Weeknd

Today I am super excited for prom. However, I am also quite nervous. To be honest, I do not like to dance, and prom is a dance. So, yeah, I have a predicament. I am leaving early today from school in order to prepare for the night. I am going to pick up my date's corsage, then I am going to try and style my hair in a cool way. Because my hair is weird. So I am going to try and make it look cool. So, prom is tonight. 

Tomorrow is Saturday, and I have to work in the afternoon. My church is also having a "Bad Prom" where we have a party and dress up in weird attire. So in the morning, I hope I can wake up early enough to buy something from Goodwill. I want to buy a disgusting plaid blazer or jacket. I just want it to be as bad as possible. So Saturday's agenda is to buy clothes and work.

Sunday is church. Ever since I was young, Sunday was always for church. Now, I go to Freedom House Church and it is awesome. I volunteer every week and we have an awesome youth group called Vertical. So, I plan to go to church, then help set up for Bad Prom. Set up starts at 2 pm, and the event starts at 6. So it is going to be a long day!

Monday is a teacher workday, so no SCHOOL! Thankfully I don't work either, so I can sleep in. But I also want to do a cleanup at Latta Plantation. I am not sure what I am going to do, because I know I will be very tired from the weekend. So either, I will make a video about the cleanup, or I will sleep in. Not sure. But the plan is to do a cleanup on Monday. 

I have lots to do this weekend. It is gonna be super busy. Hopefully it is a weekend to remember. 

My True Passion

Green, orange, and yellow. The primary colors of my life. Every day in third period, I eat a full bag of veggie straws. These straight, but slightly curved straws of heavenly starch are one of my favorite snacks. The crunchy hollow rectangular prism straw shaped chips fill me with essential carbohydrates to give me enough energy to get me through the day. Without these colorful tasty snacks, my third period is not the same. Without them, it is like there is a cloud hanging over my head. It is like I have lost a friend. My stomach growls and yearns for beautiful straws of vegetable to digest. 

My veggie straws are precious to me. Honestly, I do not know what I would do without them. The first time I ate a veggie straw, it was like someone turned the lights on. My entire life, I was living in the dark. But now, I have clear vision. For the rest of my life, I just want to eat veggie straws. As long as I have some delicious delicacies with me, I can live a happy life. When I was younger, I used to think that happiness and joy could be found in money, or women, or possessions. But in my pursuit of happiness, and as I have gotten older and wiser, I now know that only one thing can lead to happiness. Veggie straws. 

If you do not believe me, here is a quick testimonial:

My dear friend and associate Edward III was sitting next to me while I was enjoying a bag of juicy, delicate, and flavorful veggie straws when he asked, "Hey can I try some." I was taken back, Why should I share with him? They are mine! My precious. But then I snapped out of it. It was like my veggie straws were influencing me. I said, "Sure of course Edward." So I gave him some, and instantly, Edward's face started to glow. He was smiling from ear to ear while he was chowing down on veggie straws. "Great Scott. These are amazing!" Ever since then, we have shared veggie straws while working together in third period every day. There's nothing like veggie straws that can bring friends together!

Have a great day, and don't forget to smile!

Sincerely,

Nathan

A little about Nathan. Nathan loves to eat veggie straws. He also enjoys hanging out with friends while eating veggie straws. In fact, he also sleeps in a bed of veggie straws, but they usually don't last through the night. 

A Positive School Experience

Today, our teacher gave us the assignment to create a blog for this website. The prompt was to talk about a positive school experience. There are several classes that were interesting, like US History, or Chemistry. AP Environmental Science and AP Psychology were awesome as well. I learned a lot about our government and how to be a responsible citizen in Civics and Economics. But I am going to focus this blog on a class that I am taking this year. I have always been an artistic person, but I have really been able to express my creativity through my Crafts II class. 

As a freshman in high school, I took Art I because it was a required course. I loved it, and I wanted to take more art classes throughout my high school career. Instead, I decided to focus on my GPA. Most of the art classes were standard, and there were other classes that I could take that would give me a higher GPA. So for the next two years, I did not take any art classes. But my senior year, I decided to take Crafts II. It might have been the best class choice for my senior schedule. Not because it is easy, because if you don't work hard enough, you won't get a good grade. But because it is a way to express myself. It is the bridge to my creativity, a window to relaxation. The stress of school, work, oncoming college, etc. can easily be overwhelming. With one art class in my schedule, I can relax. For one period of the day, I do not have to worry about anything else other than my art. All I have to do is put all of my thought into the artwork. By focusing on creating an amazing piece of artwork, whether it be with clay, wood, stone, wire, or paper; I can drown out all other distractions. I think that it really shows in my art. My level of persistence, detail, and focus shows. It really is a way to destress. 

While I was working on a wood sculpture project, another art teacher came into our room to take the supply cart to her room for the next class(the bell was about to ring). I was still working on my project and did not notice her, or that the class time was almost up. She said, "Honey...". I looked up and I came back to reality. I looked at the clock, and slightly embarrassed, I said, "Sorry. I lost track of time." I thought she was going to be irritated because I was holding her up, but instead she smiled and said, "Oh no, it is okay. We like it when our students get into their artwork." That is when I realized how important this class was to me. By focusing on a piece, by pouring all of my effort into it, I was able to not worry about all of the stress and turmoil in my life. 

Crafts II has been an awesome way to express my creativity. Plus, I get awesome pieces of artwork to give to my mom. I am super thankful for my art teacher, Mr. Valenti for pushing me to create the best artwork that I can. I have learned that with art, there is always something more you can do. There is always one more step that you can take. Creating art is like life, there is always something more you can do. But whether you take that extra step to improve your life is up to you. 

Human Rights

I read the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and it was a lot of stuff. To be honest, most of these rights didn't seem like rights. In our lives, most of these rights are a given. Like everyone is equal. In our lives, everyone is equal. But when you think of it in a different perspective, then you can understand the right. Like in a third world country, everyone might not be equal. There are slaves in third world countries. Everyone is allowed these rights. And the entire point of these rights is so that no can be denied these rights. I have a growing awareness to the humans rights issue of slavery. Because it doesn't happen here in the US. But it does happen elsewhere in the world. I can spread this awareness to become a humans rights defender. If anyone is reading this; you can spread the word about human slavery.

Shoutout to CNN for the graphic. http://thecnnfreedomproject.blogs.cnn.com/category/the-facts/the-number/

Where did the Green Go?

So our last project in DigCit was called the World of 7 Billion Video Contest. Our task was to create a video on one of the following topics: Deforestation, water scarcity, or public health to raise awareness to the issue. I chose deforestation as my topic. I have taken AP Environmental Science, Into to Sustainability, and Green Building and Design concepts classes. In addition, I will be attending NC State in the fall for Environmental Sciences. So I have a large understanding of environmental issues. I thought this video project would be awesome because it worked so close with my own Genius Time Project. But then I found out the maximum time limit was 60 seconds and we only had two days in class to work on it. That was frustrating because our last video project we did, we had almost a month to work on. So I had some serious work to do. I had planned to do lots of drawings and stopmotions of drawings and creating animations. However, with such a small time frame to create a video, it wasn't possible. When I was storyboarding my video, I had such an awesome vision. But unfortunately, I wasn't able to see my video in its awesomeness because I didn't have time. Instead, I had to find copyright free images online and piece them together to create a video. In my opinion, whenever I see a video with pictures, I think it is very unprofessional and kiddish. I was going to avoid this method, but I could not do anything else. It is sad because I know I could have made an awesome video. But I was not able to because of the time limit. There is definitely a lot of room for improvement for this video. I liked working by myself because I have all the responsibility. If something is not right, I cannot blame anyone, because it is on me. I like having that responsibility. 

Update on our Service Project

My group and I are still in the process of working on our video project for the Lake Norman Rotary Club. I would say we are a little behind schedule because we were not able to attend the meetings two weeks in a row due to school complications. We had tests the day of the meeting, and one of our members had a medical problem that he had to attend to. But we should be able to attend the next meeting and get the rest of our footage. 

This project has been a great way to experience the "real world". We have gotten to talk to real people and professionally work with them. I definitely would like to do another project like this for another company or club in the future. 

I would say that this class has helped me to become a better film maker and a more observant creator for media. There are different things like the rule of thirds that I use now whenever I take pictures or video. 

I volunteer regularly at my church as a Director of Cameras so I was familiar with head room and different types of shots that a cameraman should get. But this project has definitely broadened my knowledge of different scenarios and how to properly interview someone. 

Obviously the product is what the club sees and what they want in the end. So technically the product is most important. This is why we are doing this project, to create a product. But don't let anyone discount the importance of the process. Learning how to properly create a video or any type of product is essential to being successful. If you speed through the process, then you come out with a mediocre product. And no one should ever settle for mediocracy. My group and I are aiming for something extraordinary, something breathtaking!

We want to win this project. 

Like I said, we are a little behind with our footage, but during our last visit, we interviewed one Rotarian and the mayor! Hopefully at our next meeting, we will be able to interview the president of the club and one or two other members. It is always good to get more footage then you think you will need for any video. You can always cut out footage, but you can't add footage after you are done shooting. 

Have a great day and don't forget to smile!

I'm a Rotarian

Yesterday, our class went on a fieldtrip to many different organizations and learned a little about each one. We went on this trip because we are doing a service video project for each organization. I was tasked with the Rotary club. We went to their meeting and learned a little about what they do. 

They work as an organization who serves their local community as well as state and national communities. 

The Rotary Club wanted a video to share what their club is all about and to expand the size of their group. 

So that is what we are going to do. 

I am really excited about this project. We are going to be able to interview members about their experience. We can teach others what it means to be a rotarian.

My group members and I are going to another meeting in the following weeks to interview and research more about rotary and what it does. When we are finished with out video, we are going to submit it to a video contest and try to win money for our school. 

Most of the Rotary Club was very friendly and ready to volunteer their time and be a part of the video. One person didn't want to do it and laughed at us, but thats ok. He is just missing out. 

Finally, as I am wrapping up, the Rotary Club had this 4 Tests banner. This was really cool, it was their principles. Everything that they did was through these principles. If it didn't pertain to these principles, then it wasn't going to happen. I am very thankful that I am going to be able to work with such a professional organization. 

Thanks for reading, and don't forget to smile!

-Nathan