable for the price or if we would want or need to try and talk them down. For my final goal of trying to take in multiple ideas and figure out which is the best solution to a real life problem has changed a little bit to be more so of taking in multiple ideas and combining them so that everyone can be happy with the solution or decision that we make.
I would recommend this project to another student for a couple of reasons. First of all it provides an opportunity for the person who's project it is to learn several very important life skills for anyone who might own a car at any point in their life and doesn't want to have to take their car into a shop super often and waste money on things that can be pretty easily learned and done on ones own like an oil change. Another reason why I would recommend a project at least similar to this to another student is because having some knowledge in the second hand market particularly for cars can be quite important. This is because it is quite likely that if someone ever owns a car then they are probably also going to need to sell it at some point and selling to a person rather then a dealership allows one to get significantly more money. Also, when getting a new car it is often better to get one that is at least a few years old as you can find effectively a brand new car for a significantly reduced price and if you know how and what to look for you can likely get one much cheaper by yourself then at some dealerships. While I do recommend this project I would put a disclaimer that if trying to learn the skills we did by yourself requires a little bit of money so that you can first of all get a car and then also buy the necessary tools and parts if you don't already have them.
I think that some of the passion projects ideas definitely should be considered being incorporated into the normal senior projects. I think this because even though being an apprentice or interning with a business is great and an important thing to have sone practice with for later in life when people are getting jobs, there is still a lot of people who would much rather prefer to be able and continue a project that they've maybe worked on before. Also, having the opportunity for someone to really pursue a passion over a month long period just before they enter a time in their lives were moments like that likely won't happen for awhile is a good thing and could be helpful for many people. As for working in a cohort, I would also say that the school should continue to allow these to be created particularly if passion projects are also incorporated into normal senior projects. I think this because if someone is pursuing a passion it is quite possible that a friend of theirs or just someone else in the class has a similar one and being able to share an experience with people who have similar passions could allow for a lot of personal growth and make people feel more connected as they end their high school career. For me personally working in a cohort was pretty helpful and overall a good experience since it allowed me and my friends to learn skills together but also work on splitting up tasks so that everyone has something to do while also being able to find moments where we can all do things together and work in a collaborative way.
Comments
Post a Comment