. Hey everyone! Last I talked to you I was making my ochun mazo as a project in my Makers class. This was a long a rushed project since I only had a month to do it, but my final product was way better then I thought. The entire mazo turned out gold, and I want you all to check out my instructable and take a look at how you can make one yourself. I had a fun time making this mazo, and I love spending time to make items for my specific religion since I don't have time in other parts of my life. Check out my instructable here.
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In my makers class, I am currently developing an instructable about how to make an Oshun mazo. In my religion, I am a priestess of Yemaya and I love to bead mazos for different orishas or “angels” in my faith. I have beaded a few mazos before, but I have never beaded one for the goddess of Oshun. Oshuns colors are different from other mazos, and hers will be especially difficult because certain aspects of her only take gold, and that’s the one that I am beading for. I am not only learning how to make an instructable, but I am also learning how to bead a mazo for Oshun.
A mazo goes around your body like a Sash, and it’s made only from beads and string, so often times they can be very heavy and delicate at the same time. I chose this project because I have never made a mazo for Ochun, and making one in a month will be a challenge for me since it usually takes months for me to make. Currently, my mazo is only 6 inches long, but soon it will look like my schematic. I want to improve how I make mazos after this, and get better at how I bead as well as the positive energy that I put into every mazo that I make. Here are pictures of my schematics, and what I have so far; In my makers class, we started this new project in which we were tasked with making a lantern out of any design we could think of. This seems easy enough, but what made the task especially hard was that we had to come up with a completely original idea. Me, being the creative soul that I am, never liked doing someone else’s designs anyway, so this didn’t exactly pose a problem for me… until I couldn’t settle on what I wanted to do.
One of the problems with being creative is that you can have so many ideas at once that you don’t even know which idea to pick. That was my problem for exactly a week, I drew and attempted a few small designs, but nothing really spoke to me. That was until I finally found what I was looking for. The design I finally settled on was a string of lanterns where each and everyone of them had a carved out letter to spell something. When I first settled on this design, I was definitely excited since I knew none of my peers was going to be doing something quite as big as my idea, but that was before I realized how much work everything was going to be. My first deliverable was a template of my project, and I was already behind. I had to draw each and every letter I was going to be using for my lanterns, along with the entire design and traceables. Tracing each and every one of the lanterns is when I first realized that while my fellow peers were bored and completely done with everything that they had to do for the class, I was staying back after class, and trying to get to school earlier to use my access time wisely. Eventually I finished, but I still had more deliverables to achieve. The next part was my prototype. I thought the prototype was going to be easy since i already had a template for what I wanted to do… I couldn’t have been more wrong. My template was completely off, and although lucky for me my teacher didn’t dock my grade for it, I was still scared that I was going to fail the entire project. I started making the lanterns out of a cardboard base, and a paper middle. The lanterns were flimsy, and by the end of making every single one, while carving the letters out to make it spell correctly, I was mostly happy with my work. When I showed my teacher my work (ofcourse it was late, since I had 25 lanterns to do), she realized that I was trying my hardest, but didn't exactly have all of the materials that I wanted. She gave me a redo, in which I could use these cardboard roll outs to make new lanterns that were a lot more stable and easier to write on. This project was the most tedious of all. I was sick for many days, so when I was at school I was behind (again). Although I was behind, and I often was working when the entire class wasn’t, I pushed through to make more and more lanterns, and although my hand is cramping to think about all of the work I did, I pushed through and finished my design! I wanted to tell my story because I feel as though in this day and age people don't try to make things anymore. We are so quick to give up when things don't look how we want it too that we don't push forward and try to make what we want to make. I knew what I wanted to make, and I settled for less than what I wanted. In the end, I would have gotten an ok grade, but if you don't apply yourself further then I would I never learned half of the things I learned when working. So here's the moral of my story: try hard! Whether you're making something, or getting through a stressful period in your life, try your very hardest and don't give up even if you're behind. Trying hard provides you experiences to learn and grow more, which we all need to do a bit more of nowadays. If you're dreaming of becoming a state legislator, read this article before hand. I'm pretty sure that after reading this you will re-think your goals in life.
Say you're a state legislator and you have strong values. You're pro-choice, you are mostly liberal but on the democratic ballot. You appreciate other cultures and you think that Donald Trump is a racist bigot. If you become a senator and your party doesn't like your ideals or what you stand for, they could cut funding for you and leave you broke without it. Sometimes your morals do not match your parties morals, and that's where the conflict really starts to begin. If you think that Donald Trump is a racist bigot, but your party wants you to like our current president, are you going to risk your funding being cut and the support of your party for your own morals? That is the biggest question when you are a state legislator. All legislators want to be for the people, but sometimes what the people want vs what the party wants is two very different things, and you have to choose what you should do yourself. After reading this, I'm hoping you're not still thinking of being a state legislator. Unless you are blessed with the ability to keep everyone close to you happy at all times, the job of being a successful state legislator should be left to superman himself. In my Political Studies class, we have talked about what the Legislative Branch is and when they do in today's U.S government. During a two day lecture, in which my teacher explained exactly what the U.S Legislative sytem does, I have a pages of notes and new things to share with you all about what I learned about the Legislative Branch.
First, lets talk about how the branch is broken up. The Legislative Branch is broken up in two separate branches: the House of Representatives and the Senate. Both have meetings about laws and currently as well as have a majority of Republicans, but they both differ in more ways than they are similar. Let’s talk about the House of Representatives first; The House of Representatives is currently made up of mostly Republicans, whose parties are based on their own ideologies and what their state voted them in for. The House has 435 members, and each of the members get a 2 year term. After their two years come up, they can either run again or just give up their seat to another person that was voted in. Since the majority of this party is Republican right now the rules and scheduling of the house of representatives is left to Republicans. To get very specific on how they differ, the House has policy specialists, while the Senate has Policy generalists. Policy specialists are people that know alot about a small amount of topics, while policy generalists are people that know a little about many things The Senate They also have a Speaker of the house, which is currently Paul Ryan. Now for the Senate. The Senate is also controlled by the Republican party (the majority), but the senate is not based on population like in the House. Senate is always 2 senate members per state, so even though there may be a lot of people in California and only a little in Montana, they both have 2 senate members per state. When it comes to debating, the House can debate for only an hour before their meeting must come to a close, but the Senate can debate literally forever. If a senate member starts filibustering, and just rants for a really long time talking about anything that could relate to the bill or tax at hand, then unless 2/3rds of senate votes for them to be quiet, they can stall the bill for up to 24 hours. To conclude, the House of Representatives and the Senate have very different jobs, but they are also similar in some ways. I hope this post has helped you learn more about this topic and helps you learn more about the government that Americans live in everyday. |
AuthorHere is all of the material that I post on Senior year of High School. I also have postings from Junior and Sophomore year which I posted in back during 2015-18 |