From September 2023 to March 2024, I attended five sessions of the Teaching Cleveland Student Challenge for the second year. Throughout the sessions, I especially enjoyed hearing from local entrepreneurs and business owners and their efforts to innovate in various fields. This experience was also a great way for me to meet students from other schools, such as Hawken and Laurel. For our fifth and final session, we were tasked with developing a final project that displayed our team's unique idea for Cleveland's 2025 expo - a modern twist on a former event that displayed Cleveland's industrial prominence. Our team developed the theme of T2ch216 and created a video in which we displayed local corporations and businesses that are pioneers in Cleveland's technology field, including Cleveland Clinic and Playhouse Square. I greatly enjoyed my time at these sessions, especially because they offered a great segway into my second semester Rebuilding Cleveland class. 

I was a part of the VECTOR Explorations Cohort from November 2021 to November 2022. My first experience was listening to guest speaker Dr. Nolan Holland, in which he talked about what his career as an engineer entails. Overall, I found this experience to be underwhelming and not something I was looking for in a future career. It was hosted by Dr. Turk for one hour. 

I was also a part of the Mayfield Chamber Leadership Academy during my freshman year. We met in various places around Mayfield to discuss topics such as finance, entrepreneurship, and teamwork. This took place from December 2021 until April 2022 and was five sessions for a total of 10 hours. 

Lastly, I listened to lawyer Ell Connally during sophomore year. She gave me more insight into what it means to be a lawyer and what a day in the life of a law student looks like. This helped me shift toward enrollment in the Community Engagement and Law cohort instead of the Science and Medicine cohort, which I was originally interested in. 

My experiential learning hours in VECTOR have been incredibly valuable for me during my high school years and I look forward to exploring summer opportunities heading into 2023. 

From mid-June to early August 2023, I participated in an internship program with an organization called Youth Opportunities Unlimited. They helped me find an internship based on my interests, which were journalism and law. After my summer vacation, they found a place for me at FutureHeights, the publisher and distributor of the Heights Observer, a local newspaper. During my time there, I would work from home and go to the office, learning from people who worked for the paper in crafting my own story. I eventually had my own story published in the paper, which was an introduction to myself and what I would be doing. After, I helped to create the Observer's very own Facebook page, which was essential in helping the Observer gain a wider audience online. I stopped in early August as cross-country practice and the school year were beginning.

From September 2022 to March 2023, I attended the Teaching CLE Student Challenge hosted by the Greater Cleveland Partnership along with four other Gilmour students. Over the course of five sessions, we learned about Cleveland's industrial history, environmentalism, and post-industrial Cleveland. Several other schools also attended, including HB, Hawken, North Royalton, and Lakewood. I especially benefited from the many guest speakers that joined us for a few sessions, including county executive Chris Ronayne. During the fifth and final session, we were tasked to present an environmental plan that would benefit the city of Cleveland. As a team, we decided to focus on bus stops because they are primarily ignored around the Gilmour area. Our proposal included green roofing and more shelter for Clevelanders who use the RTA regularly. While I didn't initially plan on studying Cleveland's environmental history, I greatly benefited from these sessions and would definitely attend another program offered by GCP.