Creativity & Activity LO2 (01/19/20) Reflection & Growth from Documentary Filmmaking

As I had hoped to get to do in this term, I was able to grow my repertoire of skills and build on my past experiences working with professional music recording equipment Adobe Premiere Pro. Due to my experience with recording equipment from making music and interning in a recording studio, I really wanted to learn more about the process of recording and how to use the audio equipment. I learned how to set up and handle the microphones, audio recorders, and microphone boom to use in the filming of my group's documentary. Our documentary was an interview with a husband and wife who own local bars and cafes in the area. During the whole process, our group faced many unforeseen obstacles. We faced difficulties when scheduling the interview, shooting the whole interview in the wrong framing, and spending hours trying to get rid of the background noise and music that was playing in the cafe. However, we worked to the best of our abilities to find a solution to all of the challenges that we faced and persevered. It was a very tedious process and although our documentary was not of the same calibre as the ones we had watched, we all still felt proud to call it ours and now know what factors and potential issues to plan for in the future.

                                    

                                                

                                    


                                    

Creativity & Activity- (01/07/20) LO4 Documentary Filmmaking pt. 2

On the first day of the course, we watched a documentary about filming documentaries. Through this film, we were able to learn about different styles of documentaries. We also watched a few videos that explained the different types of shots that are used in films. Both of these activities would give us the right tools under our belts to allow us to plan and make our own documentaries.

Today is the second day of the filmmaking term. Today, we dipped our toes into what it is like to film a documentary. Before we start to film our actual documentaries, we worked on some short 60-second docs to get some experience with using the cameras and film equipment, how to successfully interview someone, and editing footage. To understand how to structure a short documentary, we looked at a few 60-second documentaries on YouTube. When most people hear the word documentary, they imagine a longer film with a lot of detail on the subject so it was interesting to see how documentaries can be short and sweet. For the documentaries we made today, we each interviewed each other in the school and had to find solutions to work around challenges that we might encounter as documentary filmmakers. One of the unforeseen challenges that we had to work around today was figuring out the lighting. We had planned to use the lighting equipment that the IB film class usually uses. However, the equipment was nowhere to be found so we had to try and figure out places in the school where the lighting was good enough to film. Normally if you want good lighting, you can film in the sunlight outside but the constant drone of the Houston traffic on 59 keeps us from being able to capture audio outside of the building. When making our 60-second docs, Ms. Harrison had us incorporate a few different shots and cuts that are often used in interviews. These are the close-up shot, extreme close-up shot, wide shot, and a cutaway shot. A cutaway is basically when the audio from one clip plays while the video from a different clip is transitioned in or out. This is sometimes explained as a scene away from the action or subject. Using the cutaway shot was useful for some students to get the video taken outside in the sunlight while the audio from the interview plays. Each of our interviews turned out quite differently but at the end of class we all sat down together to watch and critique the lighting, framing, cuts, and editing of each of our documentaries.  After today, we now know what to look for when choosing how we film our scenes. Although the editing was a little stressful it was really fun to see how each mini-documentary turned out.

Activity- LO4 (03/31/21) Jiu-Jitsu & Kickboxing in the Dojo

Over the past two weeks, I have been learning jiu-jitsu and kickboxing. Although I have sustained quite a few injuries and may have a broken thumb, it has been a really good experience for me and has challenged me to be in better physical and mental shape. One of the highlights of my time in the dojo was when we received our jiu-jitsu robes which are called gi. Gi means uniform in Japanese and is the word used to describe the uniforms in most forms of martial arts. The gi are white and made of a thick material which allows for better grip when performing jiu-jitsu holds and takedowns. However, our uniforms would not be complete without a belt. The very first belt awarded in jiu-jitsu is the white belt. We all received our white belt after completing three acts of kindness outside of our training that showed selflessness. Although it is only the first belt, it still felt very rewarding to receive my belt from the instructors.

Receiving our White Belts

The most challenging aspect of the course for me was performing the jiu-jitsu takedowns and holds. Memorizing the movements and performing everything correctly while making sure not to harm my partner was quite challenging. The rear-naked choke was the first chokehold that we learned and can be used to prevent blood from flowing to an attacker's head, causing them to pass out. To ensure nobody accidentally took a choke-induced slumber, each person and their partner made sure that they could tap out of the choke. This chokehold can be performed from the ground or standing position and can be learned by anybody. The other takedowns and chokes were not so easy but I know that the training is helping me get in better shape based on how sore I am after completing our introductory course!

Creativity- LO2 (02/17/21) Camping from Home

 To be quite honest, this week has been a living hell for many of us in Houston. With the mass amount of homes without power, running water, and shortages of bottled water throughout Houston and throughout the state of Texas, many people I know have been freezing and hungry in their own homes. Two days ago, our power which had already gone out earlier in the week, once again went out. This time for around 26 hours. Keep in mind, that this happened during a week in which the weather was actually cold for once. We had snow here for the first time in a few years, and the whole state seemed completely unprepared. Although my family was bundled up with our winter clothes on, we were freezing and had no way of warming up besides the fireplace that we had never touched since we moved in. Since we have a cat and don't have a grate for our fireplace, I had to create a makeshift barrier to prevent the cat's curiosity from getting her burned before we lit the fireplace. Once the fireplace was lit, we were able to warm up a little bit but not by much. By this time, we had a boil water advisory and little to no water pressure from any of the sinks or toilets. However, we still had gas in our stove which let us cook a few things like instant ramen and heat up leftover soup from last week. About 6 hours into the day, my mother started to show signs of hypothermia or carbon monoxide poisoning and was panicking so we decided to book her a hotel room in town, where there was still power and running water. Until then, we had to take her out for a ride in the car so she could get fresh air and warm up. This helped her to feel better which was good since my dad and I were getting really worried. I decided to stay at home to make sure the cat and house were alright. I decided to try and make the best out of the situation and have a little fun so I grabbed a tent from the garage and set it up in the office downstairs. I had never set up a tent before so it took me a while to get the tent up. Surprisingly, the tent actually helped me to warm up by staying in there. I grabbed my sleeping bag, and guitar and camped out in my house for a few hours; pretending the whole time that I was camping in a forest. However, because of this, I now know how to set up a tent and how to stay warm in the cold.  By nighttime, I moved back up to my room to play some guitar in the candlelight. This was pretty fun and helped me to relax and calm myself down a little bit. When the power came back on I was ecstatic! The first thing I did was run to the fridge and heat up the leftovers that I had been wanting to eat since the other day.

Activity LO3 (01/23/21)- Birthday Outing and Skateboarding

 Today was my birthday! Besides renewing my license earlier this week, I had not really gone out to do anything outside of the house for a while. Today, I decided to ask a few friends if they wanted to meet up with me to go skateboarding in Houston. I grabbed my board and drove into Houston to meet them to grab some lunch before we went skateboarding. I decided to take them to Jus' Mac, a great spot that I have been going to since I was a little kid. After we grabbed a bite to eat, we headed over to the museum district and brought our boards with us. Since I had learned kickflips a few months ago, I wanted to practice this trick today while we rode around the smooth new concrete surrounding the MFAH and Glassel school of art. Unfortunately, just riding around on the sidewalk got us kicked out in the first five minutes that we were there. However, we still got a good workout and skateboarding session by skating around the area and found a parking lot where we could practice tricks and doing grinds on the curb. Although I fell a few times, it is a part of the sport and only helps me to overcome fear when trying new tricks and feel more comfortable both riding and falling off my board. By going down the steep ramps in a parking garage or trying to land a trick off of a jump or ledge, you learn how to keep calm while under pressure and also enjoy the thrill when succeeding at trying something that requires you to take a risk. I feel like once I started the sport again, I have been able to feel more confident with trying new things and also being myself. I also feel like skateboarding has allowed me to be able to better conquer my fears. I think this is because, in skateboarding, you are constantly having a mental battle to try new tricks or obstacles. It was a really fun day and I'm glad that I was able to plan a day outside with my friends.

Creativity LO5 (12/26/20)- Holiday Cooking

 Recently, I have been trying to improve my skills in the kitchen. Last week, I found a picture of my great aunt's family mac & cheese recipe that I hadn't made in over a year. It is by far the best mac & cheese recipe in the world and I have not met one person who doesn't agree with that statement. Although it is fun to make, it took me quite a long time and a lot of work grating cheese to prep all of the ingredients, cook the pasta, make the sauce, and bake all of it in the oven. However, it is worth any amount of time to make the food of gods and it turned out better than any of the previous times I had made it. Today, I wanted to try cooking something else. This time, I would be baking some sugar cookies with the help of my girlfriend. Since neither of us had made them by ourselves before, we went through some recipes and picked out one that looked good and pretty straightforward. We got to work prepping and getting all of the ingredients that we needed. It was nice to have someone else to cook with since we could each work on prepping different ingredients and help each other. While I cracked the eggs, she worked on measuring out the sugar and flour. After getting the dough ready and onto the pan we put them in the oven. The first batch was pretty good but like always the second batch was better. After they came out of the oven, we put homemade almond icing that we had made on one batch. Unfortunately, we went through them pretty quickly. I guess more help when cooking means less food when you're done.

Activity- LO2 (11//20) Skateboarding and Setting Goals

    In the past few months, I have been skateboarding quite a lot. I have been able to relearn a few tricks that I had learned a couple years ago but had lost due to not skateboarding for a while. One of the first tricks that you learn on a skateboard is an ollie. It is when you pop the tail against the ground, drag your board up with your front foot, and jump with your board simultaneously. Although I know how to ollie, I have been struggling with ollieing over bigger obstacles. So today, I worked only on improving my basics and trying to get a higher ollie. I immediately tried ollieing over a big cardboard box with no success. I realized that I needed to start off with smaller obstacles and gradually ease myself into ollieing over bigger ones since a large part of the trick is training your mind and overcoming the fear in your head. I started off with doing the trick over a crack in my driveway then worked my way up to a hat, basketball, and eventually the cardboard box. Using this strategy was really helpful as it broke down my goal of ollieing over the box into smaller achievable steps. I think that this is a good strategy to have for any goal in life. Since I sometimes struggle with getting larger assignments done for school, I want to implement the same strategy of breaking my work down into smaller and more gradual steps. If I can do this, I think my schoolwork and work habits could improve drastically and better prepare me for the times when there are a lot of big IB assignments due.

Service- LO6 (10/10/20) Helping a Sick Friend

This week, my close friend Brooks tested positive for COVID-19. Fortunately, he hasn't seen anyone recently so it is unlikely that anyone else was exposed. However, I wanted to find a way to help him since his symptoms were pretty bad. Since my mother is a pharmacist and has been studying and keeping up with all of the updates about COVID, I thought that I could at least get her advice about what medicines he should take. After listening to him describe his symptoms and what medicines he was already taking, I asked my mom what else he could take to feel better. She was able to give him detailed advice on what medicines to take to clear up any congestion, what will strengthen his immune system, and how to monitor his oxygen levels from home. He was able to tell his parents what he needed from the pharmacy and get all of the vitamins and medicines that my mom recommended he take. The sad thing to me is that all of the medical knowledge that my mom had gotten from her conferences and studies, is not readily available to the public and is not being spread by our public health officials. You would think that since the pandemic is currently such a big issue in all parts of the world, this kind of information would be a priority for these officials to share with the public. Something as simple as taking vitamin d every day can strengthen your immune system and prevent someone from getting a severe case of COVID. I believe that the current political climate in the U.S. is to blame for this and that the abundance of misinformation about the virus needs to be stopped. There also needs to be more support for people who have COVID. Since Brooks' family did not want to risk going out and spreading the virus, we decided to cook them some food and drop it off outside of his house. So far his parents have been lucky and have not gotten the virus so I hope that my mother's advice and the food we brought can help them stay safe and bring Brooks a quick recovery!

Service- LO7 (09/02/20)- Lending a Helping Hand

 Last week was a pretty crazy week! We had hurricane Laura come through Houston and Galveston. Initially, it seemed like it was going to be a bad hurricane with very high winds. Due to this, my friend John who lives in Galveston was planning on evacuating. Since he couldn't stay with his dad, he had nowhere to evacuate to. Because of this, I felt really bad for him and wanted to see if my family would let him stay with us. He has also helped me countless times before when I needed a place to stay so I felt like this was the least I could do. He was very appreciative of this offer and decided to come stay at my house. The benefit of him staying here was that we could study and attend our online classes together and also hang out together when school was finished. Before he arrived, I set up the guest room and cleaned the house so that he would have a place to sleep and a place to work during the day. I also wanted him to feel as comfortable as possible so I moved some more pillows into the room and cleaned out the drawers so he could have a place to put his clothes. In the south, guests need to be treated like royalty so I made sure that everything was clean and that he would have anything he needed during his stay. We ended up having a lot of fun despite still being in school and having to work. The hurricane did not affect the part of town that I live in so I was able to take him to the burger place that I had wanted him to try for a long time. After grabbing burgers, we also stopped by Lowe's for another surprise. We bought a mini-fridge for the room he was staying in so that he could keep his leftovers and have drinks in his room for the rest of his time at my house. He was very grateful for being able to stay with my family and joked that it was probably better than staying at his Dad's. When the hurricane had passed, he was able to safely return to Galveston with some more food for the road.

Creativity- LO 4 (08/12/20) National Lampoon's Family Beach Getaway

 Yesterday, my family and I rented a place out by the beach in Galveston and had a short vacation before the school year starts again. We decided to bring the cat down with us too! Unfortunately, this did not go well. When we got to the house, we noticed that there was lots of cat fur behind the couch which smelled like cat pee. This made our cat freak out and hide in the corner behind a shelf. We spent the longest time trying to get her out or get her to eat her food with no success. When we finally did get her out, my father decided it would be better to take her home and let her stayed there until we came back. After he left, I went to visit my friend John, and his family. His grandparents are always very welcoming and always make sure that I leave with a full stomach of their delicious family cooking. While I was there, I received a call from my mother who realized that my dad had taken the key to the house we were staying in and that she couldn't leave without locking herself out. Although this was another bump in the road, John and I tried to come up with a solution. We drove back down to where we were staying and hung out there for a little bit instead. We weren't going to let these challenges stop all of us from getting to enjoy our vacation! After John went back to his place and my father returned from his impromptu journey, we finally went down to the beach. Since it was already getting dark and the temperature was starting to drop, we did not really want to go out onto the beach to swim. Instead, we found another way to enjoy the beach. We waited until it was dark and went out to go look at the stars. Since we were still relatively close to the city, we were all surprised that we could see what we saw. We were able to see a few shooting stars and even part of the milky way! Even though the vacation did not go as planned, we found ways to improvise and enjoy the beach in a different way.

Service LO5 (07/16/20)- Teaching a friend how to skateboard

 It has been quite a long time since I have spent time in town. Due to the pandemic and the fact that I live pretty far away from my friends at school, the only way I have been in contact with them is through my phone and through playing video games together. However, today I got to go to Houston to see my friend Brooks. It was weird to see him in person after not seeing him for a few months but both of us were really happy to be able to spend time together in person. Since the summer began, I had been trying to get myself back into skateboarding. Skateboarding has always been a sport that I have loved, even though it involves a lot of falling and can be oftentimes frustrating. Brooks had never really been into skateboarding before but wanted me to teach him so that we could skate together. Once he got his own skateboard, I decided to give him some tips and teach him how to ride the board and get more comfortable on it. I decided to take us to a basketball court to help him do this. The court was the ideal location to practice since the ground is smooth and the court is in the shade. When seeing him ride his board, I noticed that he was having difficulty trying to turn. At first, we thought it was a matter of balance but I also noticed that the trucks (the metal things that you use to turn) were very tight. Since I had a tool that I use to adjust mine with me, I was able to help him out by loosening his trucks. This helped him quite a bit and by the end of our practice session, he was able to turn and keep his balance a lot more easily. I was glad that I could help him with his challenge and I hope that we can go skate again soon. When he's ready to I want to go to the skatepark with him so I can have someone that I know to talk to and film tricks with!

Creativity LO4 (06/15/20)- Room Improvement

 I decided to redecorate and rearrange my room again. Since the last time I completely redid my room, I tore out the carpet and replaced it with a vinyl floor. I wanted something that reminded me of the beach so the color I chose to replace it with was a grey and white wood. I wanted to make my room a better place to work in for doing schoolwork next year if we are still in online school. I also wanted to make my room into a better space for making music so I would be encouraged to pick up my guitar or play drums instead of being lazy and watching tv or playing video games all summer. The first thing I did was take everything out of my room and clean it. After a deep clean, I moved all of my instruments back into the room. However, I decided that I would divide the room into two sections. One half of the room would have all of my music equipment, my desk, and file cabinet to use as a workspace and studio. For the other half of my room, I wanted to dedicate it as an area to relax and to sleep. I moved a bookshelf and two chairs into one corner and went through all of the books that I owned and organized them. This way, I can sit in a chair, relax, and grab a nice book to read. Since I have been sleeping in the guest room and working in my room, I moved a futon into my room. It is not ideal but at least I now have a place to sleep in my room. My next step is to find a cheap bed that can fit in my room and that I can afford. I will be continuing to try and improve my room and make it a better space to work in the next few months. I think that having the dedicated work area and also having my room organized will help me be more productive when summer ends.

Activity LO6 (05/16/20)- Dealing with stress in a healthy way

 This past week has not been easy but I have tried to make the best out of it. My dog, Ben had been sick for the past month. He was having trouble sleeping and his breathing had been strained. After taking him to the vet countless times, we found out that he had cancer in his jaw. They told us there was nothing we could do to help him. Since we lost him, I have had a really hard time concentrating on finishing up the last of my schoolwork for this year. I decided that I needed to find a healthy way to deal with my stress and feelings. Normally exercise, nature, and playing music helps me to do this so my mother and I planned a day to go down to the beach. Instead, of going to our usual spot in Galveston, we decided to make a trip down to Surfside. Since I wanted to skimboard, I scouted for a spot to go out on and set up our beach chairs. Having the fresh ocean breeze and finding time to relax really helped me have a little peace of mind. I plan on making more trips to the beach this summer. With so many people experiencing the loss of loved ones and increased stress from the current state of the world, I believe it is crucial that everyone finds their own healthy way to deal with stress. I have started to encourage my friends to do the same. Whether it is taking a walk outside, reading a good book, listening to your favorite music, or exercising, we all need to address our own health, find ways to take care of our mental health, and practice self-care. I have realized how fortunate I am to have the support of my family and friends during a time when the world seems to be falling apart. I am sure that as the pandemic continues, the importance of self-care and mental health will become an issue that will start to be addressed by more people.

Service LO7 -(04/16/20) Meal for the family

 Due to the drastic changes that have occurred in the past month, my family has had a hard time adjusting to quarantine and to having everyone work from home. This week, my parents have been especially busy and stressed so I decided I would surprise them with a big dinner. I made a trip to the grocery store to pick up some vegetables and ground turkey to make them their favorite dishes (well at least the ones I know how to make...). I cooked my mother Japanese chicken curry and made my father turkey burgers. I thought it would be a nice way to help them both feel less stressed and not have to worry about dinner. Although I typically do not enjoy playing scrabble, I told my mother that we would play it since she had been wanting to play for a while. I had felt bad for not wanting to play since she is always willing to watch my TV shows with me even though they are not her kind of show. Due to this, I thought that I needed to return the same gestures of kindness back to her. I'm glad that we did play since it was actually pretty fun and also because I finally beat her after years of her holding the crown.

Activity LO1 (03/08/20)- Workout at the Houstonian

After celebrating my friend Brooks's 18th birthday at the Houstonian, he and I decided to have a workout day. We started off by playing basketball. Since Brooks and I both like basketball but aren't that great at playing, we like to run one-on-one games that push both of us to improve and critique each other. Brooks helped me to play better defense by teaching me something that one of his friends had taught him. We took turns playing defense against each other, trying to steal the ball or block one another's shots. Afterward, we headed up to the gym to do some cardio and weightlifting. Since I had noticed that my upper body strength had declined due to focusing on strengthening my legs for the past few weeks, I decided to focus my workout on the chest, arms, and back. This was much needed, as I quickly got tired while using the pec fly machine. When we were done, we each grabbed a smoothie downstairs.

Service LO3 02/03/20- Local Music Events

Last Friday, I attended the Friday Night Local Music event held at Evelyn's park. I was there for my internship with Mr. Gregg, a parent at the school who started Local Music. Local Music holds small live music venues featuring local bands from the Houston area. There is also an annual Local Music Festival which is a larger event that spans over the course of one weekend in the fall. My task on the day that I attended was to help Mr. Gregg as well as the park staff to set up the equipment that the bands would use for their performances. My fellow intern and I set up a time to come, helped the bands get their equipment out onto the stage, and took videos of the performances so we could use them for promoting the venue. We also created and sent out contracts and arranged stipends for each band that was playing. We are doing the same for the next Friday Night Local Music event.

Creativity LO1- (01/03/20) CAS Project (Documentary Film-making)

For my CAS project, I decided that I would like to document my January term. The term that I will be documenting is the documentary film-making term taught by Ms. Harrison. Since she has been teaching the IB film class, she has had a lot of experience with making films and is very knowledgeable about what goes into creating a documentary film. I am quite excited to begin participating in this course next week since film-making has been something I have wanted to try for a long time. From hearing about what some of my friends have done in their IB filmmaking classes and also helping a few of them to create their own film assignments, I had started to think about exploring filmmaking on my own. When I saw that documentary filmmaking was one of the options for this year’s January term, I knew I wanted to sign up. I hope that I can bring something useful to the table with my experience with audio equipment and adobe premiere. Although I have never worked with film audio equipment, I believe that I will be able to use my knowledge of studio audio equipment to my advantage in the filmmaking progress. Maybe after taking this course, I could start to create my own films for skateboarding or look into studying film in college.

Activity LO2- (12/20/19)- Learning a New Guitar Solo

 Today was the last day of school this year. When we come back in January, we will be working on our J-terms. Since it was also a half-day, I finally had found some time to work on practicing guitar. Recently, I have been struggling to find time to practice due to having more schoolwork this year. However, the lack of free time has only motivated me to finish my work so I can have time to play. In lieu of the time that I now have, I chose to challenge myself by trying to tackle a solo that I have been putting off learning for a while. The reason I had been putting this solo off was that it was long and hard to memorize. Due to this, I chose to break it down into shorter sections and learn each part separately. This strategy proved to be quite effective for the memorization aspect of the solo. However, I still faced difficulties with getting the speed and fingering of the tabs down. In order to push myself to improve, I made it a goal to be able to play along with the song. By forcing myself to do this, I practiced the solo repeatedly and was able to imprint it into my muscle memory. I am very proud to say that by breaking down the challenging song and strategizing the best way to practice, I was able to learn this song relatively quickly.

Creativity LO1 (11/01/19)-Turning my Room into a Personal Studio/Office

 This week, I was sitting around the house thinking about how I could improve my room. I had a lot more space in my room to work with now since I had moved my bed to one of our guest rooms. I decided that I wanted to turn my room into more of a workspace/studio for working on music and schoolwork. My ideal room would have a good space to work on schoolwork while also having musical instruments and equipment set up in one area so I could easily work on making music. To do this I would first need to clean a lot of the clutter on my shelves and around my desk. I started by clearing all of the extra papers in my room from last school year. To keep myself from leaving my papers and homework around my room, I put together a new file cabinet to organize all of my papers and homework for this school year. Once, I had cleared up the clutter in my room, I moved one of my shelves out and replaced it with a longer and taller shelf which I could use as a standing desk to put my keyboard and Dj equipment on. I also made space next to the shelf to use for storing my guitar. After this, I moved my drum kit into my room and assembled it where my bed used to be. I had really wanted to set my drums back up for a long time since I didn't really have a good space for them before. Although I still need to change a few more things, I now have a good space to work on both schoolwork and to practice making music. I will soon be replacing the floor in my room from carpet to something that is either laminate or hardwood to make the acoustics better and to prevent my room from getting too hot. I would also like to eventually replace my desk so I could have more space while doing homework. If I could achieve all of this and continue to improve my room, I believe I can benefit greatly by having a better space to do my work in and make music from.

Service LO5(10/06/19)- DJ-ing Fall Fling

Last weekend, I was able to have the opportunity to DJ at the Post Oak School Fall Fling dance with my friend Clark. This had been the biggest event that I had ever DJ-ed and it had been Clark's first experience with DJ-ing. To be quite honest I had been a little anxious just because I hadn't DJ-ed an official event before. Clark had also been pretty nervous so we were both in the same boat. Despite us being nervous before the event, as people came in I felt my nerves go away. By focusing on the music and the crowd and knowing that Clark could back me up if I needed help, all of the pressure that I felt suddenly lifted off my chest. However, without the help of Clark and Dr. Lee, this would've been nearly impossible to pull off. Dr. Lee, who was in charge of planning the Fall Fling, was able to get us some pretty heavy-duty speakers, subwoofers, and lights. Without her help, there was no way that we would've had access to the professional-grade equipment so I doubt that it would've been a success. Although things went smoothly, for the most part, we had to improvise a little. When we arrived, the microphone was missing. Since we had planned to use the microphone at the beginning, we had to change how we were going to open up the music for the night. However, it was pretty easy to adapt with the help of Clark who gave me a lot of input on deciding which songs would be good to play next. Although I felt that I could've done a better job, the feedback we received was very positive. It turned out to be a pretty successful event!