Morgan Smith
Walker
English
2 May 2017
Final Reflection for #PVhasPassion
Hunting
is a big part of my life, as well as the people I interact with on a daily
basis. Personally, I have been hunting since I was the age of six, and I have
been hunting big game since I was 10, which is the legal age to hunt big game
in Arizona. For my #PVhasPassion project, I wanted to complete a project that
has to do with the hunting regions in Southern Arizona. Although this idea
originally came from a friend, I continued on with it and made it into this
large scale project. This topic relates to my life because I go hunting as many
times as I can throughout the year. I go a few times at the beginning of the
year, and I most definitely go on two big game hunts towards the end of the
year. I have even missed thanksgiving and other holidays to go on a hunting
trip.
Although
I like to believe that I know almost everything there is to know about hunting
in Southern Arizona, I still had quite a few successes while doing research on
my project, and overall working on the project. First off, I learned more about
the small details of hunting. I’m not talking about that you should hike to the
other side of the hill. I am talking about the fact that if you put in effort
before the hunt, such as scouting and tracking animal patterns before the
actual hunt season, it will let you succeed in the actual hunting season. Scouting
can start as early as a year before the actual hunt. This almost guarantees
your success in the hunt, as animals follow the same patterns almost every day.
Another success I had during my project was finding which animals were in what
unit. I realized that I have hunted a certain animal in one unit, but didn’t
know there could be a completely different animal in the same area. I also
didn’t realize that the same area I was hunting could hold trophy size deer.
This encouraged me to continue my research of the area, and take more steps
into finding these animals, such as seeing and bow hunting a trophy buck in
unit 36A.
Throughout
the duration of this #PVhasPassion project, there were many hurdles that I had
to figure out and had to overcome. The first, and hardest to overcome, was time
management. Because of the size of this project for English class, I had to
dedicate a lot of my time and resources to this project. This is partly my
fault for picking this topic as my project. Time management has to do with a
lot of things, so we will break it down. First of all, it takes time to plan
and write an essay. This takes maybe an hour or two. Time that I usually spend
eating food, or thinking about hunting and not doing homework. Time also has to
do with planning dates for the future. I have to make sure that everything gets
turned in on time, and has all the correct and needed information. The last
idea that has to do with time management is actually getting out of the house
to drive to a hunting location. I have to put fuel in the truck, plan where I
will be going that day, tell someone where I will be going, and then drive to
the place. By that time, the day is usually half over. I then have to take
pictures, go through all of my pictures to ensure they are good enough quality
to present. After all of this, I get to take the nice long drive home and eat a
hot plate of dinner. Even though it all sounds like fun and games, there were
points where I had to stop and readjust my project, but not on a grand scale.
For example, I was planning on going to unit 33 to take pictures, but other
plans came up, and a friend was planning to go to the same area the following
weekend. I ended up just going the following weekend and figuring out something
else for that week’s progress.
Just
because this project had some success, and did have some hurdles to get over,
it also had some weaknesses. Most importantly, a weakness is that this project
was very time consuming based on the whole idea of the project. This wasn’t the
type of project where I could sit at home and complete it. Although it could
have been done that way, I wanted to make sure it was interesting and more exciting for
me. Part of the project could span over a week or two, just to get proper
information about the unit. Another weakness could be that not everyone gets as
excited as me when the topic of hunting comes up. This will make it more
difficult to express my feelings about it to other people. This will also make
it more difficult to “sell” my idea to everyone, especially people in my English
class. A final weakness in my project, which didn’t actually slow me down much
but hindered my experiences, was that I couldn’t visit all of the places I
wanted to go. Some places were just too far away at the moment and would take
some extra time for me to get there. I had to focus on other important things
in my life.
Projects can make
you learn a lot of things, and help you achieve some of your short term goals.
They can even help you achieve your long term goals. The most important thing I
learned during this project was that time management is very important. It can
control how stressed out you are during the day, and can most definitely help
you with daily tasks and school. This is because you get into a routine and do
the same things every day, this is time management. It helps in school by
making sure you get items turned in on time, and give yourself enough time to
complete a project or even a small writing assignment.
Overall, I had a
great time working with this project. I believe that this project idea is a
great one for a senior project, and would recommend other teachers do similar project ideas. If I were to do this project all over again, I would have to chose a
topic that has to do with automotive technology or cars. That is only if I wasn’t
allowed to pick the same topic of hunting again. For seniors next year, I would
highly recommend that they pick a topic that they are very passionate about.
Even if they can’t think of how it could be turned into a project at that
moment, it will eventually make sense. Picking a project that you are highly
passionate about is important because it will keep you focused on the final
goal, and make sure you stay on track to completing the final product and
project.
No comments:
Post a Comment