Just a reminder...

Dissemination Efforts

I am sharing my Gaia work through my local community by hosting gatherings and bringing my projects to life.  I have had a wild foraging excursion with friends and a harvest dinner with the items that were foraged.  I have also built a mini-greenhouse and had people join in in making their own small greenhouse with me.  I provided insight into the importance of a greenhouse and foraging.  I feel like this adds value to their lives living in a city and knowing they can be sustainable or make efforts into introducing ecology into their daily lives in a simple manner.

Goals and Closing the Loops

These are some of my more specific goals I want to focus on throughout my Capstone year.  I chose to make a closed loop system.  A closed loop is a complete cycle that feeds off of itself without exterior influences to continue and keep working until a full cycle is made, and the process repeats.  Each one of my goals needs each other and intertwine to function at their full potential.  This interdependence is what establishes my closed loop system.

Professional goals

The goals I have chosen to work on are: improve communication, networking, use good questions, observe more, track progress, and see patterns.  These goals serve many functions and create a closed loop system.  If I observe more and see patterns it will help me develop questions.  If I then use good questions I will improve my communication skills.  I will use these communication skills to network with others.  When it is all said and done I will track my progress with tools I have created (and you will learn about on the next tab).  I will also be able to track my observations and patterns which will be resourceful. With these goals I feel like my confidence will rise in public settings and I will be able to competently speak or ask specific questions because of focusing on observation and patterns to improve my communication.

Niche Analysis Explained

I have gleaned this niche idea off of another Gaia associate, Simha Bode.  I found it when I was looking at other associates LIPD's to get some ideas for mine.  I really liked the concept of it and it felt like a good way to reflect on my skills in a personal and professional way.  This niche analysis embodies the skills and passions that I continually put attention towards in my life.  I feel like it rounds out who I am as a whole by diving into the specific categories and labeling my talents within them.  I would like to re-evaluate this niche analysis every year to keep it current and up-to-date to reflect who I am in the moment.

Skillflex Assessment

In the image below I have displayed my skills that I would like to work on throughout this year.  I have chosen to split the categories by color, you can see the categories in the key located on the upper right hand side of the graphic.  I will address these skills during my Capstone year in my project work, professional work, and in my personal life.   I have designated more attention on languages, IT technology and sustainable agriculture however.  My reasonings behind this choice is due to the fact I want to move abroad, focus on urban ecology, and one of my output goals is to focus on creating a more mixed-media output.

Some of these professional skills tend to combine with my peer, personal and project goals. The skills that I have and the skills that I desire to have will help me achieve my highest potential in life.  They will help me: give a public speech (maybe in another language!), organize and facilitate, check-in with others and myself, expand my critical thinking and receiving as well as giving constructive criticism.  I feel like the skills are very well-rounded and can be sought out in many different area.  They can help with building a community, starting a women's group, initiating a gathering, running for the green party, building a garden (especially in the city).  To me those examples are a variety of peer, personal, professional and political pathways I can take with the skill-flexes that I have or desire to achieve. 

Tracking my Skillflexes

Disclaimer: Please do not fill out the form above as it tracks my own personal data.  Feel free to make your own  application in your Google Drive account under Form.

I have created this chart to track my skillflexes throughout my year.  I will have to first pick which one(+) of the five categories it falls into.  The categories are: IT Technology, Languages, written & communications, sustainable agriculture, and organization.  I will then state my specific attention (i.e. spanish, interviews, mahara).  After that in the next box I will describe the specific way I used the skill.  The next three columns pays attention to the skill-levels. It will be used to see where I am currently at on skills and where I ended up and where I had anticipated on being.  The highest a skill level can obtain is a 10, the lowest is a 1.  Once a skillflex is at 10 it would be considered Mastered.  The last column is for me to mark which outputs I felt the skills were used in or had attention towards the specific skills.  I will include this tracking chart in each output from here on out.