My Future

Preparing for life after school is one of the scariest and most stressful things I have ever had to do. There is really no way to know what the future holds, and one of my biggest fears is the unknown. Once I walk across the stage on the day of my high school graduation, I will no longer have everything planned out for me. I will be in control of my future. While this is freeing it is also horrifying. The pressure to become successful is huge. Thankfully, over the past year I have found a field that I enjoy and can see myself going into. I have my sights set on going into the field of marketing and public relations. I really enjoy raising awareness for causes I feel passionate about. It makes me feel like I am making a difference in the world in my own way. This year I have gotten to use my passion for marketing and PR to help improve the projects I have worked on and I have gotten to better my marketing skills.

This past year we did many projects in language arts that involved presenting to the public. One of these projects was the Genocide Poster Project. This was a project where we created a poster to raise awareness about a genocide of the past and talk about how it effects or relates to today. Our poster had to contain a visual metaphor, a slogan, and statistic. Our unit on genocide made me passionate about this project. I wanted to make a poster that would raise awareness to the fact the Cambodian Genocide still effects the people living there today. During the genocide, land mines were planted all throughout the country. Even though the genocide is over today there are still many land mines left over. Every year many are injured from accidentally setting them off. My group wanted to tell the public about this issue, but also about the people cleaning them up. My group went through many different drafts of our poster. Once we had created the final print, I created a variety of different arrangements for the poster. We had lots of critique on the different versions of the poster. It taught me what others liked, and how to make a poster balanced.

            The next big project we did in language arts was the Cancer PSA. For this project, I got to create a PSA about cervical cancer. I was the director of my group. I really enjoyed this project, because I feel that cervical cancer is an important topic that needs to be talked about. My group started by writing a script. We chose to have our actors speak directly to their parents and their future selves. By addressing these people by name, those who are in demographic are more likely to pay attention. We also made sure our PSA was short and straight to the point so we did not lose the attention of audience. We received feedback from partners at Premier Health and they really liked the script. Once we made a few adjustments to the script, we moved onto filming. Our group worked with a professional videographer to choose the best set up for our PSA. We chose to have a grey back round to set a dark and serious tone. We also had a  dramatic lighting set up. This project taught me a lot about how the visuals of a product effect the tone of it greatly.

            The final big project we did in language arts was food insecurity design challenge. We had to create a solution to any issue relating to food insecurity. My group addressed food deserts in our area. I felt passionate about this project, because food insecurity effects 1/6 children in our area. We did this through drafting legislation that would require grocery stores to donate edible food that has passed its sell by date. France passed a similar law in early 2016. For this design challenge, we had to start with a proposal. For this proposal, we had to learn how to create a pitch that would move the reader. I learned a lot about marketing during this unit. One of the useful marketing strategies was to change from a high to a low quickly. I utilized this tip when writing my anecdote. I wrote about a woman who dreamed of having an amazing life and then quickly showing how food insecurity prevented her from her dream. This causes the reader to be more invested in the subject. I also learned that if you tell the reader why you are qualified to talk about the topic it makes them more likely to believe you. My group put all of our sources in our binder so those reading it would know that we did our research. My group received high scores from our judges. This was probably one of my favorite projects because I got to learn about marketing strategies and these tips and tricks will come in handy later on in career.

            All of these projects helped me hone my marketing abilities. Because of this, I have become more confident in myself when it comes to marketing. I have no applied to be the Chair of The Ohio Districts Public Relations Committee and I have applied for an internship in marketing position. They have made the process of growing up just a little less stressful, and I feel better at the thought of life after school.