By Sanvi, student Grade 10
The Personal Project (PP) was first introduced to us towards the end of Grade 9. From then until March in Grade 10, PP was an ongoing process consisting of 2 main parts: the report and product. When speaking of the report, it consists of criteria A (research), B (relevant ATL skills), and C (reflection of the effectiveness) which were explained by monthly presentations to the collective grade and supervisors who were assigned to each student.
Time management
The product was a more independent part which required time management and was something that I needed to regulate depending on my free time and the speed at which I worked. The main focus was to have the product finished by the exhibition and keep it aligned with the logical plan, specifications, and product/learning goal highlighted in section A of the report.
Choosing a topic
All these components may come off as overwhelming at times for many students, however, for me, the biggest struggle was choosing the topic. Being something that has endless options based on your personal preferences, I had many ideas with some being hard and others being easier. My final idea ended up being a political cartoon book. I chose this because it combined my strengths (MUNs, politics) and weaknesses (VA, editing) into a product that was unique, especially since the decline of newspapers results in us coming across political cartoons less.
Political cartoons
A large misconception about the personal project is that it has to be something related to what you want to pursue later in life, and although that is a useful approach towards the topic, it can also be something that you are passionate about or want to learn more about. Therefore, regardless of not wanting to pursue politics or designing, I created a book of 15 political cartoons regarding 6 topics: Education, Sport, Media, Healthcare, Technology, and Environment.
Political cartoons are drawings that criticise a social, economic, or political aspect of society in a satirical manner while combining different subjects, labels, drawings, and colours for attraction and explanation. This helped me broaden the target audience for my product, which was something that I focused on.
Product goal vs learning goal
Although my product goal was the political cartoon book, my learning goal was to raise awareness regarding current issues to a wide target audience which I succeeded in since students from Grade 4 up to adults were all engaging in the book and trying to understand the critiques that I symbolised.
This is relevant since another aspect to the project is evaluating (criteria C) whether you were successful based on your 5 specifications chosen in criteria A. This also allowed for me to see how I have grown as someone who communicates in a multinational environment and how the different subjects such as I&S, VA, and extracurriculars like MUNs helped me in this process.
Main takeaway
Therefore, one of my main takeaways for this project is to combine aspects that you are passionate about, but also things you want to improve in to create a project that you can be proud of as a sign of growth across the extended period of time working on the personal project.