For the final senior project of the year, I decided to learn how to play the piano. Which I have been focusing on for the whole school year. However, my intentions were to learn how to play this instrument and then play it for the school. Not just for the school but for graduation, which both plans have been ruined due to the pandemic. My main reasoning for choosing to take on the piano and performance was to see how far I could challenge myself in a short amount of time of learning something new. I wanted to bare the fruits of my labor and be able to show it to my peers and community. During the time of this idea, the Science Leadership community has gone through hard times, being forcefully relocated on multiple occasions. This has brought stress to the individual students, parents, and faculty of the community. As a result, I wanted to play music for everyone to ease those struggling times.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1No1ir_ZeISNykPcTvXEEB27mS_2gW5ezFemmen9IuTk/edit?usp=sharing

Excerpt:

Why meditation works for me. Meditation for me is like a type of therapy. Talking to others doesn’t do anything for me. I always have and still address my worries and lifelong questions to myself, not others. It may be a flaw but that’s not for anyone but myself to let it become one. The first time I meditated it actually didn’t work and during this time I was an Atheist and had no beliefs on afterlives or before life. It wasn’t until I saw an article that said if you don’t believe that meditation will work, then it won’t work. You have to believe that meditation will work for its work. When I heard that it actually only made me not believe mediation worked even more. But a few months later with my anger issues at peaks I decided maybe to try once more, in an effort to calm my anger down and for me to not be so quick to anger I sat myself down in a place I saw as safe, made sure I was comfortable and on the floor. Began to breathe in and out for a seven-second duration of each breath in and out, with my eyes closed I began to see my breath cycle as a symbol much like an infinity symbol with one side with breathing in and the other side of the infinity symbol is breathing out. After this I would begin to think about things deep to me and my personal issues I’m working out. Time would feel a lot slower as the last time what felt to me as 20 minutes was actually over 6 hours. Things like that really take me by surprise and impact the way I think when I see it can control the way I perceive time.

For my Capstone, I did volunteer work at St. Christopher’s Hospital for Children. I was a volunteer in the Child Life Department- Child Life specialists help families and children cope with the stress of hospitalization. As a volunteer in this department, I was tasked with supervising the playrooms in the hospital and doing bedside visits to patients who were in isolation, bringing them toys, and playing games with them. I went from 9:00-1:00 every Saturday. I spent the first few months of the school year retrieving all necessary documents, clearances, and health screenings for the position. I then had to attend three separate orientations, to get the best possible understanding of the responsibilities. Finally, during my first shift, I shadowed a veteran volunteer to get more comfortable with the layout of the hospital and see the close-up interaction with the children. Unfortunately, I was only able to complete 3 full shifts before the hospital closed to volunteers due to COVID-19. Even in the short amount of time I was there, I learned so much about what people can do to make young children feel safer and cared for in hospital settings. Many patients feel very alone or confused in the hospital; having toys, art projects, or games can change their entire experience. I loved this Capstone because I had the opportunity to connect with young children and explore elements of what I want to do in the future. Although my capstone timeline is finished, I plan on returning to St. Christopher’s Hospital when it is safe and continuing my volunteer work.

As Philadelphia’s 2019-2020 Youth Poet Laureate, the intended goal for this capstone and my laureate project was to create a youth-based poetry anthology, centering around the broad theme of Philadelphia. The collection would have existed in a digital form, and would not only provide a voice for underrepresented poets, but also reveal the vast experiences of life in Philadelphia. Throughout the process of creating this anthology I ran into obstacles, such as realizing the difficulties of creating and distributing physical anthology books by May. Instead, I decided to create an online collection that would be more easily accessible. As time progressed and the number of submissions to the anthology remained low, I further determined that my capstone should be modified to highlight my entire year as Philadelphia’s Youth Poet Laureate. I wanted to create a digital time capsule that shows the various events, readings, performances, workshops, and poetry commissions that I worked hard on throughout my tenure as laureate. The laureate experience taught me invaluable lessons on how to communicate with event coordinators, how to lead as a young person, and how to establish a voice as an artist. This capstone serves to document the civic position for all to see what being the laureate entails, and to show rising young poets that their voices are valuable. This website is a collection of images, poems, documents, and videos that represent my time as Youth Poet Laureate, but it also exhibits just how powerful a young poet’s voice can be.