It's hard to believe I'm sitting here writing my very last senior project blog. This has been a long, time-consuming and, on occasion, stressful process, but also a rewarding one. I've learned a lot about a broad range of subjects, tackled some difficult questions and stretched my critical thinking and writing skills. 10 pages no longer seems like a lot for an essay, nor does a dozen cite sources. This experience has surely helped prepare me for college. I can, I hope, look back on the work I've done over the last four months with pride. I'm looking foreward to finishing my product over break and presenting it in mid-January.

Between now and then, of course, I'm going to have a very busy time of things. My first priority is college applications; it looks like I will need to do about one every day if I want to finish before leaving for a family vacation just after Christmas, which is my goal. . In addition, I still need to write an introductory text and edit all 25 pages of my final essay. I also am expecting to get back comments from my outside consultant, Sally Booth, which I hope to incorporate. It's going to be a lot of work, but not insurmountable.

That's about it. With a little dedication, these last pieces of my project can fall into place over the next 2+ weeks. It's been an interesting journey, one I'm sure I'll look back happily on...once it is finally over. Best wishes to everyone for the holidays, new year, senior project, college apps, and life in general. If there's one thing I learned this week, dealing with a rejection letter I didn't want to come, it is this: I have an amazing group of friends, a fantastic grade and awesome teachers. We're like a big support group. I don't know what I'd do without it. One way or another, I hope I can keep that spirit of community with me long after I graduate.

Maasalaamah for now,

David Kaner

My main goal moving foreward is maintaining enough inertia to finish this project. I feel like I'm sooo close, and yet my pace has been sort of slow. My essay is now 20 pages long, 2/3 of which Ms. Clark looked over on Fri. and gave me comments on, so I guess I could call this draft 2...maybe 1.5? I'm just a few paragraphs away from being finished, and I'm hoping we can discuss edits early next week. Hopefully, a final draft will be pretty quick in coming. I also need to write a brief introduction to complete my project; just a page or two about what I did and my overarching theme. Meanwhile, no word from Sally Booth yet; I'm hoping she managed to bring what I sent with her and will get back to me soon.

We're so close to break (and finding out about colleges on tuesday) I can barely stand it. In the interim, I know I just need to focus.

I'm moving along, I guess. From Thanksgiving break to now I've been able to get done most of the 1st draft of my 3rd essay, on the cityscape of Cairo. It sort of grew organically such that, though I expected to be done by now, I instead have a sprawling 15 page essay that still has a few pages to go. I'm dead-set on getting it done this weekend and then editing what I've done so far so I have a solid draft to hand to Ms. Clark next week. I also emailed what I had done by wed. to Sally Booth, my outside consultant, so she'd have something to look over during her trip to Bhutan. I still have a week and a half before I find out early decision results for college, so in the interim I'm prioritizing senior project over college apps. My goal for the time remaining until break is to have the essay I'm currently working on in a solid form. Once that happens, I can discuss with my mentor what my next steps are; i.e. is this enough, given my third essay was more in-depth than I originally planned for, or do I try to write a 4th piece before early January?