Who hasn't tried one of Gisella's famous, mouth-watering cupcakes? Or even the delicious bites? Several dessert businesses can be found all around the FDR community; yet, most, if not all of them belong to senior students. So, for our IBG project, we started out with a problem. The issue was that most of the tasty food businesses would be annulated once the 12th grade students left FDR, hence an idea emerged. 

As Arianna, Santiago, Emilio, Ciro and I were sitting down one Thursday afternoon, our minds fled to the typical conversation topic: Food. We tend to talk about this when we have nothing else to discuss. We were dialoguing about how sweet businesses basically made up the community and we got to thinking; Why not start our own business? We clearly had the motivation, we had the time, what else was missing? As soon as our creativity sparked up, we began brainstorming.

We thought about several names, color schemes and logos, yet none seemed to actually profile our business correctly. After several iterations we got to this first draft of the logo and slogan; also accomplishing the task of our organization: To spread joy through FDR, one cookie at a time. Munchies: Not your typical cookie business. Up to now, we have began baking recipes and getting feedback on the products, making modifications and updating our business plan. Overall, I believe we are going through the right track. 

I truly believe that this IBG has a lot of potential, we can even think about continuing and expanding throughout our remaining high school years. Regardless of the profit made, I do believe that there is a lot of room for learning and truly getting some hands on experiences at business, marketing and even cooking areas of expertise. We are thinking on contacting a few experts on the subject in order to really make Munchies a remarkable success. 

Well, it's that time of the year again: Crowdsource grading, the moment where you have the opportunity to evaluate yourself and be evaluated as a learner. During this time lapse, we are given the task to grade ourselves, to receive feedback and then reflect, to really ask the question: "What number best represents me?" Believe me, I know very well the "don't let a number define you" statement; however, at the end of the day that pretty much sums it up. Through different aspects we are told to give ourselves a grade, to measure our performance on a scale from 1-7 and then justify why. Something that is truly hard to accomplish in my perspective. 

I consider myself someone critical, yet confident in my own way. These properties of my personality face me with a crossroads, not allowing me to objectively give myself the best numerical representation of my interim accomplishments. This conflict rises from the issue of the point of view, and how different eyes are prone to witness different realities. The way I see something may not be equal to the way someone else perceives it, which is why I have learnt to put on my analytical goggles on when giving myself a grade.

When it comes to self-evaluation we are faced with a conflict of interest. It happens to be in our best advantage to get good grades, which is why it comes as a challenge to be tough on one-self. Due to this, every time I have to measure myself as a learner, I apply self evaluation as if it were someone else. I look at the facts, the evidence, try to get a more logical angle to avoid the self subjectiveness; and for now, it seems to be working.

So, in the end,  I decided to challenge myself. There is still much room for improvement, something that I am aware of. I do believe that the grades I received were the grades that I deserved; yet, I am not going to lay back and relax. I trust that interim reports serve as a wake up call to many, and in my case, the message has been heard. These reports have served as a true eye opener, specially since in life we are not always going to be given the privilege of receiving such direct feedback. Due to this, it is highly important to begin building up this questioning voice inside our heads that noticed mistakes before it is too late to fix them.

I have already created an action plan and set up to-do lists to begin my productiveness. I have began to read a documentary book and keep track of it via google docs, not to mention the book I am reading on my free time: "Elizabeth is missing". I have set up reminders and kept track of my errands on ical, I can say with absolute confidence that for the rest of tenth grade, I am going to be as proactive as I can!

As I was sitting down in my couch reflecting about the week, my mind fled to the 26th of March, when our IA group met up with Gastón Acurio to talk about our artisanal fisherman project. Such a small lapse of time has passed since that day, yet it feels as if we've had months to really think the project through.

 I recall leaving the meeting with Gastón feeling exited, overwhelmed in a good way. We felt as if we already had the project finished even before we started it; something that we now realize is not true at all. Of course, as one can imagine, this feeling didn't last for long. The week after the following, our group met with the supervisor of La Mar, whom Gastón had sent in our direction. He explained to us all the logistics of the actual project, and the work they had to complete during fifteen years in order to begin taking action.

What Pepe from La Mar explained to us that Thursday afternoon, was that for years he and his team had to go research and investigate different fishing communities. They tried with a few and had several prototypes ready to be tested. Once they found a group of fishermen that fit the profile they were looking for, they exposed them to weeks of workshop training that would prepare them in order to yield high quality produce. All of this happened over the spam of several years, nonetheless they still failed numerous times and had to rethink the purpose and main idea of their project. Now, they have concluded that the best idea is to have a few fishermen from different locations send them fish, this works because it eliminates the threat of competition between fishermen and does not make the restaurant completely dependent of these men who from time to time have proved not to be completely reliable.

Learning this new information certainly came as a shocker, we had been so confident that our project would be an easy success that we had not stop to think about the steps we would have to take in order to get there. To me, this all relates directly to  one very important takeaway I from the book Good to Great: Facing the brutal facts. I believe that the excitement of the project from the week of March may have clouded our judgement, when in reality we had to be more realistic. But in the end, I can say assured that the bigger the  pursuit, the bigger the reward; and I am certain that if we embrace this challenge and go all in, we can make the project a raging success.