Maya's Digital Portfolio

Maya Olivier



Humanities



the work of adolescents





For this project i interviewed one of my mentors, Emily Kassay. For my final project I wrote an essay and then took a photo that I felt represented her adolescents. It was very cool to hear about her struggles and good parts of her adolescents. In this project I studied the work of adolescents. We learned about different theories and how they can show the true meaning of adolescents. I really liked this project and I felt that it was one of the most interesting projects I had ever learned about. I also was very happy t interview Emily and it made me a lot closer to her and it made me relate to her in a way I can't explain.



Emily kassay interview





By Maya Olivier



Do you ever look at someone and think, wow, I would love to be just like them when I’m older? Emily Kassay is that person for me. Emily is one of the most amazing women I know, and I got a chance to interview her, yeah that's right I got to interview my idol. This interview was one of the most interesting things I have ever done. In my interview, I got to learn new important lessons and struggles from Emily. She helped me relate to her a lot more and realize that everyone has certain struggles, not just me. I wondered what Emily's adolescence was like for a while, I am glad that I finally got to hear her story. And let me tell you, Emily’s adolescents were hard. But now that she is older and has a family she shows me that no matter what your adolescents, your adulthood can still be very smooth and put together.


Emily Kassay is 45 years old and grew up in Denver Colorado. She went to Fort Lewis College and is a school teacher. Her relationship with her parents was probably the hardest part of her adolescents. Emily grew up with parents that were split. They got divorced when she was only six months old. Emily mostly grew up with her mom and sister. She and her dad didn’t have as much of a relationship, because she held a lot of anger from him. Except for the occasional summers and Christmases that she spent with him. This was very hard for her, she struggled with a lot of things because her dad wasn't a big part of her life. She had somewhat of a relationship with her mom but she wishes that it would have been a lot closer. She realized as she got older that her dad had done some messed up things, and she is just now finding a way to forgive him. I know how hard it can be to not have a strong relationship with your parents. Sometimes it can change fast and you don’t know exactly where you stand with them. It can at times be very hard and confusing. Emily told me that because she didn’t have a great relationship with her parents, she had to become independent a lot sooner than most kids. This is a huge part of adolescents. I believe that some kids have a hard time when they are adults because they didn’t ever become independent in their adolescents. They then have a very hard time transferring into their adulthood. Those people usually are not very successful in their adulthood either. This is why Emily has been so successful as an adult, she had to teach herself to be on her own.


Everyone says that school is one of the hardest parts of your adolescents, for Emily this is true. Emily went to a school that was mostly full of rich kids who could pretty much have anything they wanted. She, however, did not have much money and she didn’t have as much support from her parents. Her school was a very important part of her life. She mostly focused on her social life and grades because she wanted to go to college. However, she wasn't very connected to her high school, which she regrets. She says that she could have been a lot better of a student. In her interview, Emily explained, “I think in school I pretty much just kept my head down and did what I needed to do”. She felt like she had to try and be someone different. At her school, she did, however, find people to align with. Emily was a dancer but not through the school. She wasn’t involved in any school activities or clubs. She learned that no matter what, her work would pay off. She also didn't have as many opportunities as most kids around her because she didn’t have as much money. Her social life in high school was “pretty good” she had good friends that stuck around all through high school, and she and her four close friends did everything together. She had a boyfriend that lasted almost through high school, he didn’t go to the same school as her witch “made it nice”. Now that she looks back she realizes that he wasn’t good for her and she regrets spending so much of her time on him. The biggest lesson she learned from her friends was not to be stupid with partying or boys. If Emily could go back to school, she said, “I would take away the pressure of trying to fit in with the rich kids”. She also wishes she would have engaged in her teachers more. She now realizes that they just wanted to help her. Emily’s school was another really hard part of her adolescents. This is true for a lot of people. In school, there is a lot of pressure on you to fit in. Where in reality we don’t need to fit in with everyone, because everyone should be themselves. For me, the school has gotten easier as I’ve gotten older because I have found ways to mature and grow into a confident person. This is not true for all people. All people need to realize that school is hard, however, we will all find ways to get through it successfully. While making ourselves feel loved and cared about.


Emily has always been someone that I look up to and love as a person. After I learned about her adolescents it made me a lot closer to her and it made it very easy to relate to her. As she talked about all of her experiences, I found ways to make connections between how mine is and how hers was similar. Emily’s adolescents were hard, but she got through it. She taught me that I can get through any hard times that come my way. That's important to today's adolescents because kids have a hard time with a lot but they can all get through those hard times and work more on being themselves. All kids are different and sometimes it seems like we are not okay with that but as a community, we need to find a way to accept everyone and their flaws.



Project reflection





I am very proud of this project. I felt that I worked my hardest and did the best that I could have. That's not something that I have ever said before. There was just something about this project that made me want to do my best. The part of this project that I am most proud of is my essay. The reason for this is because I put so much thought into it. I don't know why in this particular essay I put so much thought into it. I think it's just because I wanted to impress Emily. I felt like it was my job to make sure that she liked it and to make sure that she wasn’t sad or disappointed. The first time that I wrote my essay, it wasn’t as strong. After some feedback, I decided to pretty much rewrite the whole thing. I am very happy that I did this because if I hadn’t of then I would not have been nearly as proud. I love to write but only if it's something that I am interested in. This project was incredibly interesting to mean and I would want to do something like this again.


This project was good but not all of it. At certain parts, I felt like I could have done a lot better and there were also parts where I felt stressed and lost. The part that I ran into the most trouble with was my essay. While I was writing my essay I felt myself getting lost in my opinions and kinda babbling on. I wrote my essay twice. After writing it the first time I got some feedback from my peers and realized that my essay was extremely confusing and didn’t narrow down on one specific thing like I wanted it to do. So, I decided to rewrite and reword my essay. This was extremely stressful, I panicked and felt myself goofing off in class to avoid writing my essay. After several mental breakdowns, I figured out how to write it in a way that I love and am extremely proud of. Something that I could have done differently in the process of writing this essay is taken my time when writing it the first time. I feel that if I would have worked a lot harder on my organization then I would not have to rewrite it. Overall my biggest struggle in this project was also the strongest and proudest part of it.


There were a lot of parts of this unit that were very important and there were things that I learned that blew my mind. The most important thing that I learned was that it's important to have struggled throughout your adolescents because these are the parts that you will learn from and the parts that will help you grow into an independent adult. I don’t know much about adulthood but when I interviewed Emily I realized how amazing and exciting it can be. The real lesson that I took away from this is that no matter how hard your adolescents is your adulthood can still be good and work well. This is super important for you to know in your adolescents because the bottom line is that everyone's adolescents are hard but we all can get through it and have bright futures.


The score that I would give myself would be 95%. The reason for this is because I have turned in everything that I needed to and I get all of my work done on time. The reason that it would not be 100% is that I know that sometimes I can goof off in class and not do my work. But even though I do that I still feel I deserve a 95% because I work hard in humanities. The thing that I could do better in this class is to constantly use my class time to work. I feel this because I goof off a lot in class and I could talk less and not distract my peers as much. Overall I feel that I work hard in this class and that I do good in this class overall.



Model United Nations





Venezuelan Refugee Crisis



Project Description





For this project, we each got chose a country. The one that I chose was Norway because I really wanted to see the European opinion on this problem. The problem that we did was the Venezuelan Refugee Crisis. This is one of the major issues going on in our world today. Millions of refugees are fleeing Venezuela because of how unsafe it is. The reason for this being that there is no food, no medicine, no shelter, or no water that they have access to this is killing many people in Venezuela. So, many of the families decide to flee their country into the neighboring countries witch doesn't mean that they are safer but it does mean that they have a chance to live in a new country with their families and with many new job opportunities. For our second model UN, we did the problem of Nuclear non-proliferation and discernment. This is a major problem that has been going on for years. Norway's point of view is to completely eliminate nuclear weapons this made the project a lot easier for me to do because this is something that I believe. for this conference, it was a lot more formal and our parents came and we had to make sure that we stayed in character the whole time witch was very interesting to watch.



Policy Paper





Venezuelan Refugee Crisis



Even though Norway does not play a huge role in the United Nations, they are still trying to take action in order to stop the Venezuelan Refugee Crisis.


The Venezuelan Refugee crisis is a massive problem going on in the world right now. There are many people leaving Venezuela and going to neighboring countries. This is because there are many issues in Venezuela right now. For example, they are cutting their imports and there financial prices are going up and it's causing massive problems for many of the people in poverty in Venezuela. Venezuela's leader is also causing problems for many of the people in Venezuela, this is then causing those people to leave. “Out of sheer desperation I’ve decided to walk,” she said, “so I can take care of my children back there who are still alive.” (A Venezuelan Refugee Crisis) said a poor young woman trying to flee her country. The people of Venezuela need to be helped so that more people like this woman stop suffering. The leader of Venezuela is Nicolás Maduro, most of the people and some of the countries in the UN do not want him to be the president. Instead, they want another candidate, Juan Guaido who has already pushed himself into the presidency the people and some countries think that he would put a stop to the Venezuelan refugee crisis and solve many of the problems that are going on right now. These problems do not stop it is likely that it will get a lot worse and cause Venezuela's population to decrease rapidly. Norway believes that something needs to be done and soon they believe that actions need to be taken in order to do this.


Norway's position on what should be done is, they think that there should be a new president put into office and they think that it should be Juan Guaido the new leader. Norway believes that this should be done in order to make sure that the new president fixes everything that has been done wrong and that then some of the refugees would return to Venezuela. Norway has tied to talk to the leader of Venezuela to try and help many of the refugees. However, Venezuela rejected Norway’s offer because the president didn’t agree with a lot of Norway's solutions. Norway's opinion is the same as Norway's allies also. “Norway has thus adopted a much more careful position on the Venezuelan crisis than nearly all its closest allies.” (Berglund 1). For example, the US and the UK also think that they should put someone new in the office of Venezuela. This solution would be good for Venezuela because it could increase its imports and try to fix its oil and gas problems. Norway’s position is set on this and they believe that something needs to be done as soon as possible. Norway believes that they can help with the change in order to make sure that the refugees stay healthy and safe.



Work Cited



News Theoretical, “Norwegian mediators tackle political crisis in Venezuela.” newstheoretical.com, vol. 1,15 August 2019, www.thelocal.no/20190815/norwegian-representatives-tackle-political-crisis-in-venezuela. Accessed 11 November 2019.


Berglund, Nina. “Norway may broker Venezuelan crisis.” News in English, vol.1, 20 February 2019, www.newsinenglish.no/2019/02/20/norway-linked-to-crisis-in-venezuela/. Accessed 11 November 2019


Contingency Planning Memorandum No. 33. “A Venezuelan Refugee Crisis.” The Council on Foreign Relations, vol.1, 15 February 2018, www.cfr.org/report/venezuelan-refugee-crisis. Accessed 11 November 2019. Casey,


Nicholas and Carolina, Jenny. “A Staggering Exodus: Millions of Venezuelans Are Leaving the Country, on Foot.” The New York Times, vol. 1, 20 February 2019, Section A, Page 1, www.nytimes.com/2019/02/20/world/americas/venezuela-refugees-colombia.html Accessed 11 November 2019.



Project reflection





MUN Conference



The best part of this project was the conference because everyone got really into it and stayed in character and I thought that was super engaging. This was also something that I had never experienced before. The reason for this is, in all debates and seminars that I have had in the past there have been a lot of students who were off task and not paying attention. However, when we did the MUN conference everyone had to pay attention and represent their country for the conference to work so it worked well.


I grew a lot while doing this project. I believe that the reason for this is because I was doing a country that I was very interested in and I also liked the topic that we were studying. I grew a lot in my work ethic specifically. For example, I got everything done on time and put my best work in and I stayed on task in class. This was also something that I wanted to work on because I know in my previous projects I have goofed off a lot in class and waited until the last minute and this made me feel stressed. In the MUN project, I noticed that I was a lot less stressed because I got work done when I had time in class and didn’t put it off.


I did not feel as prepared as I wanted to be when going into this first conference. This was not because I didn’t have everything that I needed. This was because I had never done anything like this before, so I had no idea what I wanted to say when I presented my speech. I originally had a speech prepared when I first went into the conference. However, when other countries started their speeches I realized that I did not see what I wanted to in the speech that I prepared. So, I rewrote my whole thing while I was sitting listening to other people. This helped a lot because I got to hear other people who were more prepared speech and it helped me come up with what I wanted to say.


During the second MUN conference that we do, I plan to come into it with a speech that I feel confident in and one that follows the outline that Lori provided us. I think that this will help me be a lot more confident while speaking and responding to others. I also would like to work on staying in character and making sure that I know my country's perspective well so that I can do a better job of responding to other people in my country's perspective. Overall, I feel that I did a good job at the first conference and I am excited to work even harder to do better on the second one.



Policy Paper





Nuclear Non-proliferation and Disarmament



Although Norway is a neutral country, Norway believes in the complete elimination of nuclear weapons and nuclear warhead


Norway has always been a country with no nuclear weapons and they do not have the right to create any. They also don’t have the desire to use or create any nuclear weapons. Norway has signed the NPT (Nuclear Proliferation Treaty) and the CPBT (Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty). However, Norway has not signed the TPNW (Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons). The reason for this is based on fear. Norway believes that if they were attacked with nuclear weapons or a nuclear war were to happen NATO would have the right to defend Norway with Nuclear weapons. In the article “Norway Votes against Nuclear Disarmament Resolution in the UN” they wrote, “Norway will not support proposals that would weaken NATO’s role as a defense alliance.” (Ministry of Foreign Affairs).This is another main reason that Norway did not sign the TPNW. Norway wants to do what's best for its country. In this same article, they wrote, “When it was agreed that Norway would take a long-term perspective in its work towards the establishment of a legally binding framework, based on the balanced, mutual, irreversible and verifiable elimination of nuclear weapons.”(Ministry of Foreign Affairs) This statement speaks for itself in the way that Norway has very valid reasons for what they support and believe. Norway has also been working on a resolution called the NDV (Nuclear Disarmament Verification). All of the articles that I read said that they still have a long way to go on this resolution, however, they believe that it will truly help them take steps closer to total Nuclear Disarmament.


I have been contemplating many different resolutions and solutions for the current issue. The main resolution that I’ve thought about is the one that Norway has already been working on. It’s called the NDV, which stands for Nuclear Disarmament Verification. This resolution is building on the Nuclear Proliferation Treaty. The overall idea of this resolution is in the process of disarming countries with nuclear weapons. Norway believes that it would be more effective if we could find a way to verify that countries do not have any Nuclear weapons. The most effective way to do this would be to bring the IAEA into it. This would make sure that the countries were free of nuclear weapons and anything that could help create more nuclear weapons. It would guarantee the safety of our people in making sure that we do not have a nuclear war that could wipe out people's overall existence. Another resolution idea that I have is to reinspect the nuclear power plants and make sure that the people who are around those power plants stay healthy. One way to do this would be to reduce the amount of highly enriched uranium (HEU). This is not good for people's health and people have been getting sick from this and even dying which is the last thing that we should all want. There is a way to make sure that people are staying healthy and something needs to be done as soon as possible.



Nuclear Non-proliferation and disarmament speech





Norway



Good afternoon everyone, I would like you all to turn your attention to resolution 2C. In this resolution it states “Calls upon all signatories of the NPT to begin efficient measures towards nuclear non-proliferation/ nuclear disarmament;” Norway stands for this. However, we would like to make some minor changes. It only takes 300 nuclear weapons to wipe out the entire world and all of human existence, right now there are over 15,000 nuclear weapons on this planet. This is enough to destroy the world 50 times. We believe in protecting the people and the environment and the number one way to do this is for the total elimination of nuclear weapons.The people of the world need to feel safe. And as far as Norway is concerned, right now the people don’t feel like this. Look around… there is conflict everywhere. But we owe it to the people to try and decrease the conflict by totally disarming countries with existing nuclear weapons and making sure that there are not more being made. Okay yes, this is unrealistic, there are so many nuclear weapons out there and so many nations that are not willing to give them up. But let me ask you something, do you want what's best for the people? Because I think that we all know what's best for them we just don’t want to accept it. Norway also understands that there is a lot of fear that we think about when we take away nuclear weapons. This is why when disarming countries we have to make sure that we disarm all the nations with nuclear weapons because when we do that the fear of nuclear warfare is eliminated. And we all owe it to each other to be a little safer and to take further steps to world peace.



Project Reflection





Nuclear Non-prolifreration and Disarmament



The United Nations is something that is very fascinating for me to learn about. I think that they are able to solve a lot of problems in our world. It is the most effective way for the world to solve problems in this day and age. In this world, we are not going to agree on one single thing but we can learn to make compromises, which is something that the united nations do best. I know that when it comes down to a huge issue like the Venezuelan Refugee Crisis or Nuclear Non-proliferation the united nations is the best bet. However, the major problem that I see with the united nations is that the bigger countries have the power which is really good for those countries but not so good for the other countries that don’t have as much power. Overall the united nations are as of right now the best solution for our world.


I feel that I have had substantial growth between the two MUN conferences. I noticed that in the most recent conference I have been a lot more engaged and in character. For example, when it came to responding to speeches and comments I knew so much about the topic that I was able to comment really well and also portray my country in their opinion for the most part. The other reason that I did really well in this conference is that I agreed with what my country stood for and I could actually talk about what I believe in and stay in character. Going into this conference I wanted to make sure that I was a lot more prepared. I did this by making sure that throughout this project I used my work time effectively this made me finish early and when I would finish early I would make sure that I did a little extra research so that I knew exactly what my country stood for and also so that I could respond to any comment that came at me and think of the best possible amendments for the conference. The conference went really well for me and I enjoyed being one of the bigger talkers.


I think that there are a lot of things that I will carry with me from these past two conferences. The main thing that I will carry is the ability to listen to people and take what they are saying into consideration and find the right way to respond. This will help me so much in the real world when working jobs and interviews. I also think that my research skills have gotten a lot better in the way that I can understand a lot more of real-world issues that are a lot more complex. This project also helped me be a lot more engaged in learning because I was so interested in what I was learning.


I think that if I was doing the again I would want to work a lot harder on my resolutions because I would love to have gotten on the docket. I also think that I would have done a lot better if I had a country that played a bigger role in the problem. Overall, I think that I did really well in this project and I think that this was the best project that I have ever done. I also really enjoyed this project and I would love to do something like this again.