Genius Time Update

This week I have finalized my interview questions, gathered up more people to interview, and created a digital image to use at the community pitch. While creating the image, I really struggled to find a way to put down "conversation starters" for people to use. I realized that I could use my interviews with people as a resource for that. By actually asking what people respond best to, I can give my audience the most realistic, accurate answers. For some reason I viewed this as a pretty big step in furthering my project. I'm not nearly as far with my project as I feel I should be, but I would say I'm definitely making progress and I met my quarter 1 goals of finding a mentor, coming up with interview questions, and finding people to interview. Next week I'm planning on starting the actual interview. I'm really excited because I think once I have a few of those complete, my project will really start to come together. 

Interview Questions

-What are some things you've heard people say about mental illness (stereotypes)

-What is your experience with mental illness? (personal or watching a family member/friend go through it)

-Did you open up to someone and receive help?

-Who'd you open up to?

-What made you comfortable enough to talk to someone?

-What's something you want people to know/understand about mental illness?

I want feedback from all kinds of people. The point of my project is to educate people enough so that they look at themselves in the mirror and are able to realize when they're contributing to the stigmatization of mental illness. What can you do to destigmatize mental illness?      

Here's one of my slides from the Keynote I created as my digital image for the community pitch:

The Meaning of Failure

As we talked about what it means to be a failure, it was really interesting to see how the people in my class defined the word. Some thought not doing well on a school assignment constitutes as failing, while others said they usually shake those types of things off. Overall, everyone agreed that letting your parents down is the ultimate failure. My thoughts on "failing" at school have changed a lot over the course of this class, not just within the last week. It helps to know that more and more people are recognizing that just because you're bad at math, you're not necessarily bad at life. It has kind of lifted my confidence a little bit because I know that at least two of my teachers, the ones teaching this class, know that all of us have different strengths and weaknesses and don't see any of us as failures. In both school and life, this past week has taught me to embrace the things I'm bad at just as much as the things I'm good at and to use my "failures" as learning experiences to better myself.