Week 5

This week was a pretty okay week. We were mostly focused on our presentation that was due on Thursday, but we were able to do some selling of bands during a few lunches. We are still having trouble selling to freshmen, but we have gotten a few to tell their friends about them. Our senior bands are completely sold out, and we have been thinking about buying junior bands since a few people have expressed interest in buying them already.

It turns out that the 360 evaluations that we all wrote about each other are actually going to be visible (without names of course). This freaks me out a little because I know that we all gave one member of the group not so great marks, and I'm worried about how she will feel. It's not like she didn't deserve what we gave her (in fact she might have deserved less), it's just that it's not something anyone likes to hear about themselves especially if you're friends with some of the people in the group that said those things about you.

The presentation went reasonably well, although we do have to make many changes to the slides themselves. One person's sections had to be completely reworked since it focused so heavily on the negatives of our company, but other than that, we don't have too much to rework.

I wish we could have gotten more done this week, but I'm not sure there was anything else we could have done.

Thanks for reading,
Zank

Chapter 5

This chapter starts with about a page and a half of text that I couldn't agree with more. It explains that the most conservative system in our world today is our education system, especially at the high school and college levels. The way high school and college are taught are to pass on the knowledge of the previous generation in order to make sure someone knows everything that was known by that  generation and all of the ones that came before it. The issue with this is that it leads to memorization of facts that will help students pass meaningless tests, but no one actually knows the reasoning behind the the facts. The information that students have to learn increases every year, just like the amount of information in known to the world, but instead of altering teaching styles, most educators continue to march through the material, just hoping to get through it all before exams. Kids graduate from college having "learned the facts, but [not understanding] the ideas behind them." Increasingly in the twenty-first century, what you know is far less important than what you can do with what you know. We have to be able to create new knowledge and new ways of solving problems, but our education system has not caught up with us.

The chapter goes on in a bit of a predictable way, two case studies: one with a teacher and a class of "at risk youth," and another with a teacher and a class of highly motivated science students. Each teacher has a new style of teaching that is very out of the box, and both classes do much better than they would have if they had been taught with the "normal" teaching style seen in schools today. This book was published in 2012. Honestly, I don't really remember what was going on in the world in 2012 because I was more interested in how exciting it was to be a freshman in high school. I think that the ideas in this book may have been innovative at the time it was published, but that now it's kind of like common knowledge (or at least in schools like Brookline High School). It seems like so many people have written books about these innovative ideas about the future, and how we need to change the way we teach and raise children, that it is no longer a novelty idea. That said, all of the ideas touched upon in the book are good ones.

Thanks for reading,
Zank

Week 4

This week we finally started selling our bracelets! On Tuesday I helped put up flyers, which we decided to primarily put inside bathroom stalls. We decided that the times when we actually read the flyers that others put up around school was when they put them up on the insides of the stalls. On Wednesday during second lunch, I sold the bracelets outside of the cafeteria with Polina, Becky, and later Madi. It was actually much more fun than I thought it would be. We ended up getting really into calling all of the people out that would pass by our table, and trying to convince them to buy a bracelet. We sold way more than I expected we would, but we didn't sell very many to freshmen. This actually surprised me greatly, but I think the way to solve the issue is to recruit a couple of freshmen to spread the word to their friends. I think this would work well because we were able to sell a lot to our friends, but none of us have freshmen friends, so we didn't have any pull with them. I didn't sellduring lunch on Thursday because I was the only one with first lunch, and I didn't want to sell alone. Unfortunately, the women who prepare sushi come on Friday, so we weren't able to sell on Friday either. I did some individual sales, and got some promises of future sales. We've made around $100 so far (I think). It was a great start, and I'm actually excited to sell again in the upcoming week.

On the storefront front, we had a deadline yesterday that we may be a little behind on. The only parts that need to be fixed are the ones that needed to be done the whole time. Unfortunately these two parts fall under my jurisdiction because they are the ones that Sophia was supposed to do, but did wrong or not at all. The unfortunate thing is that these parts require speaking to a salon owner, which isn't the easiest thing to do. I have emailed the salon owner of the salon that I have been going to for many years, but she hasn't yet responded. I also left messages on machines of a few different plumbing, heating, and electric companies, but haven't gotten many, if any, responses. This is frustrating because we are so close to finishing (and the deadline has now passes), but I can't do my part to help us finish. I made an appointment with the salon owner for this upcoming Wednesday, so if she doesn't respond to my email before then, I will speak to her then. I will continue trying to get in contact with the utility companies, but none of them are open on weekends, so I will have to wait until Monday. It seems that as soon as one project starts doing well, the other begins to suffer. Anyway, hopefully I will be able to get everything done before it's too late.

Thanks for reading,
Zank

Chapter 4

Chapter four had a nice change of pace. Instead of focusing on examples of people who are doing very well in the business world, this chapter focused on social innovators. The example was of a girl (Laura White) who grew up in Atlanta, quit swimming (even though she was a national champion by the age of 12), and started a program to teach under privileged kids how to swim when she was just in high school. When she was 16, she worked for a large non profit that started up many volunteer projects in the area, and she was soon in charge of many volunteers. She continued her work while at Tulane University in New Orleans, and she has made a great difference in many people's lives. Her parents raised her similarly to the other examples that were given in earlier chapters: not too much structured time, allowing their children to choose what to participate in and what not to participate in, encouraging passion, as well as encouraging quitting when the passion is no longer there. Laura did very well in school, but as she put it, it was just to prove that she could and that she was dedicated. She was a person that challenged other people's ideas, and spoke out very often.

An insight that the author made, was that this behavior isn't always encouraged by authority figures. These personality traits are what lead to Laura becoming who she is today, and if those traits had not been encouraged by her parents, she probably would have become a different person. I found this chapter more interesting because I feel that I can relate to it more than I could relate to the examples in the previous chapters. The other examples felt like I was comparing myself to geniuses who did really well in school without even trying. This example felt more like something I would do. I do reasonably well in school, but most of the mandatory classes are quite dull to me. I like finding other, more interesting classes to take, as well as finding out of school activities to do that involve working with people from all backgrounds. I even did a similar program to Laura's, but instead of teaching inner city kids how to swim, I thought them how to snowboard. This chapter was able to recapture my interest in the book as a whole, and I will continue with this book to see where it goes.

Thanks for reading,
Zank

Week 3

This week was a tough one, group dynamic wise. It definitely challenged me to work on my communicating skills and flexibility. I don't necessarily think that this is a bad thing, because often in the work place you will be forced to work around certain issues, but it certainly wasn't much fun. This was the week that we were supposed to finish the edits on our storefront proposal, so that it would be ready to be sent off to the bank for loan approval. Unfortunately, this didn't go quite as well as planned. Most of us spent the first day or so working on minor edits to the first three parts of the proposal, while two others worked on the last two parts. I emailed the group member who was making the phone call with a list of things to ask salon managers, that we wouldn't be able to figure out on our own. On Wednesday, no one but me showed up to class, which was pretty frustrating, but I was okay with it because one group member was making relevant phone calls, two members had been doing lots of work all along, and the last group member was sick. On Thursday, the group member who was making the phone calls the day before was missing yet again, but I figured it would be alright because I could now finish the fourth part of the proposal since she had spoken to several salon managers and employees. Unfortunately, when I went on our shared documents folder, I didn't find any edits made. The issue with this was that I was unable to move forward on part four, and both parts five and six rely completely on part four in oder to be accurate. Because the final three parts of the proposal were the only things left to be edited, there was nothing we could do in class on Thursday, so that whole class period went to waste. We don't have class on Friday, so I emailed the group member in charge of phone calls and ask to make a meeting before the end of the week to go over what had happened.

I met with her after school yesterday for an hour and a half, and it turned out that she had made a copy of the document, taken notes from her phone conversations there, and forgotten to share the document with the rest of the group. This is an easy mistake to make, but it's still very frustrating because we missed the deadline, and I now have to spend time this weekend finishing part four. I have to finish part four before the end of the day today so that the group members in charge of parts five and six can accurately finish the rest of the proposal before Monday. I understand that it was just a small mistake, I just wish it hadn't have happened, so that we could have finished on time.

Bracelet update: We will be printing and hanging flyers on our first day back, but I made both a Facebook page and email account for the group, and member of the senior as well as freshmen class will be invited to "like" the Facebook page (meaning they will see all updates posted by us) over winter break.

Thanks for reading,
Zank

Chapter 3

So I think I'm starting to lose interest in the book. It started out at a great pace, with interesting and insightful passages, but it seems to have turned into talking about specific examples of people, that I need to measure up to. This chapter is like the last one, in the way that it takes a successful adult (Shanna Tellerman this time), and goes into detail about how they were raised. It has become predictable that the childhood was slightly unconventional, with the child being able to make a lot of important life decisions for themselves, mostly in relation to schooling, but that this unconventional childhood lead to the person in question becoming a wonderfully creative adult with an amazing job. I think that when a student reads this book, they will feel as though they need to aspire to be as wonderfully creative or smart as these examples, and that when a parent (or aspiring parent) reads this they will feel like they have to raise their children exactly how the parents of the examples given in book raised their kids. The interesting part about the latter issue is that in the beginning of the book, the author stated that one of the biggest problems that first-time parents make is trying to raise their children exactly how someone else raised their kid, to try and have their child turn out the as smart or creative or sporty as someone else's child. I understand that the author is just trying to give examples of how some parents raised their children differently, and their children turned out really great, but I think the book is still being a bit "preachy" about how to raise a child the "right" way. Hopefully the coming chapters will stray away from giving specific examples of "perfect" people, and turn more towards more interesting topics.

There was one part of this chapter that I did find interesting though, and that was when Tellerman was explaining a program she did in grad school: "There were no classes or tests. Teams were usually given a real-world client or problem to solve. Grades were determined by the presentations we did at the beginning of our project, halfway through, and then at the end when you'd showcase your project to everyone in the program to be critiqued." I found this interesting because it reminded me of the communications for entrepreneurs class. I found it interesting that she chose to mention this class as a large part of her success later in life, and I hope that I can get as much out of the communications for entrepreneurs class as she did out of her grad school program. Unfortunately, this was the chapter's only highlight.

Thanks for reading,
Zank

Week 2

This week, after having finalized our plan for the storefront, we began thinking of the financial side of both opening and running it. It was difficult to come up with a list of all of the things we would require to get us to opening day. Things like a reception desk, licensed beauticians on payroll, permits, shampoo, hair drying chairs, and many others. Then we had to research each of these to find out how much each would cost. One of the lucky breaks we had was that a woman was selling all of her salon supplies on Ebay, for pretty cheap. We made a list of everything she was offering and the total price, and it was hugely helpful. After this we had to make projections about the cost of running the salon for a year. For me this meant choosing all of the services we would be providing, and deciding the price of each. We decided that we wanted to distinguish our salon from others in another way (other than allowing students to work in it): we will provide services to people of all ethnicities. When you pass by a hair salon, it is usually geared toward one ethnicity. We want to expand this and have our salon cater to not only people with white women, but also black and hispanic ones. The products and services are different for the different ethnicities, so we will need to account for that. We would also like to make sure that the people we hire are well versed in handling more than one type of hair.

A big part of what I did this week was working on a 3D model of the storefront. On Wednesday, I went with my project manager to do a few more measurements of the space, and then this weekend I finalized the model. It took me quite some time to get it right, but I finished the entire front room of the store. My group has decided that we do not want to use the back rooms until our business is off the ground. We will be using the other rooms as storage and office space to begin with. If we do well in our first year, we want to expand the business to include a nail salon in the large room directly through the back left door of the main room. We may also include either a waxing or massage station in the closed off room (located in the protruding area in the center of the back wall of the main room). I think all of these plans are good ones, but they will take a lot of work in those back rooms, and I think it is better for us to focus on doing one thing really well, before we expand the services we offer.
Below are screen shots of the 3D model.

Thanks for reading,

Zank