The End  

 
I joined Pilot in the middle of my sophomore year. After two independent learning 
adventures in Branching out, a desire to be challenged further and in different ways than in 
the classroom, and interests beyond the classroom walls I decided to apply to Pilot. Since 
then I’ve studied various things throughout my time in the program; language, fashion, art, 
science, and culture. I think that the podcasts I am currently working on are what I am most 
proud of. They’re the only thing I feel I’ve done as a creative project that is worth sharing 
with the world. Potentially cause they’re the only creative project I’ve done with the 
intention of sharing them with the world.  
Pilot has taught me to think outside the box, to advocate for myself, and that learning 
is the most exciting thing you’ll ever do. If a person disagrees with learning being the most 
exciting thing they’ll ever do then they either need to redefine learning, find something that 
interests them, or try learning in new ways. All I’m saying is you could learn physics 
through skydiving.  
I believe that all humans are naturally curious. The universe is vast and there is less 
known than unknown. We still have so much learning to do. However, I think that often 
people’s creativity and curiosity gets buried. Or maybe our education system doesn’t ask us 
to use it and we forget how. Pilot drew my creativity and curiosity out of me. I don’t think I 
would ask questions about the world around me in the ways I do, or see the world around 
me the way I do. I hope to continue the ways of being I have learned in the Pilot program 
throughout my life. All of these thoughts and beliefs I have around learning are different 
then the ones I had in the beginning of my time in the Pilot program. The ways I’ve 
changed are within thought. 
 
Global Citizenship 
 I’ve been thinking about the quote, “Work is love made visible,” by Kahil Gibran. 
When I went to India and Amy gave us journals, I asked Chris to write something in it. 
This is what he wrote and I had Amy draw hearts next to it. I wanted something in their 
handwriting in the journal for sentimental reasons. I think a lot about this quote now and 
wonder if the work I’m doing is me making my love for something visible? I think my 
work in social studies this year is the closest I’ve ever come to this. Although I love fashion, 
and french, and pottery, and all of my other studies, all of those studies were connected to 
people or people connected to them(specifically on the art note here.) This study was purely 
about people and their stories, and I think this is the most making love visible that I’ve done. 
I think that the podcasts I am currently working on are what I am most proud of. 
They’re the only thing I feel I’ve done as a creative project that is worth sharing with the 
world. Potentially cause they’re the only creative project I’ve done with the intention of 
sharing them with the world.  I also think audio editing is a lot easier to pick up than wheel 
throwing for example. It doesn’t take as much time to get a hang of it.  
I chose to study culture through storytelling and making those stories into podcasts. ​I 
started off with the broader focus of social issues globally. This was part of an effort to make 
myself think a little further outside of the box and to get more creative. I then narrowed 
down to studying one culture in-depth each semester. I started to study Turkish culture and 
quickly got bored by the articles on the internet and conventional form of research. Culture 
is the learned behaviors and practices of a group of people. I decided it would be better to 
learn through the experiences of people on this topic. So I started making podcasts, 
watching videos, and reading stories. Although I’ve done a decent amount of shifting 
around in my topic this is an example of how ​perseverance has served me to find the best 
way for me to learn about a topic that I am interested in. 
  The theme of my podcasts is beliefs in different cultures. I started with a Vox Pop 
with the question, what do you believe? I started with three interviews centered around 
immigrant stories. I interviewed and completed one podcast with Beatrice, who is from 
France. From doing this I realized that my questions needed to be revised. With her 
interview, I had a lot of background info at the beginning of the recording and a lot of 
stories were dependant on that background information in the end. I wanted more of a 
hook to the beginning of the podcast, so I revised the questions to have the person say the 
background info with the story.  
 My second interview was with Flor, who is from Guatemala. I thought originally 
that I should overlap my editing with interviews so I always have new content to edit. 
However, I think in the beginning I was overlapping a little too closely. When I 
interviewed Flor I had barely started editing Beatrice’s answers and hadn’t come to the 
conclusion that I needed to edit the questions. I ran into the same problem with Flor’s 
interview and edited them by the time I started the next interview. In these first two, I 
found that audio editing takes much longer than I originally thought.  
My next interview was with Abi, and ended up as more of an exploration of him 
than of culture and being an immigrant. Abi is from Pakistan and now lives in Paris. At that 
point, I thought I needed to find a happy medium between my first and second set of 
questions. Although I really enjoyed interviewing Abi we kind of strayed from the intent of 
the interview which was culture. As I moved through this study I found it to be very much a 
trial and error based study. Interviewing is definitely a skill that I will always be continuing 
to learn.  
At the end of the first quarter, I set a goal to have 5 completed podcasts by the end of 
the first semester. I ended up having the first Vox Pop, Beatrice, Flor, and Abi’s podcasts 
completed. Abi’s did end up getting broken into two separate pieces so that leaves a final 
count of five completed podcasts. I definitely think I was really cranking them out though 
and that they could have been better had I taken more time on them. I was also still learning 
about what questions to ask in order to get the answers and stories I was looking for.   
The second quarter I also started looking at sociology specifically. I did some Crash 
Course videos and took notes. I listened to podcasts and critiqued them as well this semester. 
I pulled the things I liked and didn’t with the goal of applying them to my own work.  
At the beginning of the third quarter, I spent some time re-thinking what I wanted 
the final audio pieces to be. I started off doing one interview about one person’s life. 
Although I love the storytelling, I wanted these final pieces to have something different to 
them. I wanted them to directly address different ideas and concepts. I wasn’t sure what I 
wanted these things to be so I started diving into a few other resources. I took a few weeks 
aside from working on podcast pieces to do readings, watch videos, and read books. These 
things left me with further ​inquiries and wondering about more things than I started with. 
Those inquiries turned into the things which I asked people in interviews later on.  
I did two readings that I found to be extremely helpful. One was on Ethnocentrism 
and Xenocentrism, and the other was about Tradition and Modernity.  It was a lot of ideas 
which I knew of but didn’t know how to put into words. Xenocentrism I think is the best 
example of this. The word means to think that other cultures are superior to your own. I 
didn’t have a word for this but had heard so many people say things like, “I’m moving to 
Canada.” I also watched some Crash Course videos on Sociology. These again did the same 
thing. I was surprised by how much knowledge I had on specific topics but wasn’t sure how 
to formulate into words.  
Of course to figure out more about what I wanted my podcasts to look like I 
continued to listen to more podcasts. I really liked ​All My Relations ​and ​Invisibilia. ​I think 
one of the beautiful things about podcasts and audio pieces is they communicate in ways 
that other forms of media can’t. They’re emotions conveyed in the way people say things 
that are enhanced by things like music in the background. These things are just not the 
same when written. When people tell a story from their childhood in a tone that conveys 
their emotions and there’s this look in their eyes as they talk to me and pull memories out of 
the depths of their minds. There’s some things that only audio can convey.  
As I worked with these new resources I came up with questions as I went, leading me 
to brainstorm my next podcast topics; Change, Ethnocentrism and Xenocentrism, and 
Modernity and Tradition. 
Of these ideas the Change episode is the only one I ended up having time to execute. 
It centered around the question of how does society change?For this episode, it made sense 
to interview Seeking Social Justice Leaders, Meg Allison, and Amy Koenigbauer. As well as 
Shelley Vermilya, as all of these people’s goals in the school are to make change! Lastly, for 
this podcast, I interviewed Grae Moriath, who did a study on queer history last year. I want 
these podcasts of exploring concepts and ideas to complement the storytelling podcasts. these 
final pieces to have something different to them. I edited these together into a podcast with 
the overarching question of how does society change? I didn’t end up including Grae’s 
answers in this one. I couldn’t figure out how I wanted them to fit into the podcast. If I had 
more time this year I think I could have worked them in somehow.  
When I interviewed Amy we forgot to hit the record button. Oops! Amy ended up 
answering the questions again with Nate. He had an opposing viewpoint to how society 
changes to what everyone else in the podcast did. This was really helpful in the end because 
it left me with asking the listener how they thought society changes. 
After we started doing school from home I was in the process of editing that podcast 
together and completing the interviews. Once I wrapped up the How Does Society Change 
podcast, I started one about Covid. I sent questions to teachers and friends. Originally there 
were four which I planned to edit together into a Vox Pop. Ending with what I started with 
made sense. When I got the answers back the ones that were the most heart warming and 
interesting to listen to were the ones answering the question, What gives you hope? I’m 
wrapping this piece up as I write my narrative.  
When I think about if this is ​enough ​work and if I put ​enough ​time into this study, I 
think it’s more important to look at the number of completed interviews than the number of 
completed podcasts. I did five interviews for each semester even though the number of final 
podcasts is different. I also put time into researching prior to the interviews. Of course all of 
these things took varying amounts of time. Overall though I think that I’m happy with the 
amount of time I put into this study given my other commitments.  
Although I don’t plan to release any of these podcasts to the world they were a blast 
to create and a great new learning experience. I think that the learning is definitely more 
important than whether or not I want to release them to the world. This study was 
definitely humanities as it dipped between both Global Citizenship and English. I have to 
remind myself of this a lot because sometimes I think maybe this should have been an 
english study. But it could go both ways for sure!  
I’m really happy that this year I decided to push myself further outside of my comfort 
zone and try something that I really knew nothing about. I’m also extremely grateful to 
everyone that I interviewed for being a part of my learning. 
 
French 
 ​My second study for this year is french. For this study I included less reflection on the
year as a whole and more on the last two quarters. I felt that with this study it’s more of a
chugging along with the learning as I’ve studied languages in the past than with podcasts where
it’s a lot more new things.
f Last year, I studied Gujarati and Hindi in India. After being away from my French
education and immersed in another language I was in a funky position. At the beginning of the
year, I was put a year ahead in French but had forgotten some basic parts of the language. I
decided I was in a place where it would be better for me to do this study independently. I worked
towards taking the AP French exam at the end of the year. This was a guiding piece to my
learning to an extent. As the exam approached, it became more and more an aspect of my study.
Due to the move to remote learning the exam was also shifted to just being the cultural
comparison and conversation. In the cultural comparison we are given two minutes to respond to
a prompt on comparing two different cultures. The conversation is with a pre-recorded person
who we are given 20 seconds to respond to.
Every year of my education I have taken a language. Language is an aspect of culture
which as my other study shows I am very interested in. Beyond further understanding different
cultures, I want to learn languages other than english to connect with others and build
relationships. I think that this became increasingly important to me the more I learned about the
world outside of what I personally knew. The world is becoming increasingly interconnected
with technology and global industries. No matter where my career leads me I’m pretty certain
that I will be working with people from other parts of the globe to some capacity.
I think the first semester went well in terms of producing work and working towards my
goals. However, ​time management ​has been challenging in this second semester. When the
semester changed so did my schedule. I now have a full day of classes on Blue days and only one
class on White days, rather than having my classes spread out. I hate that this has become an
issue as well but being the end of senior year focus in general has been challenging. I’m excited
about the work I’m doing and it’s important to me but I was honestly just running out of steam.
Time management continued to be a challenge when we shifted to online learning as I had to
figure out how to work with this whole new schedule.
Since​ time management​ has been challenging so has meeting the deadlines I set for
myself. I had three pilot studies, an online class, and five regular classes. This means I had nine
different school commitments when most students have eight. This semester I continue to have
nine school commitments, however one less self directed. This wasn’t the greatest idea for
getting things done during the second semester of senior year. This semester has definitely been
a lot of ​persevering​ through the struggles I’ve had with time management and redoing
schedules.
During the third quarter my french learning definitely was a little all over the place. I had
planned at the beginning of the semester to follow a specific schedule for french which definitely
got away from me till the last quarter. I did a lot less of my schedule and a lot more of what I felt
I needed to do on a specific day. In some ways I think this could be considered beneficial and in
other ways I don’t think it was. To the extent of listening, reading, writing, and speaking,
deciding what to work on based on what I felt I needed at that point made sense. However, I
have definitely ignored the cultural piece of studying for the AP exam to a large extent, and got
back on track with this during the final quarter.
When I started this aspect of my study I was looking for resources about France, in
french. I had trouble finding these and kind of pushed it aside because of this. I would get
frustrated and decide to put it aside till the next day. This continued and I was behind on the
work at the end of the third quarter. I decided that instead of looking for resources in french I
would look for resources in english. From my notes I will identify key words and create quizlets
to learn them.
I worked on some other components of the AP exam as well including writing persuasive
essays, email responses, and speaking from a prompt. In the end with the shift to the online exam
these things were cut. It was good to learn more about them even though they didn’t end up on
the exam.
My culture themes schedule I redid at the end of the third quarter for the weeks left
before the exam. In addition to the exam being only 45 minutes and two parts it also didn't
include the last two units. This has worked in my favor in terms of me not being great about
following my schedule for studying culture.
Prior to being stuck in my house I was going to the AP review sessions every week with
Caroline. These were quite helpful as they made me do some of the things I preferred to avoid.
Such as speaking for two minutes in response to a prompt. They have also held me more
accountable for my learning about culture. Since we are no longer at school AP is offering online
review sessions, which I did a few of. They were happening daily for 45 minutes.
I’ve been doing a lot less listening to french the third quarter. For a little bit I was
watching a show called ​Family Business​ in french. It had a lot of modern themes to it including
legalizing marijuana, queer life, and being jewish and muslim in France. On this show the
accents continued to be different then those I had heard from other resources. I like listening to
different french accents as they force me to listen for things and understand the language more.
I’ve also been doing a lot less Coffee Break French. I have however continued to listen to music
in french while doing classwork.
Overall this year I think that one of the things I’m most proud of in my french learning is
my ability to speak and understand. In the past I’ve felt more confident in my reading and
writing skills than in my speaking and listening skills. This year I’ve gotten better at speaking
and listening and am starting to feel just as confident in those skills.
Although I’ve been doing less listening I’ve kept up with speaking a pretty decent
amount. I’ve been speaking regularly with Ana and Si. I’ve also been working on speaking with
other french students who I’m friends with.
I’ve definitely felt recently that I can understand more than I can communicate in french.
Keeping up with speaking has been important for this. As has writing, which I haven’t done a
great job keeping up with. I’d like to start writing at least one thing in french a week.
Communicating and forming sentences is half of being able to use a language.
I used Duolingo and Babbel. I think that both of these are kind of an easy point situation.
I don’t think that I actually absorb as much as I would like to say I do from them. I’ll be setting
these aside this next semester to make more time for the more meaningful french practice.
 In the last quarter I devoted almost all of my time working on french to AP prep. This meant
reading a lot of articles about french cultures and taking notes on them. Mostly the articles were in
English, but some were in french. I then took my learning from these and found cultural comparison
prompts in the ​Barron’s​ AP french book. I then practiced using these responses and my research. When
the AP exam happened I didn’t feel fully prepared for it, or at least as prepared as I could have been. I
definitely felt in the end the amount of time I took to start my cultural study aspect showed.
When I took the exam itself I didn’t feel like I did awful on it. I felt pretty good about it and that
I did as well as I could have given how I prepared. On the cultural comparison part I think I did pretty
well. I got a prompt about why it was important to learn a second language in different places. Which
wasn’t too challenging given the knowledge I had. The conversation piece was a bit more challenging.
We had 20 seconds to respond to each thing the recording said. On a few of them I felt that I needed
more time and on a few of them I felt I needed less time. Overall I’m hoping that all evens out.
In the end I’m happy I took the AP exam no matter what my final score is. I think that the score
wasn’t the important part. Having a goal that I was working towards at the end of my study and working
towards something were the important parts of this. The score does serve as a form of measurement of
my french understanding, however I don’t plan on ending my french education here. This benchmark is
simply a point to move forward from and not something to beat myself up about.

During the third quarter I fell behind in my ​accountability​. I wasn’t meeting with my advisors
every two weeks like I was supposed to. This primarily was because of snow days, vacations, and me
not writing things down in my planner like I normally do. In the fourth quarter I got this together and
was meeting with my advisors even when I didn’t have much to report on.
Normally I talk about​ self-advocacy​ as my ability to ask for help when I need it. At this point I
think we’re pretty sure I know how to do this. What I think was my victory this year that was connected
to self-advocacy was starting to ask for my advisors to give me feedback. Saying things like, “What do
you think I need to do more of?” and, “How do you feel about where things are going?”
 
For my ​demonstration ​of my work please look in my content folders and portfolio.  
 

Bibliography
Exploring Things Before I Chose on a Specific Study
TED. www.ted.com/talks. Accessed 23 Sept. 2019.
Countries and Their Cultures. www.everyculture.com/To-Z/Turkey.html. Accessed 1 Oct. 2019.
Turkey Homes. 13 Mar. 2013,
www.turkeyhomes.com/blog/post/9-things-to-know-about-turkish-traditions-and-culture.
Accessed 30 Sept. 2019.

French
Radio Lingua Coffee Break French. radiolingua.com/coffeebreakfrench/. Accessed 30 Oct. 2019.
Coffee Break French has been extremely helpful to me. They play someone saying something in
french, break it down piece by piece, and then play it back. This has been very helpful in my
understanding of the language through listening.

Babbel. my.babbel.com/dashboard. Accessed 23 Sept. 2019.

Duolingo. www.duolingo.com/learn. Accessed 23 Sept. 2019
Both of these sources have been very helpful in my learning new vocab and applying my
knowledge of french language.

Word Reference. www.wordreference.com/. Accessed 23 Sept. 2019.

I use this source constantly when doing french. It helps me to understand the dictation of a word.
Connotation is something that I am working on and knowing the meaning of a word from the
dictionary is extremely helpful in this.
Lawless French. www.lawlessfrench.com/grammar/. Accessed 25 Sept. 2019.
This is very helpful in explaining french grammar to me, which is very different from english
grammar.

Global Citizenship
Child Marriage in Guatemala. YouTube, www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZHTWGa75ylc. Accessed
30 Oct. 2019.
The Guardian Angel of Guatemala. Vice,
www.vice.com/en_ca/article/kwpn7v/guatemalas-guardian-angel. Accessed 30 Oct. 2019.
Both of these videos I found to be extremely helpful to prepare for my interview with Flor.
Flor Diaz-Smith
Beatrice David
I interviewed both of these people about their home cultures for podcasts.
"Brené Brown: Strong Back, Soft Front, Wild Heart." Hosted by Krista Tippett. ​On Being​, hosted

by Krista Tippett. A podcast used to model my own podcasts from.

"Crash Course Sociology." ​Youtube,​

www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL8dPuuaLjXtMJ-AfB_7J1538YKWkZAnGA.

Accessed 31 Mar. 2020. This resource was one I used while pondering things and

contemplating what to do the next podcast on.

French Today​. 7 June 2015,

www.frenchtoday.com/french-poetry-reading/poem-chant-d-automne-verlaine/. Accessed

31 Mar. 2020. This is a French poem, which I translated to English.

Gusfield, Joseph R. "Tradition and Modernity: Misplaced Polarities in the Study of Social

Change." ​American Journal of Sociology,​ vol. 72, no. 4, Jan. 1967, pp. 1-13. This

resource was one of the ones I talked about earlier which helped me to put my thoughts

together into words.

"Kate Raworth Argues That Rethinking Economics Can save Our Planet." Hosted by Chris

Anderson. ​The TED Interview.​ ​TED​, TED Conferances,

www.ted.com/talks/the_ted_interview_kate_raworth_argues_that_rethinking_economics

_can_save_our_planet. Accessed 31 Mar. 2020. An interview used to model my own

interviews from.

"Love and Lapses." ​Invisibilia,​ NPR. ​National Public Radio/NPR​,

www.npr.org/programs/invisibilia/781162955/love-and-lapses. Accessed 31 Mar. 2020.

A podcast used to model my own podcasts from.

Lumen Learning.​

courses.lumenlearning.com/alamo-sociology/chapter/ethnocentrism-and-xenocentricism/.

Accessed 31 Mar. 2020. This resource was one of the ones I talked about earlier which

helped me to put my thoughts together into words.

National Geographic​. 19 Feb. 2019,

www.nationalgeographic.com/culture/topics/reference/colonialism/#close. Accessed 31

Mar. 2020. This resource was one I used while pondering things and contemplating what

to do the next podcast on.

"Nazi Summer Camp." ​RadioLab​. ​WNYC Studios​,

www.wnycstudios.org/podcasts/radiolab/articles/nazi-summer-camp. Accessed 31 Mar.

2020. A podcast used to model my own podcasts from.

News.​ ​Le Monde,​ www.lemonde.fr/. Accessed 31 Mar. 2020. The AP french exam often pulls

news articles from the last year. Being familiar with current events and vocabulary

surrounding them is very helpful. This is the news source I've been using for this.

"The Show of Delights." Hosted by Ira Glass. ​This American Life.​ ​This American Life,​

www.thisamericanlife.org/692/the-show-of-delights. Accessed 31 Mar. 2020. A podcast

used to model my own podcasts from.

"#1388 - Louie Psihoyos." ​The Joe Rogan Experience.​ A podcast used to model my own

podcasts from.

Babbel​. my.babbel.com/dashboard. Accessed 23 Sept. 2019.

Barron's AP French Language and Culture​.

The Conversation.​ 30 Nov. 2015,

theconversation.com/la-france-est-elle-vraiment-un-pays-assimilationniste-51145.

Accessed 31 May 2020.

Duolingo​. www.duolingo.com/learn. Accessed 23 Sept. 2019.

"France." ​Britannica,​ Website Name: Encyclopædia Britannica, 27 May 2020,

www.britannica.com/place/France/The-fine-arts. Accessed 31 May 2020.

"French Family Culture and Vocabulary." ​Optilingo​,

www.optilingo.com/blog/french/importance-of-family/. Accessed 31 May 2020.

The Guardian Angel of Guatemala.​ ​Vice​,

www.vice.com/en_ca/article/kwpn7v/guatemalas-guardian-angel. Accessed 30 Oct.

2019.

Hendricks, Sara. "The 15 Biggest Differences between French and American Parenting." ​Insider​,

11 May 2018,

www.insider.com/differences-french-and-american-parenting-2018-3#french-parents-cre

ate-strong-boundaries-for-their-kids-1. Accessed 31 May 2020.

Huff Post​. 25 May 2011,

www.huffpost.com/entry/family-values-american-an_b_102793?guccounter=1&guce_ref

errer=aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cuZ29vZ2xlLmNvbS8&guce_referrer_sig=AQAAAMu1KbCh

QabwouSFAR2ne9_MA4aHLccMCmv85sv1c7f8h_PMHp_eYYZoHw-o_oudxZnDzJQ6

T5vD0AUD0PUz0wpgdG6TfciKKScC6NAIvXQlT_xbPwcfEkXoF9t6fOm1_upNFyzr

MLjzvq5lj60Xpr_lQfOKash2Z5afdPrjUJrd. Accessed 31 May 2020.

These sources were used in studying culture for the AP exam.

Library of Congress.​ loc.gov/. Accessed 23 Sept. 2019.

TECHNOLOGIE GGG​. 16 Nov. 2012, toggg.com/spip/spip.php/french-technology-status/.

Accessed 31 May 2020.