Blog Post No. 1: A Worthwhile Challenge

    Have you ever heard of 20 Time projects? You get 20% of your class time to work on a project of your choice. And I don't know about you, but that is the last thing I want to hear my teacher say. Not only could I fail the project, but I could fail choosing the project—I could fail before I even started!

    And thus, I began my 3-hour long internet search for "interesting purposeful hobbies". I needed a worthwhile challenge. So I eventually chose to start something that I've been wanting to do for a while but never had the right push to actually do something about it.

    At first, I had thought about learning computer programming.

    

    I've spent some time in the past learning to code, but never quite had enough time for it (just like with all my other hobbies) between work, family, and school. This project seemed like the perfect opportunity. I would be doing school work and pursuing something I love, all at once.

    But something was nagging at me from the back of my head, telling me that this project was more than just an opportunity to pursue my personal interests. That I should be helping others as I helped myself.

    Then, there was the idea of organizing a monthly park cleanup. Now there’s something that’ll count as giving back to my community, I thought. It was a challenge worth 20% of my time. I would be creating flyers, gathering supplies, spending hours in the park with people I care about while helping the environment.

    But my heart wasn’t really in it. Don’t get me wrong—park cleanups are a wonderful use of time and I have incredible respect for all who organize and participate in them. But I believe that if your heart isn’t committed to something, you won’t be doing your task justice.

    So I kept thinking and looking for a challenge that I could be passionate about and use to help my community.

    And then, it hit me.

    ASL (American Sign Language) has been a passion of mine for a couple of years now (check the About Me tab for the whole story).

    It relies equally on signing, and facial expressions and body language. So even for people who have no use for signing, they can still use the other half in their everyday life. How many times have you implied something or had someone else imply something from your facial expressions, only for those interpretations to be wrong? This causes so much miscommunication, and I believe that almost everyone can learn something from sign language.

    Not only that, but ASL is just so much fun! If you love to dance (badly) just as I do, ASL is going to be a blast and a half! You pretty much get to dance your thoughts out, and have someone else actually understand you!

    So I finally decided to share this passion and start an ASL club at my high school.

    I’m going to share my mistakes (hopefully there won’t be too many), my successes, lessons learnt, the connections I make with incredibly helpful people, and a couple of tips for people who might want to do something similar. 

    I hope you enjoy this as much as I do, as we make this journey together. And as we do, I hope that you might consider taking on a worthwhile challenge of your own. 😊