Free To Be.

LifeQuest assignment -- Couldn't post on Assignment blog!

I'm going to post my assignment for the LifeQuest assignment on my personal blog for now. The internet, router, typepad.com, something is not working but for some reason blogger.com and google.com ARE working.. my dad and I are trying to figure out the problem, but I've posted this here and if I can't post it by Sunday 11:59pm at home, I'll go to the library and post it there, hopefully one will work. -- Life Quest assignment - Week #6 I’ve decided to focus on my journey to accomplishing and completing my Girl Scout Gold Award project. Just as a little background, the Girl Scout Gold Award project is the highest award a Girl Scout can earn (like the Eagle Scout Award in Boy Scouts). The Girl Scout has to spend at least 60 hours on the project and only Senior Girl Scouts can do the Gold Award. I’ve also completed the Silver Award (for Cadettes, the second to last level by age in Girl Scouting) and there is also the Bronze Award for Junior Girl Scouts (third to last level for Girl Scouting), which I didn’t do. For my Gold Award project, I’m creating a documentary about connecting youth to youth. I spent a week in South Africa filming a drama group who creates and performs skits, dances, and songs with the idea of raising awareness of AIDS in an engaging and inspiring way. This group is amazing and they are such great actors, dancers, and singers. I also spent a week in Luebeck, Germany filming a German friend of mine and her friends. I got to know my friend better, go to school with her, and I got to know lots of her friends very well. In the spring, I will be going to Chicago to film my German friend again since she will be staying there for a student exchange program. Additionally, I will film one or two groups in California. And eventually when I’m finished with the filming, editing, and getting every single permission form I can think of, I will distribute my documentary to youth organizations, schools, and the Girl Scouts. When I am awarded my Gold Award I want to have in some way successfully connected all of the groups I filmed with each other as well as the viewers of my documentary with the groups in the documentary. The main reason for my interest in this project is that I want youth my age to be more aware of other youth in other countries. I think youth and people in general would enjoy finding the many similarities they have with others in other countries and cultures and would be able to connect through their similarities. At the same time, youth need to be aware of the differences between everyone. These differences shouldn’t divide and separate people but create awareness of everyone’s uniqueness. The Call for this journey happened when I completed my Silver Award. I had a really great time doing my Silver Award project and I knew that I wanted to do a Gold Award project as well. I had no idea what I would do for my project, but I knew that it would end up being something I really enjoy doing. I think the seven stages to a journey Dr. Noble stated are more intertwined than ‘stages’ are usually thought to be. The Call, The Return Guardians, and The Homecoming or Completion are most often first (The Call) and last (Return Guardians and The Completion), but all the others in between are all going on at the same time. I’m going to be forming alliances throughout my whole journey to completing this project as well as stumbling into many ogres and threshold guardians on the way. But I also believe that I and anyone else on a journey need to start forming many alliances with others right at the beginning to help me or anyone else on a journey get started and keep going. The Road of Trials is probably going to be happening throughout my whole journey from writing my project proposal to filling out my completion form and finally to The Completion when I go to the Girl Scout awards ceremony. At the moment, I’m forming alliances with people as well as running into ogres and threshold guardians. I have always had my family as allies and I have started forming alliances with my digital video teacher, digital video students, Girl Scouts, activist youth organizations, and friends. Everyone has been very interested in my project and happy to help me in any way they can. I’m also having to deal with running and stumbling into random, annoying, and frightening ogres, threshold guardians, and many huge tree roots in the ground. When I started this journey I could already foresee some ogres and threshold guardians like having to deal with traveling, packing so much camera equipment, and being searched so many times in airports. And I knew I would have difficulties with the digital video part of the project with trying to learn as much as I am able to edit, film, and produce my first own documentary. What makes this journey so exciting and absorbing for me is that I truly want to accomplish it and reach The Completion but at the same time I am really enjoying the journey itself. Having more allies and more engaging parts of a journey than ogres and difficult parts to have to go through makes this journey so enjoyable. This kind of journey could feel like the complete opposite if I had approached it in a different way. If my parents or Girl Scout leader had forced me into doing this project to be able to put it on college applications I wouldn’t have the endurance to push past the ogres and I wouldn’t have enough urge to reach The Completion because I wouldn’t really want to make the effort to do the project! But fortunately, that’s not the case and I am having many great experiences and eye opening ‘mini-journeys’ while I travel and explore through this journey.

posted by Cassie @ 2/26/2006 01:20:00 AM