Reflection Essay
From the beginning of this project I knew with my group we’d want to do something with pollution. This was my chance to get deeper in the topic of ocean pollution and really learn the problem from the start and what other companies are doing to help put an end to it. I’ve always loved the ocean and wanted to help, this is also what my group members Matthew Mau and Adrian Canseco wanted to get deeper in and start finding the sources of ocean pollution. In this project I learned about how to solve large problems piece by piece through researching ocean pollution, getting critique from other non-profits, and making campaigns
Through our extensive research before making our presentations we found out how ocean pollution is much more of a problem some places and how every nonprofit is affecting it in a different way. For example H20 Trash Patrol is cleaning waterways by having people go out on paddle boards and clean, while surfrider is doing beach clean-ups and helping immensely promote propositions to help the environment like proposition 67. Then we wanted to help educate everyone through programs and websites. This helped me decipher large problems because I realized that we can do a little part and still be contributing to the larger cause that we’re all trying to help. After this we learned we started our presentations which were quite rough in the beginning but critique got us through.
After multiple speakers we had come to class we constantly asked them questions on how we can make our ideas better. One thing that they said was how large of a problem ocean pollution is and that we can look at it as a whole. They said find our niche in this large area. We learned this through asking the speakers after they spoke how can we make our idea more clear because in our heads it was foggy. This was definitely the most obvious advice we got throughout the entire project because it opened our eyes to see how we can’t do everything, but we can do something in our area(Southern California) especially. But we also realized that we can work our way up to being in other areas that aren’t Southern California. We finally had to use this critique in our campaigns and edit them accordingly.
We put the most work into our campaigns by far. They had all of the critique we got on them and our mission statement which were all more focused on smaller ideas compared to our last presentations. On our campaigns we were forced to do something mostly in our area because we had to do two doable campaigns and one out of this world one. While researching for these three we had to make one was fully inspired by a beach clean-up we did to volunteer but we did it with our class. This connects with our thesis because our large problem was what to do that was easy enough to actually do then through critique and experience we settled on something extremely local, our class. In our last campaign we wanted to do something that no one could actually do and how it would majorly solve our problem was buying out all companies that contribute to ocean pollution. I know this is really insane but we thought it was the craziest thing we could do. All this brings us back to our thesis.
In this project I learned about how to solve large problems piece by piece through researching ocean pollution, getting critique from other non-profits, and making campaigns. Some of the main points that we focused on was educating the public and just simply cleaning up the beach. This is really going to help me narrow down not just problems but doing homework or anything big because now I know how to space it out easier.
Presentations: https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1TsKvolzK2lveVXjahmEiHNguBHlQEdHWTy_gHHyxbNE/edit#slide=id.g180555080c_0_20
https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1-bS4a_UEUtHgE5sSlR_SrxFIqlgG55REjbxCBCFZA04/edit#slide=id.p
https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1MkRjGwv0Ogg15eL_pSbEaJMiGIPk4gbz6G-hH3nnLwU/edit#slide=id.p
Through our extensive research before making our presentations we found out how ocean pollution is much more of a problem some places and how every nonprofit is affecting it in a different way. For example H20 Trash Patrol is cleaning waterways by having people go out on paddle boards and clean, while surfrider is doing beach clean-ups and helping immensely promote propositions to help the environment like proposition 67. Then we wanted to help educate everyone through programs and websites. This helped me decipher large problems because I realized that we can do a little part and still be contributing to the larger cause that we’re all trying to help. After this we learned we started our presentations which were quite rough in the beginning but critique got us through.
After multiple speakers we had come to class we constantly asked them questions on how we can make our ideas better. One thing that they said was how large of a problem ocean pollution is and that we can look at it as a whole. They said find our niche in this large area. We learned this through asking the speakers after they spoke how can we make our idea more clear because in our heads it was foggy. This was definitely the most obvious advice we got throughout the entire project because it opened our eyes to see how we can’t do everything, but we can do something in our area(Southern California) especially. But we also realized that we can work our way up to being in other areas that aren’t Southern California. We finally had to use this critique in our campaigns and edit them accordingly.
We put the most work into our campaigns by far. They had all of the critique we got on them and our mission statement which were all more focused on smaller ideas compared to our last presentations. On our campaigns we were forced to do something mostly in our area because we had to do two doable campaigns and one out of this world one. While researching for these three we had to make one was fully inspired by a beach clean-up we did to volunteer but we did it with our class. This connects with our thesis because our large problem was what to do that was easy enough to actually do then through critique and experience we settled on something extremely local, our class. In our last campaign we wanted to do something that no one could actually do and how it would majorly solve our problem was buying out all companies that contribute to ocean pollution. I know this is really insane but we thought it was the craziest thing we could do. All this brings us back to our thesis.
In this project I learned about how to solve large problems piece by piece through researching ocean pollution, getting critique from other non-profits, and making campaigns. Some of the main points that we focused on was educating the public and just simply cleaning up the beach. This is really going to help me narrow down not just problems but doing homework or anything big because now I know how to space it out easier.
Presentations: https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1TsKvolzK2lveVXjahmEiHNguBHlQEdHWTy_gHHyxbNE/edit#slide=id.g180555080c_0_20
https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1-bS4a_UEUtHgE5sSlR_SrxFIqlgG55REjbxCBCFZA04/edit#slide=id.p
https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1MkRjGwv0Ogg15eL_pSbEaJMiGIPk4gbz6G-hH3nnLwU/edit#slide=id.p