I leaned that in life you are always going to have endure certain things whether you chose to or not. I chose to endure this intense hockey camp and in the end, I wouldn’t trade my experience there for anything in the world. I am so proud of myself for getting through that, and I wish I could convince more people to take a chance like I did.

I am proud that I got very in touch with myself. This class all together has taught me that I am stronger then I thought I was, and that endurance is not exactly a bad thing.

Final Draft:

I laced up my skates with my hands shaking. I looked around the empty locker room and felt an uncomfortable breeze. I was attending Hamilton hockey camp, and I was about to endure the hardest two weeks of my whole life. I stepped onto the ice and saw three hockey coaches standing center ice with a bag of pucks to the left of them. They looked serious, and I must have looked terrified. They told me, and the three other Canadian girls in my group, to skate five laps. I thought, “not that bad” in my head. It wasn’t until I was in the locker room after a three hour ice session, dry-heaving into a trashcan, that I knew this place was going to be a living hell.

Chris McCandless set fire to his money and his social security card. No car, no money…nothing. He was on his way to changing his lifestyle for what he believed, was for the better. Each day in the beginning was a struggle and as more days past the realization of what he was doing, finally started to kick in. However, he managed to channel his inner motivation and say: “The core of mans’ spirit comes from new experiences.” Personally, I don’t think Chris would have been able to say something like this so carefree until he had seen things that no other man has seen. He was beginning to think and act outside the box and was beating the odds of freedom.

My soccer coach Mick Hild once told me “nothing ever make you want to move slower then somebody telling you to move faster.” This quote ran through my head the entire time I was at Hamilton. “FASTER, SKATE HARD, HEAD UP” were just about the only words those coaches said to me when we were on the ice. When they would say that all I wanted to do was sit down and pass out. I wasn’t going to though, I was going to complete this. I had to self motivate myself to do everything they were telling me and shut off everything around me in order to gain the concentration I needed to proceed. On his journey, Chris didn’t have anyone telling him to go forward…in fact he had more people telling him to stop. Throughout his whole journey he made the concept of hope a lifestyle. When you are put into a situation you feel is impossible, you have to have faith that something good is going to come out of it. Even though Chris didn’t make it out of his journey alive, through his journal we are all able to learn and envy everything he discovered. In comparison, I can say that there are so many girls on my hockey team that wish they could go back in time and do that hockey camp, simply because of how much better it made me.

I will agree that Chris and my stories are very, very different; however, they do embody some of life’s main principles. We both can live by his quote “When you want something in life, you just gotta reach out and grab it” easily on a day-to-day basis. I’ve always believed that good things happen to those who work and that everyone has to make their own luck in this world. Yes, it might be a harsh truth, but it opens up an enlightening reality. If I could talk to Chris right now I would ask him about how he made faith and hope a lifestyle. I would also just try and have a conversation with him so I could compare his views and opinions on life to my own. In my experience at Hamilton Hockey Camp, I was forced to create a mentality that if I work hard, the game will soon become fun. Hockey is not a sport that just anyone can play. It takes an incredible amount of patience, strength, and passion but most of all, playing a game like that has to make you feel free. Hockey acts like an escape and like Chris said, “The freedom and simple beauty is too good to pass up…” Unlike me, Chris actually physically took himself out of society…and I envy him for that. I could never abandon my family and life like he did, but I can try to have a taste of his freedom through my escape sport called hockey.

Unedited Business Plan: 

Recycle Sports: For the Student Enterprise Course, we created a business plan aligned with the Millenium Development Goals. I have always been very passionate about sports, so I wanted to create a business that helped kids get more involved in athletics. My business is like Netflix with sports equipment. You go to our website, and pick what equipment you need to rent for your athletic season. Once your finished with it, you can either send it back to us or buy it for a discounted price.

Something I Learned: The business world is not all suits and seriousness. It can be fun, different, and laidback yet at the same time, can display professionalism. I felt very comfortable in the room I was presenting in because it was warm and inviting. A place like Sandbox industries made me excited to go into the business world.

Tips on my Business Plan: I could improve on the explanation on my financial plan. It was somewhat all over the place during my presentation so I have to make it easier to understand.

Tips on my Presentation: I have to be more clear on my marketing strategy and on how I am going sterilize all of the used sports equipment in my company. They really stressed that I should focus on how much it all costs and how it will all work.

For my lesson, I wanted to show the class how to help treat depression. Depression is something I have been dealing with for a long time, and its my goal to help teens overcome such a dark obstacle. I showed my classmates a simple but effective that help a day to day depressed person. I handed out a sheet of paper and a pencil and had them write one negative event that had happened to them in their lives, and one positive event that has also occurred. I then had them fold it so the positive was facing them and the negative was folded on the inside. The point of this exercise was to show that the negative will always be there, but you can linger on the positive to make the negative easier to deal with. The strategy of physically writing down your problem, has helped me enormously in my life and I wanted to share it with as many people as I could.

Age: 18

Hometown: Austin Texas

Current Location: Kentucky

Family: Only child, very wealthy, lives with parents, has a Chihuahua

Education: Still in high school, gets nerds to do her work

Occupation: She will never have to work a day in her life (her dad will always support her)

Hobbies: Being mean, shopping and whipping people

Variables in your life: She wants to effortlessly become famous (power and influence)

Puppet Master

* Caroline is 18. She is a mean girl that has had everything she has ever wanted, handed to her. Caroline has never worked a day in her life and is known at her school as the popular brat. She is very good a controlling anyone and most people are very intimidated by her. There are many examples of Caroline performing her cunning control, but one of the more memorable ones took place when Caroline was in 6^th grade. A boy named Timmy was hanging out with his girlfriend Jenni one day at the playground. Caroline did not like Jenni for reasons that still remain unknown. Caroline decided it would be a good idea to pour her grape soda on Jenni’s new white dress…but Caroline couldn’t do it and risk getting in trouble. Caroline decided it would be a good idea to call Timmy over and have him do it. Caroline somehow had the ability to convince Timmy it was a good idea and did it almost immediately. As we can all see, Caroline was an unknown power. She is very spoiled by her parents and is an only child. Her little doggie Diigo, is a very pampered pooch that is almost as spoiled as her owner. Caroline drives a Mercedes convertible with custom pink rims. She lives a life of luxury, and only worries about herself.

-Market: Anyone can buy this chocolate but, only adults can buy the alcohol infused ones.

*One thing I learned: Make your sales target BIG. Don’t just sell to one age group if you are looking to make a lot of money.

-Description of Product/Serving: They sell chocolate that is made with all different kinds of exotic spices.

*One thing I learned: So many weird flavors compliment chocolate.

-Marketing/Sales Strategy: They make all different kinds of chocolate and advertise with the phrase, “Travel the World through Chocolate.” I believe there marketing strategy and motivation come from this phrase.

*One thing I learned: Think of something creative and believable for your workers to follow.

Below is a picture of bacon chocolate. We tried this type of chocolate at the factory.

In my mandala, I wanted to portray abstractness. I found it very hard to make connections to everything in our class visually, so I decided to communicate it all with select words including “freedom” “find” and in my opinion, the most intense tastes a person can taste. The C in the middle stands for the main character in my book, Chris of Into the Wild, and my home state, Colorado. This connection was obvious while other parts of the mandala remain complex. The footsteps represent journey while the different colored toes show diversity. All of the lines are supposed to be roots and the fire-like balls, show controlled chaos. Controlled chaos is something that I can relate to the book because I want freedom but at the same time want my life to be in line. The different flavors displayed, show a sense of direction. Direction is HUGE in the story but, was also something we as a class had to endure in a taste testing. My mandala is hugely abstract and complicated but is easy to understand once explained. I feel it embodies a lot of things about me and I take great pride in it.

Untitled from morgan fansler on Vimeo.

*In this unit, I achieved a deep understanding of the things that motivate the design of functional, meaningful architecture incollege/university environments. I imagined a campus facility that reflectedsome of my values. Here is my creation.

My stadium! from morgan fansler on Vimeo.

*Many films have parodied the college experience. Far fewer have presented the noble, scholarly side of higher education. Here are a few things about college/university life that I admire and may get involved in in the near future.

*In a New Yorker (June 6, 2011) article by Louis Menand, a student asks his college professor, “Why did we have to buy this book?” Menand declares this a great question.

*In an effort to become more “college-ready,” we deconstructed some historical fiction. We studied Charles Dickens’ A Tale of Two Cities. Of particular interest was Dickens’ opening-line use of anaphora, the repetition of a phrase in consecutive clauses (“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.”). We used anaphora to comment on our own contemporary, seesawing society (*for every yin, we offered a yang!). Finally, we used this literary device to predict the future. The following report conveys some of my excitement and reservations, hopes and fears, etc. about college/university life.

* For more of my thoughts on College/University Education and beyond, please follow me on Twitter @GCEstudent_insert initials here and join our learning community in conversation at #GCEeducation and #GCEcollegeEDU.