Ted Talk: Passion Project
Have you ever wondered what the culture of San Francisco is like? For my entire life, I have been living in the Bay Area and going to San Francisco frequently, and I haven’t had the opportunity to explore the different aspects that make up our big city. In my passion project with my partner, Hannah, we explored this topic by going to different areas of San Francisco and interviewing strangers. Throughout this project, we realized that the most valuable lesson we learned was not gaining new perspectives of the city, but gaining confidence in talking to strangers. Improving my ability to talk to unfamiliar people is important, because it allows me to gain confidence and branch out.
Throughout this project, I was able gain confidence, because I forced myself to talk to unfamiliar people, even though everything in me told me not to.When Hannah and I made our first trip to San Francisco, we were both already very nervous going into this, as we were both small Asian girls not knowing if the interviewee was either going to answer our questions or kidnap us. First, we decided to go to Yerba Buena Park, as we were both familiar to that area and go there often with friends. We walked around the park for about an hour, attempting to gain enough confidence to interview our first interviewee, but failing. When the sky started turning dark, we realized that we needed to speak to at least one person, as people were leaving. Finally, an hour and a half later, we approached two elderly women. Luckily, they were free to talk and willingly answered our questions. During our first interview, we learned more about confidence, because it forced us to stop stalling the interview and to just do it. After we had finished the first interview, we realized that it was not as difficult to do as we first imagined. This allowed us to gain some confidence to carry out our next interviews. Gaining confidence connects to my thesis, because I was able to learn something new.
Not only did this project allow me gain more confidence, it also allowed me to branch out to others in my community. In this project, I was forced to talk to unfamiliar people and learn about their stories about San Francisco. I have never done this previously, as I was always taught to never talk to strangers, so it was a new experience for me. Learning about each individual’s story, I was surprised about the similarities and differences that each person shared with other people that we had also interviewed. I was also able to talk to others that also shared my community and their opinions on our big city. Branching out connects to my thesis, because I was able to gain a new experience.
In conclusion, I reached out to my community and gained courage throughout this passion project. f you ever have the opportunity to do something like this, I highly recommend doing something like this, because it has helped me gain an ability and lesson that I never thought I would have a chance to do.
