Eric Hodges Ms.

Ingram English 1101 11/4/2013 The Graduation Project Even before I started my High School experience I had heard what amounted to horror stories about the dreaded senior project. I couldnt stand to even think about my senior English because of all the stories from former students that had to do the project. All throughout high school I remembered hearing these stories about how awful it was, or how much work was required of you to complete the assignment. After all of these horror stories I would learn that it would turn to be surprisingly different than I imagined it would be. The first day of my English class I felt nervous for some reason that I couldnt explain. This caused a sense of anxiety to come over me for some unexplainable reason. Before the class started I sat in my, for some odd reason already warm seat, and silently prayed to myself that for divine reason the school board or the even had decided to scrap the entire idea of a senior project. Unfortunately as soon as my teacher finished taking the role for the first time the first thing that came out of my English teachers mouth was lets talk about what I know is on all of your minds, the graduation project. The feeling that went through my entire body was the same as the feeling that goes through someones body when there favorite football team misses a field goal that could have won them the game and they end up losing. My teacher, Ms. Byorick, proceeded to explain to the class that there was four parts the graduation project. The four parts of the project were to choose a topic, write a five to ten page annotated bibliography about your topic, make an eight to fifteen minute presentation about your product, and finally there had to be

some sort of physical product to show that you have either acquired some sort of a new skill or at least to show that you put a lot of work into the assignment. That was all she really talked the entire class period. I remember thinking to myself as I walked out of the room that first day well here comes a semester of pure hell. A few days later in class we talked about the project once again. On this day my teacher informed us that we would have to find a topic and also find a mentor that is not a family member. The next thought that came to my mind was how long would we have to find our mentor. Before I could even finish that thought my teacher told us that we had until the ned of the week to find our mentor. I remember thinking to myself holy crap, how am I supposed to find a mentor that could sign the paper by the end of the week. The person that I wanted to be my mentor was on one of his many business trips to China. As I sat there with thoughts running through my head about what to someone asked what if the person that we want to be our mentor is out of the state or out of the country. My teacher said that a simple email with a signature upon their return would suffice. I then let out a sigh of relief and then thought to myself, how serious is the school about this project. With all of the papers a forms that we had to get signed I began wondering just how uptight is the school when it comes to this project. The next thing that I had to was present my topic to a board of teachers. For some reason that I to this day cannot find a reason to explain I was nervous. This seemed to happen a lot whenever it came to this project. It was weird to me because before that project it happened maybe twice in my entire high school experience. On that day the whole class lined up in this narrow hallway leading into the schools library. We stood there in that tiny hallway awaiting our turn to enter the library and present to our board of teachers what it was that we wanted to do for our project. As I stood there waiting in that line I looked around and saw that I was in fact not

the only one that was nervous about this. For some reason this was actually comforting to me. Before I knew it, it was my turn to go into the library and present my topic for approval. I walked up to what was supposed to be a three teacher approval board and sat down. At my approval board there was only two teachers there. One of the teachers I was glad to be on my approval board it was an English teacher that should have been a college professor. He had a way about him that is similar to college professors and from what I had heard from other students it reflected in his teaching style. The other teacher was a strict Spanish teacher that I had heard nothing but bad things about. First they asked me for all of my papers that they needed to see signed. Then they asked me what I was planning to do for my product. I hesitated for a moment and then began to tell them that I was planning to design an in detail piece of furniture. This would include all of the measurements and motions of the piece of furniture. I told them that the design would be done in Auto CAD. After I was done explaining this to them they both just looked at me in puzzled faces and asked, is that all. A feeling of complete surprise came over me. I replied in a respectful manner and said yes that is all. Another teacher looked at me and said, why dont you try to design three or four pieces of furniture. I sensation of fire ran through my body. I sat there in awe and, thought there is no way that I would be able to design three or four pieces of furniture. I then negotiated with them and explained to them that there was no way that I would be able to complete three or four pieces of furniture for this assignment. The two of the teachers eventually agreed that it would be fine if I only did one piece. The only catch was that I needed to have plenty of documentation proving that it took me over twenty five hours to complete the assignment. I left the table and thought to myself thank the lord that I did not have to complete three of pieces of furniture.

A few months went by and I had spent hours at home working on my product and my presentation for the in class and for boards night. It was the day before our in class presentation. Our teacher explained the process of how we would have to present. For my teacher everything had to be beyond perfect or we wouldnt even make an A. She explained that she would have the room set up exactly as it would be set up on boards night. We would walk into the room and shake hands with the three judges, introduce ourselves, do our presentation, and then we would present our product. At this point it sounded easy to me after all the rest of the work that I had put into my product. In fact doing the presentation sounded relieving to me. It was something that didnt require me to spend hours of my life staring at a computer screen. The next day came and my plan for the presentation was to let someone go in front of me and then see what I could do better. I sat in my seat in the back of the class and waited for someone to go ahead and go. To my complete surprise no one wanted to go first and get it over with. A minute went by of my class sitting there in pen drop silence. My teacher broke the silence and said Eric, Im volunteering you to go first. I got out of my seat and thought to myself really out of the thirty kids to choose from to go and you picked me of all people. I exited the classroom as we were instructed to do. Whenever I re-entered the classroom I shook hands with the three students that were acting as the judges. I presented and when I finished the class looked like they were about to die of boredom. The class had that why are you even bothering talking, half asleep look on their face. I dont really blame them if I was given that presentation I would be bored as well. When I finished I felt like the whole presentation went by rather quickly and I was worried that I didnt meet the time requirement. My teacher extinguished my worries as she told me that my presentation was nine minutes and fifty seven seconds long. I was happy with that and my classmates feedback was very positive. They said

that I did a very good job with my presentation. I was happy and all that was left for was to present on boards night. The night of boards night arrived quickly. I was dressed nicely and professionally for it because we were told to dress in business casual. Me personally I despise dressing up for things, it always seemed pointless to me. I arrived to school fifteen minutes early and waited for someone to get there so that I didnt have to walk in there alone. When I saw a friend I walked in with them. I went and sat in my holding room for what seemed like an eternity. I was fourth out of five on the list to go so I knew I would be sitting there for a while. The whole room was pretty quiet there were a few people talking in low voices. I didnt really know anyone in there so I just sat by myself in silence. Another kid sat next to me, he came in a little late. He was dressed up but he reeked of cigarette smoke and his hair was a complete mess. This just made sitting in there even more torturous for me as cigarette smoke is one of my least favorite smells. Mr. Israel, my ninth grade world history teacher, came in the room and called my name. I thought to myself finally Ive been waiting here next to smoke shop forever. I entered the room and shook the hands of the judges as I was instructed to do. I gave my presentation but this time I felt like I went way over the time limit. They told me that my presentation was nine minutes and thirty seconds. I thought to myself really this one was shorter. It felt a lot longer but I was happy that it met the requirements. The feedback that I got from them was positive and they even said that my presentation was the most interesting one that they had seen that night. I thought to myself either the other presentations sucked or were just too boring to even bare.

I exited the room happy with myself. I felt like I had actually accomplished something that was meaningful. I felt like that I learned a lot about myself and I felt like I learned a lot about how a lot about college would do things. The project was never as bad as I thought and was nothing like the horror stories that had been told to me throughout high school. It was a huge learning experience for me that taught me a lot more than the class could have taught me if it was just another high school English class.