Blog #8- Final Reflection

    Medicine and Biology have been such a passion of mine in these past few years. After my STEM summer internship in 2019 at Case Western and University Hospitals, I knew I wanted to do something similar to that for my senior project. Working in a lab surrounded by doctors, making waves in the medical community while I’m still in High school sounded perfect, but COVID put a dent in this dream. However, gardening is something that my grandmother and I used to do together when I was younger. She had a huge green thumb and I wanted to follow in her footsteps. When Mr. Biggar sent an email out to the class asking if anyone wanted to take on this task, I was intrigued. I thought, “It’s not a lab, but it’s still biology. I mean in bio class I loved reading about the flora and fauna”, so I decided to sign up with Dani, who I knew would enjoy gardening just as much as I would. 

After our first meeting with Heidi O’Neill, the landscape architect who is currently working with Hawken with the veterans memorial, Dani and I knew we were in for more than we thought. Dani and I made a measly sketch that was not done to scale and we completed it in less than ten minutes. After our meeting with Heidi (and learning from our mistakes), Dani and I knew this project would be more difficult than we originally thought. 

While working together with so many constraints (time, money, resources, etc.), we were still able to have fun and immerse ourselves. This last week of our project mainly consisted of calling places and buying things and cleaning weeds, but as summer goes along, we hope our project will be finished by the end of June. Although our project will not be completed, Dani and I are very excited and optimistic about our final outcome.

Dr. Lacy Chick, a member of the science department, has agreed to help our project live on past our graduation. She will delegate her students and the Fridays for Future club to help keep our garden beautiful. This will benefit many people, animals, and insects in the Hawken Community. 

The advice I would like to give out is to be open-minded. I never thought that I would be doing landscaping and architecture for my senior project, but I enjoyed it every step of the way. Going to college is all about exploring new things and finding new interests. Ending your senior year with something you had never thought of doing is a great way to transition into adulthood. 

These past few weeks I have had a blast working with Dani, Mr. Biggar, and Heidi O’Neill on this project. I am glad that Dani and I could help see Heidi’s vision through, and I am glad that teachers, parents, and alumni see this project as a great opportunity to bring our community together. 

And lastly, I would like to thank Mr. Biggar. Over these past few weeks, our mentor, Mr. Biggar who currently works in the alumni office here at Hawken, went to great lengths to make sure that me and Dani’s project went smoothly. Mr. Biggar is a very busy man who already has a lot on his plate, but he made sure to take time out of his busy schedule to drive Dani and me around, visit us while we worked, and contact many different people and pull some strings. And with that, I am very grateful that he was our mentor.