Final Senior Project: Wings

Andrew, James, Anna, Carly, Katy & Luke

As the days wound down towards graduation, Anna's high school rightfully recognized that the seniors are checked out.  In an effort to do one final "educational" thing before graduation, they offer the Wings program.  This is meant to be a capstone event and basically students can pick a project or internship/shadowing experience over a two-week period.  The requirement is that they have to get a sponsor, get approval from a mysterious, nameless/faceless, faculty committee and do a presentation on the project upon completion.  After much consideration and a few phone calls, Anna decided to shadow Aunt Lucy for her final project for a week.  This turned into a bonus early graduation celebration thanks to her cousin James.  Today's guest blogger, writing about her "Wings" experience, is Anna.

Hello esteemed family, friends, and friends of friends. Long time no see! As you just read, I can confirm that the seniors are in fact "checked out". There has been much speculation amongst the family as to whether or not the Wings program was meant to be educational or was just meant to get the bored seniors out of the building the last two weeks before graduation. I will not be stating my opinion in this argument, but I will say that I was definitely kept entertained during this project. The Wings program has been going on at my school since 2015. You wouldn't know it though from the lack of information that everyone has. None of the seniors know exactly what to do, and we can't ask the teachers because they don't really know either. As I was preparing for this project, which culminates in a two-week long class-free period to let us loose into the world, there were a lot of curious questions from my parents. None of which I could answer. "What are you doing for the project?", I don't know. "When is the project?" I'm not really sure. "Have you asked your teachers?" yup. "What did they say?" they said they didn't know. This loop kept happening up until about a month before the program started, and that is where the story begins folks.

Originally, I was planning on doing the "personal project" choice for the program. I was planning on recruiting a small army of volunteers to help me collect plastic trash from the school in order to make "eco bricks" (see link for eco bricks here: What Are Ecobricks and How Can You Use Them? (familyhandyman.com)). The plan was to build a small boulder at the entrance to the parking lot of the school for people to paint on for different school events (similar to the boulder at the back entrance of the school for people to paint on for different school events). As the project loomed closer though, I started thinking, that's a lot of work. And I ultimately decided that I'd rather not spend two weeks wrangling teen volunteers to work in the sun for hours at a time just for a graffiti surface. So instead of that, I became one of the teen volunteers. I reached out to my Aunt Lucy up in Massachusetts to see if she would be willing to let me shadow her for a week as a potter's apprentice, which she said yes to.

About 4 days before I was to leave for Massachusetts, my parents asked me to come downstairs. And of course, my first thought was "Oh god am I in trouble?", but instead I found out that my cousins (James, Luke & Katy and Andew & Carly)
had been planning a weekend trip to Manhattan for the past couple months (which I was not originally invited to), and they were wondering if I would want to join them that weekend since I'd already be in the area. I very quickly said yes and booked my train ticket to Manhattan that night. I later found out that everything had happened so quickly that Aunt Mary thought that I just booked a train ticket to New York without my parents knowing. (My mom booked the ticket with me).

The day of the trip, I woke up 4 minutes before my alarm went off at 6 am to my dad knocking on my door asking if I was up. Great way to start the day. He dropped me off at the metro station by our house so I could take the metro into DC and catch an Amtrak train from there to New York. The whole process went pretty smoothly. The whole Amtrak experience was pretty cool! Although the conductor did get mad at me for putting my feet up on the seat in front of me when I had two entire aisles to myself. When I got there, my cousin James greeted me at Penn Station with two armfuls of groceries. (He proceeded to ask me if I needed help carrying my luggage even though I had a free hand). We took the Long Island Railroad from there to Huntington, and over to Mary's house, a lot of train action in one day. After I said hi to everyone and had some lunch, I crashed on the couch for a bit before we went back into the city for dinner. We got dinner at this place called the Meatball Factory, which is exactly what it sounds like, and went to go see Wicked on Broadway after dinner! James ended up surprising us with front row seats to the show, which was incredible.

Jet Skiing with James in NY Harbor

The next day we drove back into the city for tons of adventures! We went jet-skiing, got New York pizza, walked on the Highline which is this really cool park that is built on an old, abandoned railroad, and gives you a beautiful view of a horrifying looking building. I'm not sure what the actual name of the building is, but there's a part of it called "the edge". While most building observation decks wrap around the outside of the building, this one is well known for its observation deck that juts out of the side of this building 100 stories up. It is also known for its section of glass floor where you can see 100 stories underneath you, and an experience where you can climb on the OUTSIDE of the building to the very top. (Google a picture, it's terrifying). The whole time that we were walking on the highline, I was looking at this ominous building with all the tiny people wayyyyyyy up at the top thinking, "Wow, I'm so happy that's not me right now". But of course, the universe likes to play jokes on me. So, when we got to the end of the highline, James told us he had one more surprise for us and led us into a mall. All of us were very confused, until we saw the ominous sign for the death trap itself. A bright neon sign on the 4th floor of the mall that said, "the edge". All lowercase, no caps, like it's just a fun little thing. As soon as I saw the sign, I slowly looked at James and just said "...no", to which he smiled and laughed and kept speed-walking forward. 

Not only did James get us tickets for "the edge," he called in a favor and got us premium tickets that got us past all the lines and into the elevator in under 3 minutes. The second the elevator door closed, James said "Oh yeah, I probably should've asked if any of you guys were scared of heights before this". And then the elevator started going up. The screens on the walls played a scene of Manhattan that looked like it could've been part of a spiderman movie, and I was pressed against the wall feeling dizzy and in fact feeling like James SHOULD'VE asked if anyone was scared of heights before this. Once we got to the top, the elevator doors open up to floor-to-ceiling windows giving you a panoramic view of New York. The view was really nice, but all I could focus on was the fact that the building felt like it was swaying in the wind like a palm tree. Now I'm no architect, but I generally feel like skyscrapers and palm trees shouldn't have that much in common. I was coerced onto the observation deck though for a few photos against the glass barrier, and almost immediately went back inside where I guess my brain thought it was "safer" to wait for everyone else. I later told James that I appreciated the experience, but I would never be doing that again.

On the edge with Luke, Andrew & James

The day after all the Manhattan shenanigans, I traveled with Aunt Lucy, Aunt Terri, Luke and Katy back to Massachusetts to actually begin the project. Lucy and I decided that there would be a good mix of work in the pottery studio, farm work, and somewhere in there to pick a day to shadow Terri at the hospital in the maternity ward. And that's exactly what we did. I learned how to throw a pot, center it, trim it, make glaze, paint papers for monoprinting, cut said papers, make biodegradable clay, and also learn some of the comings and goings of the homestead. I happened to visit during the "meat bird season" (I don't actually think it's called that, that's just what I'm calling it), so I was volunteered to help carry all of the meat chickens from the coop at the top of the hill, to the outdoor coop in the field. This feat was done by putting 2 chickens at a time into 5-gallon buckets, putting the lid on (and hoping you don't drop the bucket) and carrying said buckets into the field. My favorite part about that day was when we were all inside later and Lucy was telling me about how she tries to eat vegetarian most of the time, to which I responded, "Don't you have an entire coop of chickens in the back that're going to be butchered in a few weeks?".

In the studio with Aunt Lucy

I learned a lot during my Massachusetts visit, and I'm very grateful for the experience. One of the things I learned is that I probably won't be self-employed in the future. I don't think I quite have the self-discipline for that yet. Even if I don't become a potter in the future, I still had fun, and I think I'll remember this experience for a long time. I want to say a big, big thank you to Lucy and Terri for letting me come out to visit them and more importantly letting me work next to them. Because of them I think this was easily one of the most enjoyable school projects I've ever done. The actual presentation day for the wings project is now over and done with, and no one still knew what was going on, but we made it. I hope you enjoyed me rambling and regaling you with my project and if you want to see the final presentation, too bad. It's lost to the black hole of old Fairfax County student files now.