Senior in 12th grade
Best Work
Throughout my entire high school career, I have done many projects that are meant to demonstrate my skills and understanding of a given topic. These are projects that I picked myself that I believe best show my skills throughout the years so far.
2018 Science Fair Project (9th grade)
My project board
The program I used to generate the soundwaves (Audacity)
During my first year of high school, like every student in the school, I had to participate in the school's annual science fair. My project experimented on human perception of different sound waves to determine whether or not they can discern the type of sound wave they are listening to without any prior knowledge of what each specific sound wave sounds like. I made my test subjects of many different age groups listen random sequences of sine, square, and saw waves of differing frequencies and had them pick what "shape" of soundwave they believe the are listening to. I found that, generally for most of my subjects, were able to recognize sine waves compared to square and saw waves, which were often mixed up together.
Sound samples
The sounds in these samples are loud and might be harsh to listen to, so please turn down your volume before listening!
!
Sine waveform
440 Hz
293 Hz
1,567 Hz
Square waveform
440 Hz
123 Hz
1,174 Hz
Saw waveform
440 Hz
97 Hz
649 Hz
This project, though unexpected, gave me a first-place award in my class and I was among the 3 - 5 ACLC students invited by ACSEF to present my board to the Golden Gate STEM fair in 2019. I agreed to present my board and went to the fair. I was amazed to see everyone's projects and saw many interesting and innovative projects from students from other schools. Though I didn't gain any special rewards for my project, I was given a certificate of recognition for participating in the fair, and my project was also featured in an Alameda newspaper article covering science fair projects in ACLC.
2019 California vs. George Milton Mock Trial (10th grade)
(That's me!)
Our mock trial proceeding
A sample of my work in the prosecution team
At around December 2019, former facilitator Lynn Kameny held the annual California vs, George Milton mock trial. For context, we read John Steinbeck's Of Mice and Men, in which two men, George Milton and Lennie Smalls, find work on a ranch due to the Great Depression, but the book ends ambiguously as George shoots Lennie with a pistol.
In this project, the class held "mock trials," pretending that the classroom is a courtroom and two teams of 3-5 people, both called the defense and the prosecution, had to argue on whether or not the killing of Lennie Smalls was justified under current California law. A few students chose to represent and roleplay as characters in the book as witnesses and as George, the defendant. The judge and the jury (the rest of the class) has to listen to the proceedings and decide which side wins.
I was interested in putting my skills in debate to the test, so I volunteered to be part of the prosecution team. Our main objective is to argue that George's decision to kill Lennie were not justified and that he should be sentenced to jail. I remembered our discussions about how we should be very blunt in this type of case and the law states that the killing of a person is illegal. During the court proceedings, the defense argued that Lennie was killed out of a form of euthanasia to spare Lennie from suffering, but we argued that George's case is more of 2nd degree murder instead. After a week of debating, the jury and the judge decided that we, the prosecution side, won the case and that George Milton has been sentenced to a years in prison due to second degree murder.
2021 The Great Gatsby Essay (11th grade)
The essay itself
In 2021, when I was in 11th grade during Distance Learning, the Molly Fenn's English class read F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby, which is a novel narrated by Nick Carroway about a rich man named Jay Gatsby during the Roaring Twenties, as well as his strange love life and his willingness to go back to his ex-girlfriend, Daisy. In this essay, I chose to write about the possible symbolism that is scattered throughout the book and how these types of symbolism relate to the themes of the book, which are prosperity, love, and tragedy, as well as instances of foreshadowing within the book. I chose this project as one of my best works because although it was especially difficult to write, I had a lot of fun with it because I enjoy talking about symbolism in a given piece of media, if it is meant to be symbolistic at all.
2021 "Censor Pill" Advertisement (12th grade)
A video project meant to "advertise" a chindogu, an art form for useless products
(No real cursing was involved in this project. This is also made as satire, so please don't take it seriously!)
Just about last year in my DVS (Digital Video Studio) class, we learned about a Japanese art form called "Chindogu" (珍道具), which is an art form that involves creating a product that may solve everyday problems but is technically useless. We had to come up with a chindogu and had to make a video advertising the product.
I first came up with the idea of a sort of "pill" that magically censors all of your cursing, thus giving birth to this project: "The Censor Pill." I had lots of fun creatively brainstorming and directing this project. My group and I also enjoyed dappling in a little bit of humor in there, such as word play, excessive (bleeped out) cursing, and just ominous undertones in the dialogue. Even the DVS teacher loved it. He even showed it to the entire school during a DVS video watching event, and needless to say, I'm pretty proud of it!