Final Project Reflection

As my Hawken Project comes to an end, I am very proud of how my final project turned out.  Looking back to the beginning of the project, my goals, and inspirations for this project were to find and reach out to successful individuals across different fields I had interests in and hear about their experiences and any wisdom or advice they may be able to offer. In addition to this goal, I decided to center it around hiking and exploration of Cleveland as I felt that up until this point I was contained within a small area with very few experiences outside of it. Overall I would say my project went extremely well and I met almost all of my goals getting to speak with a range of individuals from a software engineer at Facebook all the way to a local small business owner. In addition to this, I felt that I succeeded with my second goal of learning more about the area around me, going for hikes in areas as far out as Twinsburg while also learning more about the industrial district and downtown area of Cleveland. Looking back on my project, the only complaint that I have is that I did not take more pictures to remember the project and all my walks/hikes. I learned a ton from the individuals I interviewed as well as my hikes. Some things I learned about include the pathways that can lead to jobs at large tech companies or the importance of having a skill that makes you stand out in a complex competitive job market. Others include the importance of data and data processing in a world with now seemingly endless data at our fingertips, or how to balance risk and reward when scaling a business and incurring debt. One really cool thing I was able to explore over my project that I was not expecting though was the ways in which underinvestment and can affect communities, often leading to old dangerous buildings which cannot be paid for and health hazards for the surrounding communities. Some advice I would give to rising juniors or rising seniors about the completion of a Hawken Project would be to find something you truly care about and something you want to do. This is important as the project is most valuable when it is an exploration of one's self and one's interest as opposed to boring work and an excuse to not be in school. Overall, my most important takeaway after this project is just the importance of reaching out. I had interviewed many important individuals across many different fields all of which I was very privileged to speak with. This would never have been possible without just simply reaching out to these individuals and asking them to take time out of their day to help you. Something I learned from this project is that the majority of people are extremely nice and helpful and willing to go out of their way to help you understand their field of expertise if you demonstrate interest and a willingness to learn. I am very pleased with how my project came out and would like to thank everyone who helped make my project what it was, from the Hawken teachers who helped me craft this project to my amazing mentor Mr. Bajak, and to all the great people I got the opportunity to speak with.






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