Final Blog Post

Through this experience, I gained a lot of real-world knowledge, gained connections I will revere for a while, and expanded upon my own sociological imagination. Most of what I learned came as a result of my solution and research. For example, I found out the scope of education inequality in Chicago and across America, and discovered just how important it is that that gap be closed. Also, in terms of real-world knowledge, I discovered the usefulness of after-school programs on both statistical and individual bases, and figured out how important reading is for all children, especially those who come from lower-income households. From my expert, I found out the dire straits that kids from these backgrounds find themselves in as they begin and attempt to move through school. In general, throughout this project I learned about how important it is to help lower-income kids get a better education, which programs can do that, and how hard it really is for those kids to get an education with or without said programs.

During the semester, I started slowly on my Genius Hour project. I thought that since I had such a large block of time to work on and finish the project, I could get away with messing around at the start of the year. This cost me at the end of the semester, though, because I had to put a lot of time in over the past few weeks getting my remaining sources, finishing my annotated bibliography, carrying out my solution, and readying my presentation. Despite the rush I forced upon myself to finish the project, however, I was still able to learn a lot through the process, and especially while carrying out my solution. As I'm sure you already know, my solution involved helping at an after-school program with lower-income kids. The kids were very receptive to me and we had a lot of fun playing board games and sports together. These connections were so powerful I will be going back to the program again in the future to continue working there. But perhaps the most important thing I learned from this process regards my sociological imagination. I was able to develop it, and in doing so, take on a slightly different world view through helping lower-income kids. Throughout this project, I fought back from a rough start and helped kids out, but the main thing I did was learn, from both the experience and even the kids, too.