I can’t believe how much I have progressed in ASL this year. There is still so much to learn until I get to my goal but I am proud of what I have learned. I owe all my success to my mentor and generosity of giving me her time. Her eagerness to teach me is very admirable and shows me her love of ASL. If I wasn't in The Pilot in high school I wouldn't be going to college for the same degree I am now. The Pilot has shown me my interests and given me time to consider and even study them, which not a lot of students in highschool get the opportunity to do. When I think about my friends that have a direct plan and goal for college and their career are the ones who were in pilot and had the opportunity to explore options outside of school and it has made more successful and changed the way they think about their education. In the second semester I started mentoring a middle school student who was interested in learning ASL. She had known quite a few signs before so we worked more on those basic signs and conversational basics. I showed her Bill Vicars’ online ASL University and we found that helpful to study during our time. I quizzed her by writing down easy and challenging questions before and then asking her and having her respond using vocab she studied. This was a good way to get to practice with someone else when we were not meeting with Laura. Laura gave us a couple additional assignment throughout the year. She would assign certain chapters in my textbook and one research project about interpreting. Sadie, the other student Laura taught and I both went to disability awareness day and shadowed an interpreter. This was awesome to see and meet many interpreters and people from the deaf community in Vermont. I met another ASL Interpreter student from UNH who told me about her experience as a interpreter student and it was very helpful. After this I did research on the pros and cons of being and interpreter and the code of ethics which I hadn't heard of before. This basically explains the requirement of an interpreter and their responsibility to be moral and fair when interpreting for someone and being their voice. To keep track of the time spent on ASL like meetings with Laura and Abby and time spent practicing, I kept a log daily. This helped Caroline see what I was doing, I also gave her access to my blog. For the last project Laura assigned us memorizing a children's story and presenting it to her and other teachers at the end of the year. This was hard to do because memorizing is difficult even in your own language. This pushed me to be more expressive when signing. A big part of communicating and signing is telling stories and acting out to explain so this was good to teach me ways to be clear while doing that. I feel pretty confident now telling this story. The resources I use to immerse myself in ASL is YouTube channels like Bill Vicars ASLU and deaf youtubers. I have applied for Gallaudet University online classes for next falland this involved interviews to evaluate my skills. I was approved for ASL level 2 out of 5 levels. I am going to be a counselor for a summer camp for deaf kids this summer, which is very exciting to meet people in the deaf community and get more signing. I was interested in the genetics of hearing loss so I researched the deaf population and how common it is to have hearing loss. It turns out many people have some degree of hearing loss especially as you get older. Once you lose hearing transmitters in your ear you can't get them back. Avoiding really loud noises are important to keep your hearing. In the beginning of the year in English I was studying unhealthy foods in America and misconceptions in the media about healthy dieting to consumers. I noticed that a food being unhealthy revolved around how much sugar it had. I studied the huge issue of diet and disease in the U.S. and I watched different documentaries about the vegan diet, peoples different opinions on the vegan diet, and how some doctors have proved the famously blamed carbohydrates and sugar is not the reason for the obesity epidemic and disease and how other doctors profusely disagree with them. Watching “What The Health” was an eye opening video about how animal farming is the reason for deforestation, global warming, widespread obesity, disease and is responsible for 56 BILLION animals killed yearly by Americans. Being vegan showed me how being someone you advocated for something is an incredibly hard thing. Everyone has their own opinions and the likeliness of them changing their opinion is slim. People won’t believe what they don't want to believe. I wrote a paper about health problems and diseases in the U.S. and how they relate to consuming animal products. A big portion of these disease could be explained from animal products. I did a thirty day social media detox where I had not contact with facebook, instagram etc and reflected daily. This made me realize how much social media can take over your life. I started reading a interesting novel and did a reflection which made work on my writing and reading skills. I wrote a paper on herbivores, omnivores etc and learned about the evolution of modern humans’ diet and how there is little evidence of modern humans being reliant on the same diets as neanderthals. I started reading a book about modern humans and neanderthals and European DNA. This was a higher level book about science and theory and was a new style of book for me. I read as much as I could of it and took notes on important things to remember. I normally wouldn't read this kind of book but I am glad I did because it has a lot of information about anthropology, DNA and takes my ancestry study to a different direction. I did a workshop on veganism in january for a pilot student summit. This was fun to do and take part spreading a positive message about veganism. I think because I have done so many exhibitions I was not worried about talking in front of people. I am glad that I heightened my public speaking skills over the past two years and I proved that by being able to do a workshop. I studied Plimoth plantation were the pilgrims on the Mayflower colonized. I researched this because my ancestors the Fuller’s were passengers. I even found their signature on the Mayflower compact and a list of Mayflower passengers. One of the ancestors went on to establish Barnstable near cape cod. I starting doing more history projects. This was inspired by visiting the Queen’s staircase in The Bahamas. I wanted to do more research on Queen Victoria and the english abolition of the slave trade to really understand the importance of where I was in Nassau. I found out England passed the first Abolition act in 1807 and encourage other european states to do the same. I thought this was very admirable that they were ahead of the movement and went to great lengths to stop this giant “industry”. They started the North African squadron to patrol the ivory coast of Africa to intercept slave ships. They saved countless people and many soldiers lost their lives in the name of the cause. This isn't taught in the US and not even England, but schools should also show their activist history, to inspire young people but also educate them on the mistakes. Then I spent a lot of time researching and reading about Queen Victoria. I was interested initially by her involvement in abolition and England being the first country to initialize it and then I learned she had a African goddaughter who used to be a slave. This was one of the reasons I think she was a very inspirational leader. I wrote a paper on her life and how she was an important part of English history. I started filling out a anscteral register I had from my grandparents. I color coded the people who emigrated and proved some of the information I got from my DNA test. I found several different new emigrations. Studying ASL and learning about deaf culture has made me look differently at hearing people and myself. I know a little what it's like to be hearing in a deaf community and I have seen what it's like for a deaf person in a hearing world. I learned what it is to be hearing by looking from the outside. Knowing this has changed the way I look at the my own language. I have been able to take my studies in so many different directions this year and I am happy with the work I have done. The pilot program has been very valuable to me in my high school experience and shaped me as a student and person. I am excited to use the information and techniques in learning for the next years in college. Thanks to Chris and Amy for being amazing teachers the past two years!