Stranded No More

In Social Entrepreneurship, we learned about everything that goes into making a business. We went over the basics such as marketing, incentives, mission/vision statements, sales, and pitches, as well as some lesser known concepts such as hedgehog concept, financial projections, and legal structures. We read the book E-Myth Revisited to better understand the mentality an entrepreneur needs when starting their own business. For our FE’s, we had guest speakers like the founder of Purple Asparagus, the director of 826Chi, and the founder of GCE, Eric Davis, come in to show us what they thought worked the best and to give us tips and tricks for starting and running a business. Our action project was to create our own business idea over the entire term, and we learned about each part of our business as we created it. We went really in depth with our business ideas to the point where, if we had the time and resources, we could actually make these ideas a reality. We each had to make a quick, two minute, video of our pitch for 'potential' investors. I really enjoyed the entire process of creating our businesses because this is a real thing that I am contemplating on doing. To be able to get good insight on what it would take and the work that goes into it on top of having a decent beginning with research will help a lot in the future. The only part that I had truly struggle with was the financial projections since it really depends on the individual hair salon. Overall this course genuinely helped in believing that I could do this in the, hopefully near, future. Please enjoy my pitch below.

ENT AP - Kizoa Movie - Video - Slideshow Maker

Just Keep Swimming

In unit 3, Apotheosis, we looked into the endurance of survivors. We examined their experiences and used them as inspiration for our own life missions. The main people we learned about was an African man who was a child soldier and Elie Wiesel, author of Night. For our FE this unit, we were tasked to come up with and design our own based around a fear or our missions. I ended up basing mine off of my mission and went to interview two Chicago police officers to get better insight on what to expect when I join the force. For the action project we were to write a survival guide about our life's future goals. This, for me, is the process of becoming apart of the CPD discussing what I will need to be prepared, a potential timeline, and a back up plan if the worst case scenario were to happen while pursuing our missions. Overall, this was relatively straightforward as I, mostly, know what my life will look like in the next three years. However, it was slightly troublesome writing the timeline past that since I do not know when my number will be called to start the academy, so I had to put down my educated guess for that date and those past it. Doing this project really helped me figure out some kinks in my plans for the future giving me a clearer vision for what needs to be done. This was a great way to end my last humanities class before moving onto my next stage in life. I hope you enjoy my survival guide below.