For this project we were told that we are creating our new school. I don't think that any of us believed that it was going to happen before we leave the school and it still might not. We all thought that this would be a waste of time but really it had such a big impact on all of us in every way. Most of us ended up enjoying this project. I personally thought that this project was really cool and I ended up liking it a lot. For this project we were told use design thinking to find out the best design for the users of the school (ie. Students, Teachers, Parents etc.) Design thinking is the process in which you go through a few steps to come up with the best design suitable for the users as well as a sustainable design. Those steps are, empathy interviews, ideation, prototyping, and finalizing the project. These steps were very different than anything I had ever been exposed to before. I did however really like this type of thinking and therefore liked the project. I have always been in standardized schooling and this was the first time I had every heard of it and it will certainly help me later on in life. The project was that we, the group, would create high-quality architecture pans and renderings from the critiques of peers and others as well as design thinking. When done prototyping, we would present to students, parents, faculty and community members to get more feedback. We then would refine our projects to suit the needs and eventually propose out ideas to the Board of Directors and future donors. Throughout this project, we used architecture program such as sketch-up and rendering programs like kerkythea to create our campus design as well as our small room design. I was the one in our group to use a lot of the programs to do all of the renderings and 3-d designs. I really like this part because I am such a visual learner and it was so much fun for me to see my ideas become real to some extent. My favorite part was getting to see the makers space come to life as I was rendering it because I love building and creating and it was such a cool designed space and I learned so much from this process. I learned that many other people liked the idea and wanted one in the new school as well. I really liked learning from this and I think that it was very helpful to my future career as a scientist or engineer. I really liked the sketch-up because you can do and make whatever you want on there with no limits. I learned a lot about how some of the professionally made buildings are made from videos that I watched on the programing and designing. I learned the most from this part of the project and I was very fond of it as well. For this project we were placed into groups of 4 so that we could work on collaborating within this project. What stood out to me was the group that I was put into because they are not a group that I would normally chose to work with although I ended up loving my group and we all became so much closer as friends and like a mini family. I am a driver and I like to get things done and have nothing get in the way and I do not work super well in groups so I had quite a bit of trouble of working in a group. Although it was hard for me to work in a group and get along with everyone as well as splitting up the work evenly, this project really helped me work on that side of myself. It was hard to get a group of three drivers and one introvert (no offense) rolling although we got the hang of it later on in the project. I still ended up taking on more of the work load than the others because that is just me as person but I definitely was not as much of a dictator as I had been in the past. Some examples of this is that I did all of the sketch-up while everyone else had the ideas, wrote the proposal, and made the budget. We all worked in our strengthened areas and tried our hardest in each of these. I think that it is very very important for students to have voice in what their facilities and schools look like. I think that this is so important because the students are one of the main users of the school and should have a say in how they want to learn. I also think that it can affect the perspective students have on their learning. If they do not like their school because of the environment and how it is not suited for them, they are not going to learn anything, be able to focus, or want to be there. For example, I started off high school at DHS because from what I had heard about the location and design of animas, I though that is was a really trashy school and would not accommodate for my educational needs however looks may be deceiving. This was not the case at all and I ended up switching schools because I wasn't getting what I needed at DHS, the big fancy school, but when I switched I got everything I needed no matter how it looked. I think that if the school had accommodated for me design wise, I would have gone there in the first place although that was not the case. I do think that it is very important for students to have a say in what their facility is like so that they can get the best and most out of the 4 years that they are there.