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• Who did I speak with and why did I choose that person?

  
  I talked to Marion because I wanted to see where she lived in France.
  
  

• What did you learn about them? What did you learn from them?

  
  She likes a lot of music and movies, she lives in Paris and in highschool.

• How did this interaction help you move towards achieving your personal goal?

  
  I wanted to see what movies she liked, and she told me.

• What specifically did you do well according to your goals/expectations?

  
  I wanted to find about about movies, and she told me .
  
  

• What specifically do you need to improve on? (Quote specific things you said or did and what you would have done or said if you could do it again)rc

  
  Some words I wanted to say I had to look up and sometimes I had to translate a word she said with word reference.

• Since my topic is very well-known to many people, it's hard to find an appropriate attitude and explanation I should use for this project. So I looked over many websites and tried to find a objective attitude towards all kinds of comments.
  
  
  
• It's really hard to find the actual truth of the story in Tibet, actually. After I searched all kinds of information, I don't even think that there is a truth exists. Foreign media is always not reporting the truth and exaggerating the mistakes Chinese government had, while Chinese government is always trying to hide something from the people and the media. All I can do is read articles from both sides and to analyze as best as I can. 
  
  
  
• The story actually attracts far more attention than I ever thought, however, the truth is not attracting any focus at all. As if everybody are mislead to different kinds of acknowledgement, the people in China, the foreigners, the media, and even myself. Each side has its own point of view and evidence. Although I can tell parts of it are completely wrong, the rest is still bothering me because all the "truth" are in a conflict. For example, There is no way to identify whether Dalai Lama is involved in the conflict as a man with guilt, nor can I find any evidence to prove his innocence.
  
   
• I think it will. After all the articles I went through, what I see was only one side disagree with another. Either Chinese media and government saying foreign media are all telling lies, or foreign media blaming Chinese government about freedom and human right but never speaking about the improvements. In my article, I tried to combine the two ideas together and try to find some similarities between them. 
  
  
  
• I learned a lot about the ancient history between Tibet and China, and I also learned about the prejudice media have on China-Tibet conflict. What's the most important, I discovered that there might be something with no truth existing at all. What we saw is just a surface. The truth itself might already been covered up by time.

(Option #3) 

The most challenging thing about this project was finding sources to back up the pictures I had taken; I started taking pictures before I found my sources, which was a bad idea. I should have looked up things in Philadelphia that were well documented and then taken pictures of them. I looked at the document on the moodle assignment page for the benchmark hyperlinked as topics and started brainstorming ideas of what pictures I could collect and what theme I wanted to portray through my pictures. I then thought about pictures would be the most convenient to retrieve after school or even during school if I had a free period. After I collected the ones that were close by the school I started thinking of other places in Center city that I could get to via trolley or short train ride and by my house that I could go and document as a sign

I took 10 pictures although there are only 9 posted because I couldn’t get the 10^th picture to upload and I was running out of time for my project. My favorite picture was the mansion. Not only because the Elkins Estate is beautiful and I’ve loved the architecture and elegance that the home has but also because I had to work very hard at finding history behind it. I wasn’t sure that I was going to be able to use that picture because I hadn’t found anything worth using that I could connect back to my theme or globalization. After I found information about the Nun’s that lived there I really started to dig up lots of information. So this picture became my favorite because I worked the hardest at it and because I love the house, after finishing my connections for that picture I felt more accomplished than I did for any of the other pictures. Overall, I’m not sure if it’s less or more prevalent in places other than Philly because I didn’t look for links between globalization and those cities. However, having said that I think that there is a larger amount of people immigrating to other countries like Florida and California that might have more signs of globalization because there are larger cities than Philadelphia so it makes sense that within those places that there would be more signs. I think that for a moderately sized city I think that it’s pretty evident in this Philadelphia. There are lots of examples in the businesses, neighborhoods, restaurants and shops as well as in the universities; each of them show a different portion of globalization but it is pretty evenly conveyed in each section.

I learned a lot about how I work and about Philadelphia. I didn’t have a lot of trouble actually writing about the pictures connection to globalization because it was pretty evident if you understood the lessons that we were taught in class. I learned so much about Philadelphia; I didn’t realize how much I didn’t know. I’ve been to the liberty bell, constitution center, Chinatown; all of which are places that I’ve been too so many times and never even thought about the historical value of the landmarks. I always assumed that the majority of the landmarks were put there as a agreement or as a gift and most of them were but I never thought of them as globalization. Now that I do Philadelphia seems much more interesting and historically rich than ever before. 

• What did you find most challenging about this project?
  
  The most challenging aspect of this project option did not lie on the photo, but rather figuring out ways to connect the picture with the larger globalization themes.
  
  
• How did you go about collecting the images or selecting the images?
  
  I skim through the collections of photos that I have, as well as wandering around the city with the lens of globalization in mind. Sometimes, I had a very clear vision of the connection between what I see and globalization. However, when it became less relevant and significant once I put it down in writing.
  
  
• Which image is your favorite? Why? Elaborate.
  
  My favorite was the pictures of Italian Market. I like the transformation that the place has witnessed over the years. I really wish I have the picture of the place 10, 20, 30 years ago to compare the change.
  
  
• How prevalent is the evidence of globalization in Philadelphia? Do you think it is more or less so (evident) than in other large cities in the US? Why Why not?
  
  Globalization is conspicuous arguably everywhere now. However, it has a stronger presence in urban than rural, and even more so in larger urban area. In Philadelphia, it is certainly not that hard to find evidences of globalization, as it is the hub of major activities involving multinational interactions. In larger city, such as New York, it is more ubiquitous, as there are more people, and activities.
  
  
• What did you learn?
  
  - That escaping globalization seems to be impossible in Philadelphia.
  - The root of Globalization is strikingly inhuman.
  

The most challenging part about this benchmark was trying to figure out how to layout the entire process. It was difficult for us because we were unsure on how to provide a good design. In the end we designed it in a way where we felt it was the most creative yet simple.

The story was easy for us to get because there are many students within the school who of course have a story to tell. There were many students who had similar stories and throughout the process of us finding  a topic to focus on it was simple because a friend was telling us her story and she started to mention the different people who are in similar positions as her. Her story inspired us to go outside of the box and interview multiple people in order to have a thorough general understanding of successful immigration stories. 

I believe that this story hasn't received much attention because it hasn't been revealed. I feel like it is unknown but in a way it is known because we know about it. It's unknown because no one takes the time to acknowledge or notice an immigrants story.

Yes, if our article is shared to the public and no because if this article only stays within the walls of the school how will anyone else be able to hear out their stories.

I learned so much from this assignment I've learned about how strong people are and how monstrous others are. It all depends on the way you were raised I suppose because of everything that is being taught to them. I learned to be a leader like Bach and to keep moving forward never to let anyone bring you down.

Option #1

Fieldler, Elizabeth, auth. "Philly Cops Bust Crime In 140 Characters Or Fewer." National Public Radio. N.p., n.d. web. 17 May 2012. <http://www.npr.org/2012/04/10/150355105/philly-cops-bust-crime-in-140-characters-or-less>.

Mulholland, Jessica. "Philadelphia Police Officers to Start Tweeting at Work." Government Technology. 17 April 2012: n. page. Web. 25 May. 2012. <http://www.govtech.com/public-safety/Philadelphia-Police-to-Start-Tweeting-at-Work.html>.

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  Click here for benchmark
  
  Reflection:
  What I found most challenging was writing about the connections between the image and a theme. I tried to branch out and have a varied collection to talk about so that it is not all the same things as everybody else. Plus writing in general is not something I'm best at so it was really hard to get started on the two paragraph explanations and have them be deep, meaningful, and insightful. When I first thought about this project I tried to get images that I knew I would go past on my everyday routine and try to find a deep connection to globalization with it. So for the first week I woud look very carefully at my surroundings and try to pick out stuff that nobody would really think twice at in regards to globalization then I went around having a regular camera, my phone camera and some pictures that I got from friends because I enlisted their help with gathering all the photos I needed. Personally my favorite image is the one of my dog. I love her so much that it scares my parents when I hug her because I may just squeeze to tight and pop her head off. Anybody that has seen me with my dog can guarantee that I love her the most and that she is my favorite being in the whole world. I learned a lot about the background of a lot of things and how there is a heck of a lot more globalizing going around then what I previously thought there was.
  

Since the begging I knew that this brenchmark will be specially challenging because our teacher give us options to select from, which was nice but at the same time scary because each option was hard in a way, wasn’t a safe choice. I chose the uncover story to find a good news in the city and show it because sometimes I feel like the people in Philadelphia underestimate the city and think that everything is bad.

For the reason that is a news article I couldn’t stay set in front of my computer and write a paper, I had to research and find people who will support my story in order to show that is real. Rotary Club is the organization that is sponsoring my exchange program and besides that they do a lot of good community service so was a pleasure for me talk about that fantastic people. 

A Study of Thematic Evolution

By Michael Dea

Capstone Mentor: Ms. Larissa Pahomov

Topic:

The goal of this capstone was to examine poetry and short stories over the course of four years to see how, if at all, the themes of the writing change over time.

            During the proposal stages of the capstone process, I looked at what I found interesting and what I enjoyed doing. As a result, I chose a capstone with a creative writing basis, given that I wrote as a hobby previously. Once the plans for what the end goal of the capstone were determined, the process of selecting what works would go into the end product was begun, supplementing some areas with works that were begun within the year. After this step’s completion, the selected works were analyzed for possible connections, the details of which can be seen in the process paper. Throughout this process, given that the works were written, they were reviewed by others for input on things such as themes, revisions (for newer works) etc.