Blog Post #1: Beginning the project

Today I am starting to begin brainstorming ideas for my courage project, also known as Genius Hour. The whole premise behind the Genius Hour that I will be engaging this year in Advanced Language Arts is to step out of my comfort zone and challenge myself to do something that is passionate to me that I was too scared to try. I then must present a final product relating to my challenge after much research of how to carry it out and actually do it like publishing something or learning a new language.

What I am most excited about with this type of project is that I have a lot of freedom in deciding what I would like to do my project on, and how I plan to do it. This excites me because then I don't have to look forward to the pressure of having to stay within a strict template and expectations and I can set my own expectations for my own project. This means I can create my own rubric and decide for myself what is standard for me and what by best work will look like. Some challenges I foresee with this type of project are that since there will be no strict due dates or deadlines, I may have a tendency to fall behind or procrastinate which will only hamper my progress in the end.

I have decided that I will be working alone, and not in a group. The pros of working alone are that I won't have to compromise on anything, I can switch ideas whenever I like, and I won't have to rely on someone to get some of the work done knowing that if they won't it could negatively impact my grade. On the other hand, some cons are that I will be forced to take on a big project all by myself which can get somewhat overwhelming, and it will take longer to complete all the research by myself.

I have already started brainstorming two ideas that I could possibly do for my Genius Hour project. The first idea is to learn a new language, specifically Latin. It is a language I became quite interested about after our Roman unit last year in 6th grade, but I am a little skeptical of trying to learn it since it is a dead language. This makes any teaching sources quite hard to find, making the language itself quite difficult to learn. Yet, wouldn't that be the perfect challenge to do for a courage project like Genius Hour? My second idea is to publish some of my poetry I have been working on for some time. I love writing poetry and have been writing and collecting it since 2nd grade. I have an amazing collection of poems that I am quite proud of, and after receiving much praise I feel as though I should try to publish them and reveal them to the public. I feel a little hesitant on doing this though because to reveal something private to the outside world takes much courage, and once it is out there, it will undergo much judgement from the public. Again, wouldn't that make it the perfect project? Those are the only two ideas I have for now, and I can already tell as I begin this project, there is a long ways to go. Today I have only started brainstorming some ideas for my courage project, but I know that soon, once I get into researching, I will have to overcome many obstacles along the way. As I do, I will make sure to keep posting more and more blogs. With that, I conclude this post.