For the past few months we have been working in psychology to plan an event that would take place sometime during Mental Health Month in May. My team and I chose to focus on the demographic of middle schoolers and decided we wanted to plan an event regarding stress and anxiety and coping with that transitioning into high school. It was a strenuous process organizing the event entirely on our own since we needed to coordinate with leaders at River Middle School, find a licensed therapist to talk about stress & anxiety and coping mechanisms, and prep 3 high school students from different grades in our high school to take part in a panel. It took a lot of work trying to find a therapist to come in and help us with our project since everyone happened to be busy or didn’t respond to our emails. However, after reaching out to Jeni Olsen from Teens Connect in Napa, she was able to help us find a teen therapist who assisted us with our event. There was a lot of going back and forth with the teacher at River who was coordinating the event at River’s library but thankfully we got it all set up and it worked out! It was definitely a learning experience dealing with 120 8th graders ALL at the same time and trying to keep them quiet but I think that they all gained something out of it and it turned out alright.
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For the past year I have been heavily involved with a newly formed council in Napa: The Napa Youth Council. The Napa Youth Council is a group of youth from high schools across Napa working with Napa Public Health and Services to decrease the access and use of tobacco amongst the youth of Napa. We have worked on various projects throughout the year but our largest project took place today. We presented at a City Council meeting regarding updating our City’s Tobacco Control Grades of 2019. Each year the American Lung Association gives each county their tobacco control grades and Napa received an overall F. To raise our Tobacco Control Grades of 2019, the council created a 3 step process which we presented about to City Council.
We received a lot of support from Friday Night Live Chapters all across Napa and had a whole room of supporters with us this evening! An update on my Guardians of the Sea project in Environmental Science which just came to an end! To recap, my group and I decided to tackle two lesser-known pollutions: light and noise pollution which I discussed in one of my recent blog posts (https://hibahshafi.weebly.com/blog/guardians-of-the-sea).
After deciding we were going to focus on light and noise pollution and completing research, we developed our needs statement: “Napa’s riverfront businesses need to minimize the harmful impact they hold over the Napa River due to noise and light pollution because of it’s detrimental impact on marine life as well as humans.” After developing our needs statement we got to work and began researching the local impact of sound and light pollution but were unable to find anything on google so we ended up reaching out to several different local organizations all over Napa. Several of the organizations got back to us and provided us with some ideas, the most helpful being looking into Environmental Impact Reports of Businesses, but that was about it. The reason behind this was that there has not been any research into the effects humans and businesses in Napa have on the amount of sound and light pollution that there is in Napa. Knowing this information, we set out to do our own research. We walked around all over downtown Napa and recorded decibel levels close to the riverfront and found that the average reading we were getting was around 70 dB which is very high and at some places, we found that the reading was over 75 dB which can impair the hearing of marine life. We also walked around to different businesses and conducted a survey asking a few basic questions about the number of lights they used, where they were located, whether or not their lights were energy efficient, and asked them about the number of events they held with large volume levels per year. After weighing the different ideas we had: going dark in downtown after 10 for a week, speaking to city council about updating the questions on Environmental Impact Reports, and finding a solution, we decided to focus on awareness. Each person can contribute greatly to the amount of noise and light pollution generated and we wanted to educate people about what the problem was and how they could help. We decided Earth Day was the perfect platform for us to raise awareness about this lesser-known issue and got a booth where we had an interactive bingo, posters were people could write in how they could lessen the amount of noise and light pollution they generated, and an informative trifold. It was a huge success and a super fun project! I was not planning on completing any additional internships but after doing some reflecting, I thought it would be best to do another internship but this time in my desired career field: medicine. I have been interested in pursuing a career in the field of medicine ever since my grandfather was first diagnosed with Lung Cancer back when I was in eighth grade. I began going with him to all of his appointments with his thoracic surgeon and oncologist and formed a connection close enough with his thoracic surgeon that he gave me a tour of lung cancer research lab. It was really cool because he had a huge lab with so many successful researchers who I got to work with for a whole day and even got the opportunity to go in again and extract my own DNA! Ever since then, he has been a mentor who I am still in contact with. I decided to do my internship at the Queen of the Valley and after applying and interviewing I was one of the 3 people out of 15 others who got the internship! Originally, I was going to be working in the ER department but unfortunately after the health screening I had to do, I found that I was not immune to Hepatitis B despite receiving the vaccination when I was younger. Due to this, I was unable to interact with patients so instead I ended up working at the front desk. At the front desk I checked people in and assisted them with registering for ER’s, medical procedures, etc, provided people with directions, delivered flowers, and wheeled people around in wheelchairs. I was pretty intimidated at first and wanted to quit because of the amount of responsibility I was given but I slowly got the hang of it. I made several friends at the hospital including a few nurses, the woman who worked at the front desk, and with all the other front desk volunteers! There were always 3-4 other people volunteering at the front desk and I was kind of scared at them at first since everyone was well over the age of 70 so I thought they would be mean, but they were all so welcoming and nice. Overall, it was a super fun experience and I was sad to go but hopefully I’ll begin volunteering there again over the Summer! For the past few days, we have been having class discussions in Chicano Studies about walls. We were first introduced to the topic of walls when we were posed the question in class, “Do walls divide?” and were instructed to go to a side of the classroom based on our stance and to justify our opinion on the matter. I immediately thought of the Mexico border wall and decided that walls divide people, but in some instances, such as homes or classrooms, the purpose of walls is not to divide but to protect.
When it comes to the wall the president of the United States is trying to build at the Mexico/US border, I find it completely unnecessary. Building a wall was one of the current president’s key promises while campaigning and he is currently trying to deliver on that promise despite 59% of Americans disagreeing with it. He claims that the purpose of the wall is to “protect” American citizens from “rapists and drug dealers” and people who “steal jobs”. America was a country built by immigrants who work tirelessly to make a living and keep our country functioning. Immigrants are a HUGE part of our workforce and make up a whopping 17.1% of it. To address the other reasoning he provided: why is the president singling an entire race by calling them “drug dealers and rapists”? Are all Mexican immigrants rapists and drug dealers? The majority of them are looking to seek refuge in a first world country where they are able to better their lives and work. I believe that there is no substantial reasoning behind building a wall and it seems like it is being used as a tool to divide two neighboring countries and make it clear that immigrants are not welcome in America. If the purpose of the wall was to protect Americans, then border security could be increased, more cameras could be installed, and more border security officers could be hired. In Environmental Science, we are working on our latest project: Guardians of the Sea. In this project, we were posed with the question, “How can we make local changes to better support life underwater?” After pondering this question, in teams, we created a mind map on whiteboards to figure out what we wanted to focus on. Here is our mind map! After being placed in new groups and bouncing ideas between each other, my team decided to focus on lesser known types of pollution: noise and light pollution. Since Napa has a large hospitality and agricultural industry and noise and light pollution are problems that aren’t as well known or heard of as others, I decided it was a great idea and go forward with it. Noise pollution is a problem directly affecting the ocean because human-made noises can cause disruption in ecosystems in the Ocean. It was found by the Animal Welfare Institute that noise levels in the Ocean have doubled in the past decade, and have severely been affecting ocean life. Noises such as construction or shipping noises can disrupt an animal’s ability to find food and avoid predators. There are also several species that communicate with each other through noise, and they are unable to hear because of noise pollution. Some noises are even fatal to Ocean life. Light pollution is also a significant issue in our oceans. Light pollution in the Ocean is caused by light from cruise ships, oil rigs, and developments along the coast. Many marine species are guided by natural light patterns such as turtles, squid, and zooplankton. Artificial light is disrupting their migration patterns and influencing their behaviors. On a local level, we should take action and put our best efforts forth to prevent further light and noise pollution. My team and I have just started this project, but will keep you updated on our action plan! Crane, A., & Ferrari, M. (2018, April 10). The fishy problem of underwater noise pollution. Retrieved from https://www.earthtouchnews.com/oceans/oceans/the-fishy-problem-of-underwater-noise-pollution/ Ocean Noise. (n.d.). Retrieved from https://awionline.org/content/ocean-noise WilkinsonJun, A. (2015, June 26). Light pollution increasing in marine protected areas. Retrieved from https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2015/06/light-pollution-increasing-marine-protected-areas?r3f_986=https://www.google.com/ This Summer, I was hired by the Metropolitan Transportation Committee to intern at the Napa Valley Transportation Authority. The Napa Valley Transportation Authority (NVTA), serves as the county of Napa’s traffic congestion management agency and is in charge of improving the streets, highways, bicycle, and pedestrian walkways. It is also in charge of the Vine Transit Bus System. Over the Summer, I worked on several projects with influential community leaders in a professional atmosphere. I completed a miniature comprehensive operational analysis complete with suggested bus routes better suited for the youth of Napa and a ridership analysis, created a promotional video for the Napa Valley Vine Trail, attended board meetings, and assisted with events for the public. In addition, I worked with a select team of transportation interns across the Bay Area and we competed in a competition against all other interns in the Bay Area hired by the Metropolitan Transportation Committee. There were two parts to the competition, one took place in the opening meeting and was a team challenge where we worked to create a bridge and completed a quiz. The other more formal competition, was at MTC’s high school internship closing event and we were tasked with presenting all the work we completed over the Summer. My team won first place out of all eight teams at both competitions. The most memorable part of my Summer was learning to ride a bike. My dad tried to teach me when I was younger, but I had no interest. Over the Summer, I was forced to learn how to ride a bike since one of my tasks was biking on the Vine Trail. I hated it at first, but am now an avid biker!! This semester I took Environmental Science, a class studying environmental issues to find solutions so we are able to make a positive impact in our local community. This class started out as a class I took because I wanted an additional year of science credit, but quickly turned into much, much more. There were two major projects we started over the course of the semester: the Car Project, which I have blogged about before, and also the Garden Project. Both have been very enjoyable and I appreciate the community impact aspect of them and how I feel like I am able to make a difference with the work that I am doing. I found myself becoming very passionate about every project that we did because it felt like we were making an actual impact. In addition to extensive community outreach, I also really liked how Ms. Wolf started out each day with different warm-ups and brought up different things to discuss each morning that were relevant to what was currently going on in the news and found a way to connect it back to Environmental Science. It made the class much more interesting each day because what we talked about correlated with what was going on in the news. Overall, I have really enjoyed Environmental Science and can’t wait to finish planning our garden and beautifying spaces around our school! P.S. Here are my plant babies!! This semester I had the privilege of taking Chicano Studies: a course offered at my high school studying the Latino/a community’s contributions to the political, social, economic, and cultural development of the United States. Over the course of the semester, I got to learn about significant historical Latino/a figures ranging from artists to musicians, analyzed literature written by Latino/a authors, and critiqued paintings/murals by Latino/a artists. Some projects we did throughout the semester were: reading and analyzing Bless Me Ultima by Rudolfo Anaya, present on local murals painted by Latin American painters, learn about single stories, and create our own piece of artwork. As a class, we even got to take a trip to San Francisco where we ate Latin American food, attended the Dia De Los Muertos parade, and got to see the Pan American Unity Mural by Diego Rivera. Next semester, we will be painting our own mural in Downtown Napa. I really liked the discussion style setup of this class and how engaging it was. It did not seem boring nor did it seem to drag on as a lot of my other classes seem to, and I definitely learned something new every day. I especially enjoyed watching the films: La Familia and La Bamba. Prior to learning more about the historical struggles of the Latin American community in America, after watching these two films and through discussions in class, I became more aware of the hardships and struggles the Latino/a community had faced. It was not something I had been aware of before. There was also a few other things which surprised me. We had an artist, Arlene Valencia, come and speak to us about her struggles as an undocumented immigrant in Napa. The challenges she overcame were tremendous and came as a shock to me––I had never realized how privileged I was to have a social security number and how I had taken that for granted. She also went over a few of her paintings and some other artwork she has completed, which greatly interested me. Overall, this class has definitely been one of my favorite this semester and I’m so glad I decided to take it. |
AuthorHibah Shafi is a Senior at New Technology High School. Archives
May 2019
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