Assumptions of my future

Life is full of making decisions. Soon I will be making some of my most impactful decisions. What will I do after I graduate? How will my decision affect me financially? These questions are not easy to answer with so many options. For my Economics class, I’m learning about risks, opportunity costs, and how they affect an individual as well as a collective. My classmates and I went to Lyft and learned more about the market of a ride-share company. We also went to the Chicago Ideas week and listened to professionals talk about algorithms and big data. These experiences were both connected with this class and gave me insight on our economy as a bigger picture.

As a senior, I have a few ideas of what I want to do and how to get there but for this Action project, I focused on 2 completely different career and educational pathways so I can have some ideas on what's accessible and possible for me.

If you want to look at my choices more in depth, click here, or you can continue reading.

Econ AP1, MW, 2019

For both pathways, I made some assumptions.

If I were to go to Scripps college for an undergraduate degree in neuroscience, I assumed that:

- I will receive $35,00 in financial aid and $5,000 in scholarships.

- I will stay on campus all 4 years

With these assumptions, the cost of attending this school would be $168,264

(Year 1- $33,642

Year 2- $41,778

Year 3- $44,869

Year 4- $47,975)

To pay off the loans, it would take 16 years and my true cost, including the compounding interest would end up being $201,123, including $32,859 of interest. Here's a link to the full chart. 

 Becoming a psychiatrist 

Assuming that I would become a psychiatrist, I calculated my lifetime earnings.

MW, LIFETIME EARNINGS, 2019

Lifetime earnings chart

This shows my salary going up as the years go by. The blue, red, and yellow lines represent my entry, middle, and senior level salaries. The cost of living increases so it only makes sense that my pay will increase too. In total, my lifetime earnings would be

Here is the supply of demand of psychiatrist

MW, Psych SD, 2019

This shows the employment and wage rise that is expected in the next 10 years as well as where it is now.

If I were to go to The New School, I assumed that:

-I would receive money from multiple sources (scholarships and student aid options)  adding up to around $50,000 

-I will stay enrolled into this school until I graduate 

-I will stay on campus for all 5 years

- I will be attending the BA/BFA Lang/Parsons program

With these assumptions, the cost of attending this school would be $140,194

(Year 1- $23,642

Year 2- $25,778

Year 3- $27,975

Year 4- $30,236

Year 5- $32,563)

To pay off loans for The New School, it would take 16 years as well. This leaves me with the true cost of $191,193 including $50,999 in interest paid. Here's a link to the full chart. 

Becoming an Art Director

If I become an Art Director, here is my intended salary and lifetime earnings.

Total Entry	269722.1687
Total Mid	987059.1107
Total Senior	7328860.989
Lifetime Earnings	8585642.268

Lifetime earnings chart 

Here is the supply and demand of Art Directors. 

MW, SD Art Director, 2019

The growth rate is 1%, so the change is very small, the two lines represent that 1% growth for the next 10 years. 

While doing this AP, I was able to get more insight on one of the career paths. I talked to a doctor, who happens to be a friend of my mom's. The doctor that I talked to wasn't a psychiatrist exactly but I wanted to know if they enjoyed their life as a doctor and if they would ever go through all of those years of school again? "I absolutely would go through everything again, even though it wasn't fun, it was rewarding. I love being a doctor now." Dr. ED told me. I then asked him for advice and he left me with "You need to be disciplined, Study hard, be positive, and always remember why you started" 

With this information, I don't have a final decision of what I would want to do. Both paths have pros and cons. Ultimately my biggest takeaway was the amount of money an education costs. With both paths, the school costs aren't that much different but my salary cost had a substantial difference.

I compiled some pros and cons of each path 

The New School, Art Director

The pros of this pathway:

Graduate with 2 degree's

Be in a city that will be easy to get this career after graduating

The cons of this pathway:

Really expensive true cost

Scripps college, Psychiatrist

The Pro's

High Lifetime earnings

More education options

The Cons

Longtime payment

Longer school time

 I believe either path I would be okay with but I would for sure have to try to get more money in scholarships. Before this action project, I didn’t know most of these things that I’m displaying. Not only did this project give me the opportunity to explore my options and get a sense of what I want to do, financially and educationally wise. Researching different pathways left me with more confidence in what I can do after I graduate.

1 . ) “29-1066 Psychiatrists.” U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, 29 Mar. 2019, https://www.bls.gov/oes/current/oes291066.htm.

2.) “Art Directors : Occupational Outlook Handbook:” U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, https://www.bls.gov/ooh/arts-and-design/art-directors.htm#tab-1. 

3.) “Scripps College Overview.” College Factual, 13 Sept. 2019, https://www.collegefactual.com/colleges/scripps-college/.

4.) “The New School Overview.” College Factual, 13 Sept. 2019, https://www.collegefactual.com/colleges/the-new-school/.

Disservices within Chicago Public Schools

The job of a journalist is to research, document, and share stories that you find important/meaningful. Being a journalist can be a dangerous job and can cost you your life. For my journalism course, my class finished out first unit, “Text”. In this unit we learned what it takes to be a journalist as well as a consumer throughout the different time periods. We analyzed different parts of an article: like the headline, how you would capture this information/ the readers and how you can communicate a message. This led to me thinking about what I could write about.

Disservices within Chicago Public Schools

        “We’ve been using the same books for 10 years. We can't afford anything.” says 17-year-old Kayla who attends King College Prep. Chicago is notorious for having unjust school systems in lower-income neighborhoods predominantly on the south and west sides of Chicago. It’s not news that public schools don’t have the best funding or functionality, some schools more than others. But in circumstances as Kayla (and many others) describes it, there’s an obvious disadvantage to students who go to schools in minority dense neighborhoods. Teachers coming and going has been a big problem within the CPS school system, as well as having fewer resources than other students in higher-income neighborhoods.
        Instability within the staff at schools is detrimental to the success of students. Often when teachers are coming and going frequently, students become less engaged and are less likely to be motivated to learn. “We just lost like 7 teachers and only 3 of them were replaced.” says Kayla. Fewer teachers can translate into many issues. Teachers can likely be coaches or sponsors, helping with extracurricular programs such as sports, or academic teams within the school. Class size is very important to your learning success, it’s easy to trail off in class when you have 20 plus classmates. It may be even easier to overlook a student with an intolerable workload. This may cause a decrease in test scores leading to less funding, something that schools like this have been struggling with already. With fewer teachers, this means that there will be less and less programs to offer. At King College Prep, a librarian no longer worked there, and so students were not allowed to access the library for a year until they were able to find a new teacher, depriving them of a consistent space to study.
        Kayla talks about how she wishes she could experience what other students can .Barely even 5 miles north of her school, a senior, also at a selective enrollment school likely experiences school completely different. At a school like Walter Payton or Jones college prep, the school offers so many resources; 70+ clubs/activities, global class trips, and room for more teacher/student interaction. These things are something that they’re known for. “I think it's unfair to see students within the same system experience a completely different academic environment,” she then continues to express her point “I have friends who attend Walter Payton College Prep and we’ve discussed the difference in numbers with extracurricular activities and clubs. Payton has over 70 clubs while King is losing clubs yearly.”
        This is just one unfortunate situations out of countless others. Talking to Kayla really brought insight to a situation that not a lot of people acknowledges nor try to change. For many students, school is a sanctuary but it truly is providing a disservice to students while simultaneously setting them up for failure in higher education to allow students to continue to attend schools with subpar conditions and education. Every student deserves equal opportunity and hopefully under the new mayoral administration in Chicago, that would be something attainable.

        Deciding to write about this topic came from me having friends who go to public schools here in Chicago and I wanted to know more about my friends perspective. I was able to empathize, having experienced completely different highschools myself. I hear about what they have to go through and how it compares to other schools in Chicago and it’s wrong. Public schools have to fix their system. This project worked out perfectly because I was already with my peer who I interviewed and we regularly have conversations like this. I’m glad I could write an article about this.

The Policy Podcast; Terminiello v. Chicago (1949)

I'm closing the Chapter for junior year humanity courses. That means that I'm ending my policy course. This course was different for me. I never learned about the government in such an extensive way as we did this term. I'm grateful for everything that I learned about because now my classmates and I have more knowledge on what it means to be a citizen of America, as well as learning different perspectives outside of American citizenship. The first unit we learned about the Legislative branch, the second unit, we learned about the Executive branch. In this unit, we learned what the Judicial branch of the government is all about. Learning about the government, we of course will see some terms that aren't common so my teacher gave us some legal terminology to define. Knowing those terms, it made subjects easier to comprehend. I now understand how a case reaches the Supreme Court. While understanding the process of a case being handled, I got to get to know more of what it means for something to be constitutional or not. So, with learning about the supreme court, we researched different cases, specifically all of the landmark cases, such as Roe v. Wade and Brown v, Board of education. This might've been the most impactful unit for me because I really got a sense of how change happens within the legal world. Some of the cases were even inspiring because it shows that change is worth fighting for and without the fight, nothing will change.

To represent everything that I learned this unit, I made a podcast talking about Terminiello v. Chicago (1949).

There are a lot of interesting and necessary Supreme Court cases, it's not easy to just pick one to look more into. I first thought that I was going to choose Tinker v. Des Moines but someone recommended me to look at Terminiello v. Chicago and I never heard about it. I chose this case after looking at it more because I though it was more interesting than my former choice, although they both have to do with our First amendment rights. I enjoyed making this podcast and while trying to explain what I learned, I even ended up learning more.

Citations
“{{Meta.pageTitle}}.” {{Meta.siteName}}, www.oyez.org/cases/1940-1955/337us1.

“Terminiello v. Chicago, 337 U.S. 1 (1949).” Justia Law, supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/337/1/.

Reports of cases adjudged in the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania : [1828-1835] / by William Rawle, jun. ; with notes referring to cases in the subsequent reports by William Wynne Wister, jun

Comic Studies: Sequential Art

Making comic books is a form of storytelling. For my last junior year, I submitted a proposal for comic making, something that I’ve wanted to learn more of. I chose this study because I always liked to write and create things. I got interested in political comics and I thought that it was really cool that you communicate a meaning behind them, as serious or not as you want it to be. My goal was to get to know more about the process of making comics, make my own comic and of course, read a lot of new comics.

At the beginning of this course, I started with broad research. I looked at different manga artist and anime artist because I know that anime and cartoons go hand and hand with what I was researching. I also did my first mini-comic of the term, this folds into a little book, throughout the term I did a couple of these: here’s my first one (follow the numbers):

MW, How to Leave a Coma, 2019 

I also did my first Comic-Jam of the term with my adviser, this is one of my favorite things that I did in this class. A comic Jam is when at least 2 people are involved and each person has a sheet of paper. You both start off with making one comic panel, it can be for as long or as short as you want it to be. After the time is up you pass it to the next person and you keep passing it along until the comic is done. Here’s my top 2 of the term.

MW, AM, Untitled Jam04, 2019

AM, MW, Untitled Jam05, 2019

I had 2 field experiences for this class. The first one was Free Comic Book Day, I went with my friend who also likes comic books and my goal was pretty easy to achieve, get new comic books. This trip really helped me because it gave me a lot of inspiration. It felt really awesome seeing so many different styles and I got to talk to an comic artist while I was at one of the stores. The second one was more of an internal experience. I had the opportunity to talk to a writer, Dave Scheidt. He's from Chicago, and has wrote for Cartoon Network, Huffington Post, Nickelodeon, and a good amount of others. This experience was impactful because I got an actual perspective of someone working in the field of comics.

My goal for this course was to Create a comic book. I ended up not being to have a finished project but I'm not mad at that. The process seemed so much simpler in the beginning. As we all know, not many things are as they seem. I had made a lot of different plots while trying to come up with the idea that I used in my comic. The script is down below, it was my first time completing a script/ story this long.

My main inspiration for this story was just the human mind and the span of emotions that we feel, I think with all if my stories, I exaggerate different emotions and how I process things that may be different for other people. I didn't want a story with a clear message. I want it to be up to interpretation. I'm proud of what I made, it might not be that understandable but I tried to make it make sense. I did realize that I have a lot of dialogue and maybe next time I could find different ways that characters can communicate without words.

 I was able to draw a few of the panels after I established character design and revised some parts of the script. Here's one part that I was able to draft.

MW, Room Draft, 2019

Overall, I wish that I was able to finish this comic by the end of this course but that doesn't mean that I'm not going to continue working on this project. I think that this process has allowed me to appreciate comic art more. I'm glad that I was able to do this independent study.

Now Lets Make ChicaGLOW

I'm ending my junior year, which means I'm ending Urban Planning with our last unit: "Flow". In this class, we discussed the designs of neighborhoods locally as well as globally. I saw some neighborhood designs from all over the spectrum, like cities from hundreds of years ago, in different countries and even locally. My favorite cities that we researched was Curitiba and the Pullman district, they’re both different designs and turned out different but I enjoyed learning about those different communities, it was inspiring and eye opening to learn how urban planning really affects citizens in different ways. While researching during our internal investigation, we viewed and listened to James Kunstler’s, Majora Carter’s, and Ellen Dunham-Jones' Ted Talks. They all presented 3 different subjects on communities and cities. These subjects talked about the architecture of cities and how it’s gotten lazy, the inequality of communities, and how we can fix these issues with concepts such as retrofitting. There were also other terms my classmates and I dissected like white flight, R.C.I. (Residential Commercial Industrial) communities, and N.I.M.B.Y. (Not In My Back Yard). For our External Investigation, we visited the pedway system downtown that connects all of the train lines, including the Metra.

MW, The Rede, 2019

I used all of this new information to redesign my very own neighborhood! I planned out a design at an intersection that has a lot of empty and unused spaces.

 I didn’t want to do my neighborhood because there’s nothing really here except houses and a few stores here and there. I then told myself how this was a good opportunity to apply my urban planning skills and make this intersection with nothing to do around it into the center pf this neighborhood. To find out what I wanted to do, I had to reflect on why do I have to leave my neighborhood to do things? After answering that, I thought about how there are kids my age in my neighborhood and there are even younger kids and how we should have more community centers so there can be more interaction throughout my block. For the new design, I used Minecraft to best represent what I wanted. This design relates to 2 different SDG's

SDG 11.7- by 2030, provide universal access to safe, inclusive and accessible, green and public spaces, particularly for women and children, older persons and persons with disabilities. All of the spaces that I added were public and while designing them, I thought of how everyone could be involved no matter your age, race and capabilities. 

SDG 11.6- by 2030, reduce the adverse per capita environmental impact of cities, including by paying special attention to air quality, municipal and other waste management. I added recycling and garbage on the streets. If you look at my design, the blue boxes represent public waste management because I know Chicago isn't the best at waste management.

MW, Bike Lanes, 2019

Peter Calthorpe has 7 different principles to build a better city. While designing this, I thought about those. One of them is to raise the bike rate, I believe that with bike lanes, people wouldn't be as hesitant to bike, Another one is walk, with these spaces so close to a residential area, it would be so easy to walk and go to the library or go to the park instead of having to drive. He also talks about spreading out the density of cities and bringing more community spaces to neighborhoods like mine is a step in the direction of spreading density around in a city instead of having everything downtown or having to travel. 

Overall, this was a challenging action project and it was completely worth it, I enjoyed doing everything. I'm glad that I got to use Minecraft as well because I personally enjoy playing Minecraft so it was cool to have a crossover with what I'm doing in school. This course, Urban Planning was a great class to take and I plan on sharing what I learned with my peers outside of school because it's all useful information. 

Sources:

“Chicago Cultural Center | Choose Chicago.” English, www.choosechicago.com/things-to-do/museums-and-arts/chicago-cultural-center/.

“Sustainable Development Goal 11.” Sustainable Development.org. United Nations. Web. 3, Jun 2019. 

TED. “7 principles for building better cities | Peter Calthorpe.” Youtube.com. Lesson by Peter Calthorpe. August 31, 2017. Web. 

The injustices of the Iraq War

Policy is a course that I'm taking in my last term as a junior. My classmates and I just ended the 2nd unit of this term, "Executive". The main focus was the executive branch of the US Government. We talked about actions that the executive branch can take and cabinet positions, I specifically looked into the Secretary of Housing and Urban development but I got a chance to look into my classmates positions. We went to the Cook County Criminal Courthouse in this unit and it's so far one of my favorite field experiences, we got to witness part of an actual murder trial. I learned about the wars that had US involvement and what it takes to declare a war. For this Action project, I wrote about how the Iraq war wasn't a just war. I came across this blog that has photographs from the Iraq war and that made me realize how much of an impact the war was.

Marco Di Lauro, 2003

This photo is from the blog of Marco Di Lauro, who at the time worked for  Getty Images News Service. I came across while looking for information on documenting the United states invasion of Iraq. Researching this was very enlightening to what's going on in government decisions and how it affects everyone involved, rather it's direct or indirect interactions.
Here's my paper:

Towards the end of writing this paper, my class visited the National Veterans Art Museum. This went along with my paper because I talked about how soldiers are now affected physically and mentally for the rest of their lives. I saw the photography there, it really connected with me as a viewer even though I have no idea what the soldiers went through while oversee's.

Yeon J. Yue, 2017, Grey American Landscape

 I asked our tour guide does she see a difference in art between the generations of veterans and she said that around the time of the Iraq and Afghanistan war, there was a lot of photography because that was around the time you were first allowed a camera. She also said that soldiers now in this generation turn towards performance art and comedy, I found that really interesting how the mediums changed through the decades. A lot of veterans have different experiences and that can seem really isolated after going to war and they're dropped into regular civilization expected to live it over again.

Yeon J. Yue, 2017, Grey American Landscape

This project was really enjoyable. I like to research and write so I had fun learning about the Iraq war. My favorite part of researching was looking through a theoretical analysis by Kenneth N. Waltz, called Man, the State and War. I'm glad that I chose this war because I feel like I gained so much information on the United states and the war itself. 

Circuits behind the city

Power is our second unit for my class, Urban Planning. In this unit we learned about circuits and that related to unit 1, when we learned about electricity. We went to an FE to the Museum of Science and Industry and there we saw the Tesla coil, which is a transforming alternating current, invented by Nikola Tesla. That was a very cool experience and it was relevant because at the time, we were learning about the war on currents. A war between Alternating and Direct current. Another reason this FE was relevant is because we're reading Devil in the white city, a book about Chicago's world fair, and the Museum is one of the only remaining structures from that time. In addition to learning about Alternating and Direct currents, I learned how to use formula's to calculate power, voltage, current, resistance, and ohms.

DS MW, Diagram, 2019

For this units Action Project, I partnered with my classmate,DS and we made a circuit of our own. I believe the purpose of this project was to use all that we learned and actually get to make something of it. I enjoyed designing a parallel circuit with my partner, and I also enjoyed seeing what my classmates did for their circuit. My favorite part was calculating all of the math that we learned. My partner and I even found a connection with SDG 7 and you can see that below. 

In conclusion, this project went very well and I think it tied in perfectly to our curriculum. I was pleased with all of my calculations and how I could find real world connections.