Reflection

Following the completion of my senior project about bringing skin cancer awareness,

there are many different ideas, facts, and levels of organization that I have obtained. With any

project, a responsibility of readiness comes at hand. I have been capable of determining my

work schedule in order to fully complete my project by its due date. Additionally, I have learned

more about skin cancer than I already knew before. What sparked my interest to start this

project was a lesson that I had in my Honors Anatomy and Physiology class. Our class was

studying about the integumentary system of the human body and touched upon the subject of

skin cancer. I didn’t know skin cancer was genuinely a thing. I was completely dumbfounded by

the fact that skin cancer can look almost like any regular mole, pimple, or age spot. How will

people ever know they have skin cancer if the majority of people wouldn’t be able to recognize it

in its early stages before it gets deadly? I decided that I would take this into my own hands and

make an informational brochure about the most popular types of skin cancers in order to

potentially end up saving a person’s life. We never know if we'll ever get skin cancer, but it is

better to be informed about it before it gets life threatening. Especially since we live in California,

the sun is out 24/7 and the majority causes of skin cancer are UV rays from the sun. My service

to help those around me is to inform them of warning signs, how to spot skin cancer, signs if

they are at risk of getting skin cancer, and how to prevent skin cancer. I put all of that

information on my brochure.

To grow in my knowledge before making the brochure, I conducted a research paper

about skin cancer so that I get all the information before I decide what to put on the brochure so

that all the important information is not to be left out. I thought this project would be easy peasy

and that I would just make a brochure, do a research essay, and then I’d be done. However, that

was completely not the case. I had a very difficult time in producing and thinking of a design

idea on how to organize and lay out my brochure so that it would be visually appealing so

people would want to read it, as well as informative. Ironically, the brochure took the longest to

make rather than writing up my research paper. My first attempt with making the brochure was
supposed to be beach themed and I would make shells on the paper to design it as different

types of skin cancers (the ABCDE rule that helps people recognize whether or not a pimple,

mole, or age spot is skin cancer). That ended up looking horrible. Then I decided to go for a

more minimalistic look and that design looked completely different and easy to read. I went on to

show my peers and family if that design would make them want to read the brochure and if they

would also learn from it at the same time. Nearly all of the responses I got were positive, so that

was the design I stuck to.

Taking the knowledge of skin cancer that I’ve learned upon the completion of this project

is to spread it to those around me. I have planned on making several copies of this brochure

and passing it out to everyone at the presentation that I will conduct later on in March.

Knowledge is to be spread to others, not kept to oneself. With this knowledge, and with the fact

that skin cancer is so common in today’s world, one person’s life being potentially saved is the

best thing that could ever happen from this project. I hope to better my community for the best

of all of our futures.