In pltw theres a lot of times where I thought I couldn’t finish something, whether it be something small like building a bridge to something big like not finishing the maker project. I think one of  the most difficult things where I was willing to give up was when I did an engineering module. We had to build a bridge, it took a lot of patience and had to be well thought out. I felt the need to rush things and wasn’t so happy with how things turned out. About a class later I decided that i wanted to take my time and focus on what i was working on. I soon realized that i was happy for not giving up. I got to look at the outcome and smile because i know i put hard working didn’t give up

Hey y’all I’m Prisila. I’m a current 8th grader at the Ann Richards School For Young Women Leaders. I take a class called PLTW or Project Lead The Way. For the class, we had to do a project called “the maker project.” For this project, my group and I decided to build a playhouse. We had measurements, an online model, and a prototype. We then started building our house.

During the process of building our house, we went through a lot of failure. Sometimes our measurements were off, or we didn’t have enough material. When we had to build the roof, we had no idea how to do it. We got an idea and tried to do it but it was too hard. When we found an alternative, it didn’t quite work out. We had to make weird cuts that were hard to make on the wood to make it work, but we finally did it. Another time, we had to cut out a wall, but something went wrong. The saw decided to take it’s own turn and we made a wrong cut. We thought that we had lost the wood and wouldn’t have enough to finish the house. We started freaking out, but then we realized it was still useful for a smaller wall.

Failure was a big part of our project. I always got really frustrated when things didn’t work out. This project made me really stressed when we encountered failure because i thought we didn’t have time to fix our mistakes. I always thought that we only had a little bit of time, so it always stressed me out. Although I was stressed and frustrated, we managed to fix our mistakes and finish our house.I was really proud of all the work that we got done.

Failure doesn’t define anyone or anything. We all make mistakes and we can all go back and fix them. Failure is a part of life and we all have to live with it.

Dear Failures,

I know this sounds cheesy, but you are only a failure if you give up. No, seriously. Otherwise, all of us would be failures. Sometimes, you have a brilliant idea, but it just doesn’t work out, so you need to try another strategy. Sometimes, that still doesn’t work, so you have to try a gazillion different things, and it still epically fails. That is okay though, because if it is impossible, it is not possible, and you may not be the right person to make your idea a reality. Sometimes, you just have to accept the fact that you cannot do everything and that you have limits, so sometimes you have to give up.

This year, in PLTW, I was working on making a movie. I made the script for the movie, I got the costumes designed, I got actors for all of the parts, and I knew where we would be filming. Everything for the movie was amazing. I tried finding a time when the actors could come over to our set and film. For weeks, I searched for a time, but there was just no time when we could film. The due date was drawing near, so I had to cancel the movie and come up with a completely different idea for my project. I quickly wrote up the script, and my partner and I filmed the entire video during school hours. The video actually worked out in the end and it will soon be posted on either Youtube, or our blog, so be looking out for Words of Wisdom.

In Words of Wisdom, there are a few lessons which Aleeya L. and I think are very important for anybody, not just kids, and not just adults. The lessons are meant to help people become aware of communication issues that people often have. By creating our video, we hope to resolve many of the communication issues.

My point in this blog is that whenever you mess up, don’t give up, because until you give up you haven’t failed, but when you give up, that is when you truly fail.

CHALLENGE:

Today, I would like you to find something that you gave up on, and try to find a way to finish it and make it better. My goal is that by doing this, you will see that you can usually find a way to make your ideas come true, but only if you put your mind to it. Maybe you’ll have to change something from your original design, but that’s okay.

Have fun and keep on failing,

Regina S.

Eighth grade has been a long year, and it’s hard for me to believe it’s coming to an end. There have been times I have failed on a project I was working on, and wanted to give up. But I made it to the end somehow, and I think I have done pretty good.

I remember making a video about the mission statement this year, and it stressed me out a lot. I remember so many things going wrong, and at one point we had to refilm clips.

That week I had to stay after school almost every day to finish the video, and I remember I just wanted to say, forget it. But I didn’t, and I’m proud of myself. After watching the final video, I was proud knowing I created that and put so much effort in. This was a time that really stuck out to me about how I persevered until the end. Another time, has been in this last project.

I was very excited when I learned we would be building a skateboard as our last project of eighth grade. My older brother has two skateboards at home, and many times I like to play on them and pretend I’m good at riding them. However, I’m not very good and have fallen a couple times. Despite my inability to ride a skateboard well, I like skateboarding

and think it’s a cool sport or hobby. And even if you’re not the best at skateboarding, you can still have lots of fun, as I’ve learned.

Now I want you to think of a famous female skateboarder, or perhaps a famous female engineer/builder. When I asked myself this, I struggled to come up with answers. I wish there were more women associated in things like skateboarding. When I think of skateboarding I think of skater dudes, like Tony Hawk. Women and skateboarding are not common things that go hand in hand. It’s one of those things that is thought of as more of a manly thing. Why can’t there be more women connected to skateboarding? I feel that as the 8th grade class of Ann Richards, building these skateboards is adding to the image that skateboarding can be connected to women. Its also adding to the image that women can do the same things that men can do. Even though we are not becoming professional skaters, we are still building and constructing them. What we have been doing in class shows that women can do things that may be considered, “manly.” As I came to this realization in the building process, it made me want to keep working and not give up when problems arose.

One thing I’ve learned is that building a skateboard is harder than I thought it would be. The thing that makes it hard is that there are multiple steps, and if you don’t do one exactly right, it won’t turn out the right way and the skateboard will not function correctly. For example, the first time we built we didn’t put enough glue on the grain wood and after we had pressed all of the pieces together, there were cracks in the skateboard, making it weak. I was upset about this because it meant we had to start over. I had wanted to just keep going and ignore our failure, but then I remembered my realization, and wanted to be proud of my finished work. So after starting over we learned from our mistakes, and

built our skateboard the correct way. Now I would like to quote a senior speech from the other day. She said it was okay to make mistakes, because we learn from our mistakes and they help us grow. I would like to say that this is 100% true. It’s good to make mistakes, and as humans we make them often. This project has taught me mainly two things. The first being that as a woman we are capable of the same things as men. And lastly; to make mistakes, learn from them, and continue on. Just because you have failed once, doesn’t mean you should give up.

In the blog post I did before I talked about the what the giving bunny project is about an the steps it takes to make one by if you didn’t read that I’ll just tell you a little bit about it.

What it is about…

The Giving Bunny project is about making other people happy. All you have to do is hand sew a bunny and when you finish you give the bunny a name and put it anywhere you want so when someone sees it that person can take it home. You can put inspirational quotes that can make that person smile. Now that you have read about this I am going to tell you what we’re are planning to do now.

What we were planning on doing…

The day of the maker faire we got a wonderful idea from Ms.D to expand our project. She said we should make more bunnies and take them to a hospital to where we can give to little kids. The hospital we plan on going is Dell Children’s Hospital and we are planning to go to the kids that have cancer and give them a bunny that would make them smile and be happy since that’s the point of the project.

What we are gonna do…

When we scheduled the appointment to go to the hospital we were all set to go until something came up that we couldn’t go. We tried to reschedule it but they never answered our phone call and our voice mails. So what Ms.Wiersema told us we should do was go to an Elementary School and hide them around the classrooms so when the little kids when to school they would find them and make their day even better. The school we want to go to is J.Houston Elementary and we hope that our goal is meet.

Giving Bunnies                                                                 Emelyn Macias

This six weeks me and my group have been working on the giving bunny project in class. Which has been really difficult because we’re going through a lot of obstacles while doing this project and I know at the end this project will be worth it. We have had a really fun experience because we all have learned something in this project. I learned how to sew and stuff the bunnies. I’m glad that this class and project has taught me new things that I never imagined myself accomplishing.

The point of the giving bunny project was to make people happy. We first did this as our maker project and now we wanted to go more big and make kids happy since kids love stuffed little animals. We are planning to either a hospital or an elementary school to go take the bunnies to the little kids to make them happy. We thought this was a good idea because it would make me and my group happy and the little kids. I have been sewing in the tails and stuffing the bunnies because i’m not really trained or ready to start embroidering the bunnies faces.

Maker project and this project that i’m currently doing has really taught me new ways not only on what i’m good or bad at but how to work with other people that i’m not used to talking to. Pltw is a class that helps me discover new things about myself that can help me later in the future and in my other classes

This year has been a year full of ups and downs, from field trips and projects, to stressful algebra nights.  This applies to my  PLTW class as well, from all the modules we completed to the Maker Faire project, there have been many ups and downs. Through this class I have learned so many things about communication, building, and computer software. Even though it was difficult from time to time not to have a structured class, I’m glad to have experienced it because it has really allowed me to work on time-management and creativity.

After my group and I completed a module, I felt very accomplished. Through all the steps, design process, building, then reflection, it was a lot of work and I was proud of what my group and I had accomplished, even if it wasn’t the original plan. This is another important lesson I’ve learned. The design in the beginning can change throughout the working period, and that’s okay. I’ve learned that many failures and mistakes turn into a lot of great things and end up making what you’re working on even better than planned.

The subject of failure applies to a new project we began in PLTW this 6 weeks called, Kick Flip Failure. This project involved building and designing our own skateboard. This project has 3 parts to it: design, build and reflect. Since we don’t have enough space for a bunch of groups to be on the same schedule, each group had their own schedule. My group and I had the schedule of Build, Design, then Reflect. Our very first step of this project was to pick a shape for our skateboard, and once we had a shape we applied it to illustrator to laser cut the veneer. Our original plan was to have a curved board, but we accidently started to glue the veneer together before we put it in the vacuum. We were disappointed by the dilemma but we shook it off and faced our heads toward a new challenge, which was design.When we searched skateboards in google images, a lot of graffiti patterns came up and we really liked how it looked. We tested them out in our notebook, then brought it to the testing wood. We realized we didn’t really liked how it looked so we went back to the drawing board. We were having a bad case of designers-block for about 20 minutes, scrolling through endless pictures of skateboard designs looking for inspiration, when Sierra said, “What if we did a galaxy theme?!” Melanie and I thought that was a great idea and went to go get a board to test on. We first painted the board black then sprayed blue, purple, gold and silver spray paint on it. We then took white paint and splattered some white onto the board to give it a “fresher” look and represent stars and other things in space. We then did the same thing for our skateboard. We stepped back and admired our hard work after spray painting for 20 minutes.

I’m so glad I was able to experience a class where your ideas and designs turn into actual products. It’s really satisfying to stand back after completing a project and to think about all of the work and the process that has contributed to your final product, and the things you overcame re-designed, and perfected.

We will all fail countless times in life. This blog post is probably going to be extremely cheesy but it’s true. I have failed on many tests and I have failed at smaller things too. Sometimes if I am asked to think about a time that I have failed I don’t know what to say. It’s hard to think of these times off of the top of your head. But, I have found that it if you really focus you can find multiple things that you fail at each day, even if they are small.

This blog post sounds negative but that isn’t what I was going for. There isn’t anything wrong with failing. Yes, it’s true you don’t want to fail classes or tests but it really isn’t the end of the world if you do. When you fail you have to learn from it. As long as you do that then failing is actually helping you in the long run.

I have had so much trouble in Algebra this past 8th grade year. I rarely ever pass a test on the first try. The worst grade I have ever gotton this year was a 21 percent on one of my algebra tests. When I recieved my test back I was kind of upset. I did not want to do corrections or redo it at all. I was so sick of having to do so much extra work just because I never understood everything the first time. In the end I realized that it wasn’t worth it to give up.

I went to tutorials and got help with everything I didn’t know. I did my test corrections and really paid attention to what I wasn’t understanding. I was nervous to retake the test but I did and the results made me so happy. I got a 100! Not only did I get a 100 but I now understand everything that I didn’t before. After that I always was sure to redo my tests if I need to.

So what I’m trying to say is, don’t be afraid of failure. Sometimes failing will lead to you learning even more in the long run.

Everyone has gone through failures, it is inevitable. Failures come big and small, at any time of your lives. And we all have to overcome them, no matter how challenging, to get anything done.

One big challenge I faced during PLTW this year was finishing all my projects. There was just so much I wanted to build, and not nearly enough time. Soon most of these projects turned into failures collecting dust around my house. I planned to come after school and work at home but never found the time. All these half-done projects have been nagging at me since. One big thing is that I won’t have these resources next year, so it’s now or never.

I am slowly overcoming this failure by coming after school whenever possible or working on extra projects at home. This is really hard because school and homework take up all day. Another big thing that’s stopping me is motivation. Sometimes I just can’t find the motivation to get things done. Sometimes I just think, It’s almost the end of the year, why bother?

Even with the project we are doing now, I am having trouble finishing our model of Austin. I think the only way I am going to get over this is finding motivation in myself. The only person I am hurting by not doing it is myself, I’m the only one missing out. I am using this way of thinking to go the extra mile, take extra time, and make my project extra good. Now instead of just being ok with the buildings, I’m going to find the time to laser engrave streets and add trees and grass. And If it’s ok with my group, I might even paint the buildings realistically instead of just white.

Failure is normal when you are trying something new or difficult. Everybody makes mistakes.  I have failed so many times throughout my short 14 years on this planet. When you fail you just have to pick yourself up and try again. If you give up you won’t go anywhere.

 

An example of a time I failed was this year in December. The eighth grade went on a trip to Dallas and missed two days of school and one of the days that I missed was when I had geometry. I am in an advanced geometry class with other eighth graders and ninth graders. The day we were gone the ninth graders learned surface area and volume. Sounds easy right. Not when the shapes have holes in them and pieces cut out. A week or so later we have a small quiz over the surface area and volume of five different shapes. The quiz is only ten questions. As soon as I get the quiz I get started not really knowing what exactly I should be doing but trying my best.

 

The as I walk into class the next week I see quiz correction written on the board. This did not help my nerves at all. We were getting our quiz scores back this class. The teacher walks up to the front of the classroom and I think she is going to announce the top grades like she usually does, but she starts talking about how the quiz scores that we received will not count and the whole class will get to do a retake. AKA almost everyone failed so she is giving us another chance to learn the material. As she walks over to my desk to hand me my quiz the lowest I am expecting is maybe 40%. I flip over the paper and my grade circled in red pen at the top reads 0%. What! I didn’t even know It was possible to get a zero on a quiz, but sure enough it is. At first I was pretty disappointed but I own it and turn my sad grade into a doughnut, yes a doughnut.

 

Overall this experience really showed me that it is okay to fail. You just have to own up to it and then put in the required work to fix it. I think that anyone can connect this back to their life in one way or another.