The goal of our final synthesis project was to coordinate and show the film Queen of the Sun on the HUB lawn and to have the UW bee keepers come and sell honey at our event. As it turned out, this became a harder task than the simplicity of showing a movie at college and this forced us to restructure our project. Honestly my group members and I were left scratching our heads, after we learned that we were supposed to reserve the HUB outlets and the lawn to show a movie. This obstacle was swiftly managed and in the end we were able to reschedule the event. The overall relaxed tone of both my groupmates and I made this obstacle seem less like a let down and just a minor bump in the road. Also the UW bee keepers were promptly notified via Facebook, the app itself helped us gain attention for the event itself and we would set up an event on Facebook.
I myself and some of my group members were limited with our own personal schedules with athletic commitments, which we anticipated going into the project. Our initial date didn’t conflict with any of our schedules but for Dana and Sarah who had NCAAs from the following week and I had my national championships the week after. Our decision was to reschedule during the final week of class before finals. And I missed the movie and the final group presentation which given the confidence of my group and their leadership, was not an issue. But for me I felt like I couldn’t contribute during the final stages of the quarter long project and perhaps the meaningfulness of my contribution was taken away. I really enjoy presenting on global topics that interest me and know I would have been able to add something to the final presentation. Whereas planning may not be one of my strong suits and could be an area of growth in the future.
This project was not just about our group restructuring our event but it was about introducing themes of the class to people on campus. Themes like the effects of mono-cropping, food production and food ethics and not just honey bees. I think that people came to this event with an open mind and were fairly excited to watch the movie. But I feel like for students it would be more effective if this project were something like getting involved in an organization and helping them with a pre-established initiative. I think that collaboration with the UW beekeeping was really helpful for our project but if that aspect was our group going and getting our hands dirty, so to speak, that would be more enriching for my groupmates and I. And perhaps that was a direction we could have pursued.