Jonathan Andreoli Senior Spring Project
About Me
Hi I'm Jonathan, and I've been going to BB&N since Kindergarten. For my SSP, I focused on trying new things and building community at BB&N. I spent my SSP trying filmmaking, cooking, learning about the Beatles, and playing tennis. I made sure I had lots of time to spend with my friends and that I would have fun during my time at SSP.
Mid Point Reflection:
My SSP has been off to a great start. I’ve had a lot of free time, but I’ve also had a lot of work to do. I’m realizing that many of my SSP activities are up to me to stay on top of and ensure I finish on time.
For my short cinematic film, for example, I spent the first two weeks just learning the basics of using a camera and learning how to edit. This was very helpful, but now I just need to make sure the film gets finished on time. I am working with my friend Carl, so we have been keeping each other on task and creating timelines to make sure we have a good schedule.
For the other film I’m making (the “Day in the Life” documentaries of BB&N faculty), it also took a week or two to learn the basics, but we have started making a lot of progress at the end of last week and this week. We interviewed our first subject, Dennis Keller. Dennis is a bus driver at BB&N, and he had lots of insightful things to say during our interview. I feel confident now in my editing skills and I know exactly what I have to do to make sure the film comes out well.
One of my favorite parts of my SSP so far is my Cultural Cooking. My friends and I have been meeting every week to cook a new meal. So far we have made pasta, and then dumplings and spring rolls. The food has turned out surprisingly well compared to my standards for my friend group. It has been comforting to have a scheduled time to see my friends each week and the cooking itself has been very fun. Now I feel more confident to make these meals for myself in the future.
My Beatles seminar has also been very interesting. It sometimes can be hard to go to the seminar on Tuesday nights, but I have enjoyed learning about the Beatles. I chose this seminar because I always knew who the Beatles were and knew that they were famous, but I had never dived deep into their music. My uncle once tried to get me interested in the Beatles, but I never did. Now, I’ve been going through the Beatles’ music catalog and listening to every song as a part of the seminar. It has been very interesting and I am excited to continue listening to all of the songs!
Finally, I have been coaching the middle school tennis team as my community service pillar. Getting more opportunities to be involved with tennis is always rewarding for me. So far, I have gotten to know many of the kids. It is rewarding to know that they are looking up to me. I know several of them by name, but I would like to get to know all of them well in the next few weeks. Having conversations with them and teaching them so far has gone well.
To be honest, I have not started my book yet, but I bought it and am going to start soon! The story is a biography about a doctor who was diagnosed with cancer. He wrote this story while he knew he was going to pass away and writes about the irony of going from a doctor to a patient and about the beauty of life. The book was published posthumously. I am very excited to start reading it and take away many messages that can be applied to my own life.
My SSP has been running very smoothly and I have little complaints or regrets. As I said earlier, the only thing that I will say is that I could have maybe been a little more detailed when planning out both of my films. It took about two weeks to really get in the flow of things, which was not entirely accounted for. For my cinematic film, we are changing the content of the film from what we originally put down on the form. When filling out the form, I knew that details such as the content of the film were subject to change. So I don’t regret taking two weeks to future out what I’m doing and finding a direction to go in. Now, we are planning on making films about everyday objects with narration in the background. Today, actually, Carl and I took lots of videos of pens and have put together some pretty satisfying clips! There is a lot of room for creativity in this project and I’m excited to see where it will go. I’ve always wanted to pick up filmmaking, so I’m glad that was my new experience for SSP. The documentary is also going well and I am really enjoying editing it! At first, the editing process can be tedious, but it can be fun to be creative.
It has been good to see my classmates during class meetings. So far I have enjoyed class meetings, but I would appreciate time to be social. Maybe if we had more opportunities to get up, walk around, and talk to people, that would be appreciated. During SSP it is hard to interact with classmates other than your best friends. During class meetings, everyone is there, but there is not much time to interact with them before everyone has to go back to their next commitment. So some time to socialize (not for long but maybe just for a few minutes) could be a great addition to our weekly meetings.
Overall SSP is going great and is going by quickly! I’m excited for the rest of it but I hope it doesn’t go by too quickly!
Final Reflection:
SSP has been a great experience from me. I really enjoyed having the free time and being able to do what I wanted for eight weeks. It gave me an opportunity to work on things that I would never have had the time to do. My favorite part was probably making the BB&N Behind the Scenes videos. One of my favorite projects from my BB&N career was the Junior profile, and this project was very similar to that, just in another form. It was very rewarding to connect with people that I see every day, but don't normally connect with them in this way. I really enjoyed seeing how the buses got ready in the morning, and seeing how the kitchen staff cooked the meals in the morning, even if it was at 5am. I realized that everything in the kitchen is homemade, from every hand-cut vegetable in the salad bar to every different soup each day. It gave me a new perspective and appreciation for the food we eat every day. I also really liked the filmmaking aspect of it. It was exciting to take all of the footage and cut it down into a 3 minute film. It was very challenging at the start, but I got into the groove later on. The cooking was also very fun. It was good to have scheduled time where all of my friends (11 of us) could be sure to see each other. The food was also amazing. I will be using those skills in the future. I would recommend that future seniors similarly choose to partake in their own independent projects. SSP gives you so much time to do anything you want. I would recommend choosing something that you've been wanting to do, or just thought about, and pursuing it in depth during SSP. There's no other chance you get like SSP. I would also recommend making sure you are on top of your own plans. It's easy to let things slip away as the weeks go on, but it's honestly so much more rewarding if you stay on top of it. SSP helped me become more independent and also more creative. For all of my school years, teachers would tell me what to do, and what assignments to complete, but for the first time, I got to choose what I wanted, and had full control of how it came out.
My book was called When Breath Becomes Air. It was about a doctor who developed cancer and wrote a memoir that published after he passed. It was sad but very insightful. It showed me what the life of a doctor was like, which is very similar to my academic interests. But at the same time, it was very interesting to hear his perspective on life. It connected to my SSP because I tried to learn about other perspectives through my BB&N Behind the Scenes project.
