T-POL 2024

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Thank you for coming to my presentation of learning. I am the expert on my own learning. I am also responsible and accountable for my own learning. You can expect me to give an honest evaluation of my progress. We will discuss my strengths and opportunities for growth. Thank you in advance for listening and for offering feedback that I can use to improve as a learner. 

Success behaviours. To be a successful learner you must demonstrate the behaviours required to learn, I would like to touch on a few of the behaviours think I believe I have improved on and that demonstrate my learning. 

Agency: ownership and responsibility. One of the things that has been listed on my report card ever since I can remember is always something along the lines of Max needs to stay on task or Max needs to talk less in class. While I agree that I can get off task and talk sometimes, I think I have been improving on taking responsibility for my learning. I still need reminders sometimes to stay on task but for the most part I’m improving. 

Self regulation: Balance. Balancing your school work with a social life and sports is in my opinion one of the keys to academic success. I can’t speak for anyone else but if I had only school work and no sports and no social life I would go crazy. This is one thing that I haven’t improved in but I definitely should. Sometimes I can spend a little to much of my time on the social life part of the equation and that leads to sometimes doing projects last minuet but for the most part I think I have a pretty balanced life. 

Engagement: Contributions. I’d like to believe that I participate often, sometimes I may need a shove. One thing I would like to improve on is not needing prompts to write good work. It’s not that I don’t try but if its free reign with no prompts or examples I can’t choose because there are to many options and I dont know witch is the closest to correct. That’s something I would like to focus on in grade 10. 

Since September of late year we have done a lot of projects, some I was more fond of than others. All the projects had one thing in common, work. Now I know that’s obvious but that’s not really what I mean. All the projects across all the classes have work submitted by me or a group member that can be reflected on to better my work for the upcoming school year. 

The first project I want to look back on is Rocky Mountain High, that’s the project we traveled to Alberta doing. The main goal of Rocky Mountain High was to learn about Canadian history through the CPR (Canadian pacific railway.) To wrap up the project/trip we made a book that had elements from each location we stoped at. Reading back over this book it was just so bland. Imagine if an unsalted cracker had a personality, that’s who wrote it. The book gave me an understanding of what was written it just made me almost fall asleep from boredom. I think I can learn and improve from this by trying to make a personal connection to the learning so that it seems like a human with emotions wrote it. Below is an example of writing from the book.

I’d also like to demonstrate a project I am proud of to show that not everything I’ve made this year needs to be 100% changed. For the spring exhibition that happened just last Thursday we made a WW1 comic book as the finale to a project titled WWI Con – The Great War Graphically Told. I have always had an interest in the world wars and during this project I have learned more about the negative and positive impacts of the war. Although the comic book took so much time it wasn’t as tedious as I thought it would be, since I was passionate about the topic I had lost of fun storyboarding, writing, and illustrating the comic. I also think that a historical fiction comic would be the perfect way to educate someone who may not be able to handle paragraphs upon paragraphs of information. I think this project displays my growth as a learner quite well, during my m-POL I talked about getting my work in on time, good quality, and work that meets the criteria and for this project I ticked all the box’s. below is the comic itself. 

WW1 Comic

One of the things I would definitely change is my final submission for the CHEMhistory project we did in science class. The project was about the history of the elements on the periodic table. My element was lead and for the final piece of work we were supposed to make a drawing of something that symbolizes our elements. My element being lead the first thing I thought of was a pencil and so that’s what I drew. I could’ve drawn a battle scene using lead bullets or lead pipes witches caused many deaths due to lead tainted water. If you were to think of the bare minimum and then go 15x barer that’s what my work would’ve been. I think I could’ve made this project better in so many ways and going into science next year even though its not a PLP course I’m going to remember this anytime my work isn’t up to par. Below is the drawing 

 

I think near the start of grade nine I had not a horrible work ethic but it wasn’t great either. I got most of my work done on time but I would still prioritize social activities before school work. Now in the present at the end of the year one thing that has been on my mind is that grade 10 is when your grades start to count, not that you shouldn’t try up until then but its when they get taken more seriously. Realizing that has made me start prioritizing my work a little more and making sure im prepared for the year to come. 

My learning portfolio. As I look back at some of my blog posts from the start of the year they are a big improvement from grade 8 but still lack in certain areas. I feel that they have a lot more emotion than the ones from before but they could either be longer or get more into detail and be less of a stream of consciousness. Some newer posts like my m-POL and my rise of the frankenstuffies project post are full of detail about the project and also where it applies what I can learn and take away from the project besides the project material. (E.g. I learned from the WW1 comic project graphic deign skills not just about WW1.) Below are the posts from the beginning of the year and some recent ones to compare.

Recent post-

Rise of the Frankenstuffies

Old post-

The moving image.

Destination Imagination. DI Is a hands-on program where students lead projects and learn to solve problems creatively. Students work in teams to come up with unique solutions to seven different challenges, getting ready for a fun problem-solving competition. DI this year took place at Seycove and I competed in the technical challenge with a group of peers. Our challenge was to make a pinball machine. There was two competitions that took place although I had unfortunately scheduled events so I was unable to attend to preform with my group. Even though I couldn’t make it to the preforming I learned a lot from the building of our machine. As a group we had to overcome challenges together and settle disagreements within our group and those will be skills I use for ever in the future.   

I think grade 9 has left me with lots to reflect on and to learn from and I think im going to be quite prepared for grade 10 because of this, and so ill leave you with a quote from Phineas and Ferb “The only thing that is impossible is impossibility” – Phineas. 

mPOL 2024

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Thank you for coming to my presentation of learning. I am the expert on my own learning. I am also responsible and accountable for my own learning. You can expect me to give an honest evaluation of my progress. We will discuss my strengths and opportunities for growth. Thank you in advance for listening and for offering feedback that I can use to improve as a learner.

The M in mPOL stands for mid-year and I know its a little late for that but better late than never. Now that were halfway through the school year a lot of projects have been done and now its time to reflect! 

We started off the school year strong with a trip to Alberta which was not only fun because it was a trip but we learned about the CPR (Canadian Pacific Railway) witch has to do with history and that’s something I’ve always been intrigued by. The big project for the unit named “Rocky Mountain High” was a multi-touch book which included elements from the various locations we visited. Looking back at the book and re-reading what I wrote it was dry, not that it didn’t have the information required but it wasn’t very personal and if i were to redo the project I would make it sound more like me and less like chat GPT (it wasn’t chat GTP.) 

One of the projects that I am especially proud of is the rise of the frankenstuffies project. The video we made at the end was not only one of my favourite things to learn this year but its also some of my most proud work. During this project we learned a bunch of different skills on the apps we regularly use but I also tried some apps I never had before, in the upcoming projects I can use these skills to make my work better. 

One skill I think I got better at this year was handing my work in on time, last year I would complete the work but forget to turn it in and I would have to set reminders to turn my work in but this year even though I’m not perfect (nobody is) I’ve handed a lot of my work in on time without reminders! On the flip side something I could work on is talking in class less, its been something I’ve been told for years and very slowly I seem to be improving but I need stay on task more often. 

One thing that I’ve noticed as a bit of a pattern in my work is that any projects that involves a decent amount of writing becomes a bit dry. It’s not that I run out of things to say it just seems that the longer I write the less interesting the righting becomes. One of my goals for the rest of the school year is to make my writing less boring. 

One of the more recent projects we did was titled “lets get Reil! The project was about the historic Canadian figure Louie Reil and how he has been portrayed over time. The main focus’s of the project was grammar and improving our writing which is a skill that I’m going to take and use on pretty much every project ever. I know I’ve mentioned it quite a bit but my writing is lacking in certain ways so every little bit helps. The final project for this project was a multi-paragraph composition, it was like a mini essay and if you compare it to some of my writing from the beginning of the year you can see the difference. (Example below)

Multi paragraph composition-

Rocky Mountain high reflective blog post-

How does the geography around us shape who we are and how we live?

 

This past year we have done a lot of projects and I have to admit that not all of it met my standards. This time I’m not just talking about the writing, the thriller we made although it was funny I didn’t think of it as some of my best work. Although I liked writing the script and filming the short, I just didn’t feel that it was some of my best work. Just in case you want to see it, its linked below. 

Thriller-

 

The school year is going to be over soon but with what’s left I’m going to strive for better work and use all the helpful things I learned this year. 

Rise of the Frankenstuffies

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Rise of the Frankenstuffies. Rise of the frankenstuffies was our most recent project and it was probably my favourite this year. It required/taught many skills some of witch were actual physical skills instead of digital skills like normal (excluding exhibitions.) There are a few different pieces of the project we did to build up to the video such as a storyboard, written story, we also read the book Leviathan by Scott Westerfeld. The first thing we did during the project was we sewed our frankenstuffies. We cut up a bunch of stuffed animals and sewed them together to make a combination of animals that would act as the main characters in our stories. If I was going to change anything about my stuffy, maybe I would make it bigger. In my story he is 6’5 creature and it doesn’t really show that well in my video. We learned a lot about the structure of the story and how to formulate a great story. I know that before high school is over I will definitely need to write more story’s and I feel that my story’s will be better in the future. We had to storyboard our written story to turn it into a video. A story board is an essential part of  the video making process and without it You would have no idea how to transfer a bunch of words to a video, here’s mine as an example:

A lot of things that were harder to show on video didn’t make the cut so if I did it again I might try to improve the amount detail in the video. We also learned about something called a Log line which is a summary of your story that is supposed to cover the main idea. Like mine for example:

“Edward is a man-made creature from Russia who goes on an adventure to Mexico, somewhere he has never been. After an excruciating journey to his hotel, Edward’s fun vacation twists when he finds some of his personal belongings have gone missing”…

Overall it was a super fun project and I took away some valuable skills for the furture. If you would like to watch the video if been talking about this whole time than click the link below.

Here a padlet to leave reviews if you feel inclined to do so 

https://padlet.com/maxn6/rise-of-the-frankenstuffies-3g2yf23wvewbxgob

Louis Riel multi-paragraph composition reflection

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The Louis Riel multi-paragraph response was the first project we did after we got back from winter break and I think it was a great way to start off the new year. This project was about developing our literary skills and how the Canadian Hero Louis Riel was portrayed over time. Before we started writing the drafts of the paragraphs we were focusing on making the words we use when we write more interesting and descriptive. We used different charts to try making basic words more interesting and I think that has helped my vocabulary expand. I think that its important that we learn about the history of our country and see what lead to where we are today. The paragraphs I wrote for the multi-paragraph composition met the criteria but I wish I had done extra and made the paragraph less flat. Looking back I definitely think the paragraphs were missing something. 

When I was in grades 5 and 6 covid was happening and the long time we spent out of class is when we should’ve been learning how to make our sentences more enticing, therefore I had to do some catching up. Although I feel my paragraph was still lacking I feel I definitely improved my writing. Thiswasn’t necessarily a fun project but I know the skills will be useful down the road. I also enjoyed learning about history so who knows, maybe that could be a career.

 

How has the portrayal of Louis Riel changed over time? Louis Riel has been portrayed as an insane man and a hero, which one was he? Louis Riel has been a controversial figure in history, well up until recently where most people are on the same page about him. Many people viewed him as a hero of the Métis people but many also viewed him as a enemy of the Canadian government. Louis Riel was a Métis man from Saint Boniface, Winnipeg who was born in 1844. He grew up in the Red River settlement but when he was a young adult he left for Quebec to continue his schooling, there he faced discrimination because he was Métis. In march of 1865 he dropped out of his priesthood but stayed in Montreal with his aunt Lucie Riel. During the last year he spent there he had a failed romance with a woman named Marie–Julie Guernon and they were set to be married. The engagement fell apart when the woman’s family opposed her marriage to Louis Riel due to the fact that he was not white. Métis were often seen as inferior to both sides, the white people thought they were to much like First Nations and the First Nations thought they were to white. Nowadays, Louis Riel is seen as a great Canadian hero but it was not always that way. Back in the late 1860’s, early 1870’s Louis Riel was one of the biggest adversaries of the Canadian government. He was seen as an enemy for thinking the oppression the Métis were facing was unjust. In Winnipeg in 1970 a statue was unveiled, sculpted by a man named Marcien Lemay which depicted Louis Riel as disfigured, malnourished, and trapped. This statue outraged people because it showed him in the way he used to be seen, the statue got so vandalized that the city had to remove it. It was replaced by one sculpted by Miguel Joyal in 1996, it made Louie Riel look regal, smart, and like a statesman. In the Heritage minuet video by Historica Canada it shows Louis Riel’s last thoughts before being hung and in the background a man calls him insane, this is supposed to depict how he was viewed at that time. The Métis people have always viewed Louis Riel as a Canadian hero but when did other people start seeing him of less of a mad man and more like a hero? In the late 1900’s people started seeing him for the heroic actions he made. The controversy around Louis Riel will never end but currently more people consider him a hero than not. . Over all, how people see Louis Riel will never be a set thing but certainly more people view him as a hero than not.

 

Metaphor machine/ winter exhibition reflection.

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For our final project before winter break we had a project about revolutions, my group was the Russian revolution, for the project we had to create a “Metaphor Machine” witch was a Rube Goldberg machine but each connection of the machine had to represent a key part of the revolution. (If you don’t know what a Rube Goldberg machine is then watch this video-

 

 

We had to work together as a team because it was not only the machine we were making, we had to organize costumes, food, and decorations for the exhibition. The first thing we had to do for this project was to create a infographic about the Russian revolution witch was to get us familiar with the revolution and to start getting some ideas before we go into our groups. 

Not only did we have to learn about the revolution but we also had to develop and use technical skills to plan the machine and actually make it work. This project was fun because we got to work in groups but also because we actually got to make a physical creation instead of something on an iPad. I wish that we had things a little more figured out during the building process but the machine still came together pretty well so I can’t really complain. 

Alongside the machine we had to create a documentary about the making of the machine. It was supposed to be a behind the scenes type of video but it did not get the attention we thought it would at the exhibition. Here’s the video 

This project was a good send off to the break and I enjoyed it. The run through of the machine was never fully filmed but there are clips, ill show them below. Thanks for reading.   

IMG_5957 IMG_5958 IMG_5959

Loon lake reflection post

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How do the choices we make set our future path? That was the driving question from our trip to the pinnacle pursuits at loon lake. We went on a week long trip to bond as a team but also learn about leadership and how we can apply skills and ability’s to communicate and work better. There were three competencies we focused on;  processing, analyzing, and decision making. Processing is about thinking critically, creatively, and reflectively and using multiple ways to do so. As an example, during our time at loon lake we made shelters in the forest out of sticks, that required creative thing as well as critical thinking to complete. Although most of them had deeper meaning we did a lot of creative activity’s while we were there. Analyzing is about identifying, analyzing, and coming up with conclusions while keeping bias, relevance, and authenticity in mind. We learned a lot about making decisions fairly and understanding the facts of a situation first. Decision-making is about evaluating ethical implications and making complex judgements while identifying and respecting diverse communities. We did a lot of activity’s that focused on diversity and being inclusive of everyone but we also did activity’s showing how we can all relate one way or another. On the last day we needed to come up with a transfer goal (something we learnt that we are going to apply in our daily lives) and I decided to keep talking to the people I didn’t really talk to before the trip. It was way more fun than I expected and I’m glad we went, it was also a great learning experience  

Take your kid to work day 2023

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Take your kid to work day. I had a great take your kid to work day with my mom. My mom is a prop master in the television/movie industry, and we visited some of the laces that supply and make props for her. 

What are a prop masters responsibilities? Well as the head of the props department she has to coordinate with the other departments. Let’s say as an example that a costume a character is wearing has a wrist gauntlet that shoots a dart, even if the dart is CGI sometimes they want a shot of the dart firing. It’s the prop departments job to build the wrist gauntlet and make sure it fires the dart, they also have to share plans with the costume department to make sure it all fits together. Even something small like that can take a few days to make work. Another part of her job is helping design props. If the prop is simple enough or not specialized then they can make in in-house but if it needs complex moving components or a design cut out of metal (as an example, not just that) then they go to places that do that for them. I was lucky enough to visit IRL creative witch is one of those company’s. Places like IRL creative are almost like private contractors in the industry. The process of these “private contractors” making the props is; my mom and her props team talk with the producers and directors and any other department that might be involved, next they take what the director and producers want and draw it out and map out the dimensions, after that they would take it to somewhere like IRL creative and show them the design, the “private contractors” then would use the machines they have to make the prop. A process this complicated is quite common for making props. When I visited IRL they demonstrated one of the many machine they had and it was very interesting, the machine heated up a sheep of plastic then pressed down over an object to make a mole of it, after it had been pressed down the air was sucked out from under it and it became an air tight mold so the replica was exact. As well as IRL creative I got to visit the Prop Shop. The Prop Shop is a prop wear-house that does rentals. Let’s say a show my mom is working on is filming a airport scene, instead of buying 50 suitcases she can just rent them from somewhere like the Prop Shop. This is often a much more cost effective option making it a more popular option, even if you need the suitcases for an extended amount of time you could do an extended rental witch is still cheaper than buying them. My take your kid to work day was a different experience for me because most of the times I have gone to work with my mom I’ve only gotten to see the props in action and never what goes into making/getting them. For take your kid to work day I had to make a video about my experience (YouTube link at the bottom of the page) and I used IMovie for this. To Make the video I took photos and videos at the workplaces I visited as well as interviewing my mom. I learned a lot about what my mom does for work and it gave me the understanding to follow in my moms footsteps if I wanted (I probably wont, I hear the hours suck.) I think that this was a valuable learning experience and I wish we has it two years in a row because I would love to go to work with my dad who is a on-set painter for the movie/tv industry as well. 

Youtube link- https://youtu.be/3TmQRJmOJl8?feature=shared  

Run a remake- reflection

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Run a remake- reflection. 

For the launch of our project we had to remake a video named “run,” linked here (link.) the criteria was we had to replicate a short film titled Run to the best of our abilities. This was a group project and I worked with three of my class mates (their blogs linked here.) There’s a few aspects to reflect on in this project. One of them being the product itself. The final video was pretty good in my opinion. We had had some shaky camera shots during the first draft but when we revised those got fixed. I think we did a pretty decent job syncing ours to the original and it was only a few seconds off at the end. During Sydneys (who played the main character) acting i think he could’ve smiled a little less while he was getting choked out but I still think he did a great job especially since not everybody is comfortable on camera. The first time we recorded the audio for our video it wasn’t super clear and wasn’t in time with Sydney’s footsteps but after the ground frosted over we were able to re-record the audio  and it was much louder and clear. Another thing to reflect on is the teamwork. James, Sydney, and myself worked quite well together while filming and we also collaborated on ideas to improve the video. Hunter was only present for the re-shoots of our video but he helped out where he could. I personally think four people is one to many for this project, although I’m happy with the work my entire group did and all four of us collaborated well at some points throughout filming one person was just kind of standing around waiting to be useful again. I didn’t play the biggest role in the editing of our video but I tried to help where I could, I think the editing aspect turned out well and the speed of the clips and sound effects added made the final product much better. I also liked the filter that was put on the video to make it appear a little more dark and mysterious because in reality it was quite bright during the filming of the video. One ting we had to deal with during filming is the placement of other groups. Because of the limited area we could film in there were a lot of groups kind of lumped together where we were filming and that made it difficult to film certain shots. There were a few times where we were trying to film the running senes and in the background you could see another group filming there’s so that was a bit of a setback at spots. Although I’m proud to present our final product I think there’s always room for improvement. If we could’ve just gotten our video down by 3 seconds we could’ve matched it with the original and then I would’ve been very satisfied. If you watch the original and our remake side by side they actually are quite similar and almost in sync. A lot of other groups had interesting ideas that were super cool but the didn’t match the original as much and I think my group was on of the groups that did it best. This was only the launch of our project witch I find crazy because we just spent the last 2 weeks working on these videos. 

Run! Remake

How does the geography around us shape who we are and how we live?

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Have you ever hiked 17k with 24 other people, I have. This was our first project of the year and we went to Alberta for it. This was a bit of a change from last year considering our last project of the year was the one we went on a trip for. Our Humanities projects driving question is How has the geography of the west shaped who we are and for Maker our question is How might I use the moving image to tell a story. Even though these were two separate questions for two separate classes they ended up basically being the same. See more about the Maker post here – (link) For the Humanities aspect we were focusing on how the geography around us shaped us. We went to many locations and a big part of the big idea involved the CPR. Did you know that without the CPR we here in BC wouldn’t be a part of the country. The entire reason that B.C. Is in Canada is that the country promised B.C. in ten years they would have a coast to coast railway. They needed the funding from B.C. and our government said yes. 

HUMANITIES WORK FROM THE TRIP.

MULTI-TOUCH BOOK.

The major piece of work we did was our multi-touch book. It has information about most of the locations we visited, as well as the videos we made throughout the trip. It also has my five themes of geography comic life. Our multi touch book was the thing that tied the whole project together. It included both aspects from humanities and maker with the videos being in it. I think the book was an interesting way to have all the different pieces of the project in one place.

FIVE THEMES COMIC LIFE.  

Another part of this big project was the comic life. We made a comic life depicting the five themes of geography; Location, Place, Region, Movement, and Human/Environment interaction. In the comic we had to have a photo we took or drew and it had to represent one of the five themes, we had to make one for each of the five themes. We then had to write something to connect the dots about how that photo represented that theme. Comic life was a cool app I got to learn to use and I hope we get to use it again. 

This project was long and hard (ish) and after all that all though I will miss the fun I had in Alberta I’m happy to say with this blog post finished the project is done. 

The moving image.

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Did you know that Banff was Canada’s first national park? I do because I was there. For our first project this year we went to Alberta to do a field study, this is the post for the maker part of this project. Our driving question is how might we use the moving image to tell a story. Although the two subjects (maker, and humanities) are separate they ended up being pretty intertwined on this project, however we have to make two separate blog posts so here’s the link to the humanities post- (link) For maker we focused on videos. Basically every part of the maker aspect of the project had to do with a video. We learned a little bit about videography at the beginning, we looked at different types of interviews for our interview video, we looked at an example for our at home video, and we also got to see a few different tik toks that we could use the same style of for our tik tok video. 

VIDEOS. 

SILENT VIDEO.

The first video we made was the silent video. We went to Three valley gap château and ghost town for the first night of the trip. The criteria for our silent videos was: story must have a beginning, middle, and end, all group members must be in one shot, at least two different settings for scenes, and two other digital enhancements. In my group I was with my classmates James and Kai. During this video creation we learned how we can use actions and sound effects to tell a story without words My groups video is about a man who losses everything in a saloon and then tries to rob a jewelry store, here it is. 

TIK TOK VIDEO. 

For our tik tok video I worked with my friend Lucas. The contents of this video was basically up to us but it had to represent the west in some way. In our video we are punching each other in the face but every time a punch lands the background changes and we did It at a bunch of different locations. The video helped me with my videography skills because I had to set up and figure out the shots for the video. It was the easiest of all the videos to film and each day I filmed only took 1-2 minuets out of my day. It was a fun video and I had fun filming it, here it is. 

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AT HOME VIDEO. 

The at home video was originally supposed to be about who we our in our place but it just ended up being about what inspires me. I got to think about the things in my environment that inspire me. This video was an opportunity to learn more about my self. Over the summer we all did work based about setting goals and what inspires us to set goals. I talked about how the environment around me inspires me to be active outside. I had to use video editing skills to make the video. It’s easy of telling a story of the west I get to tell the story of myself. 

INVESTIGATIVE VIDEO 

The investigative video was supposed investigate a story or idea about the west. We had to come up with a thesis and this was mine “people come to the west for the views but also the difference of geography.” I interviewed a man from Georgia USA who talked about how he came here because its like nothing he could ever see at home he also said the cultural experience here is different. I found that super interesting because Georgia isn’t that far away its just in the country below us. He mentioned how everyone is much nicer here witch I thought was a stereotype but I guess not. 

This was a awesome project and Alberta was super fun. I’m glad the program I’m in gave me this opportunity.