Being from such a powerful, isolated nation such as the United States, I often forget that there are millions of people struggling to find food, shelter, or safety. Impoverished people go through daily struggles whether it is starvation or alcohol/drug addiction. One group of people that is most ignored, forgotten about, is in my back yard. This is the Native Americans. Coming from Native American descent, I have always been interested in bettering the lives of those less fortunate than me. Although I do follow up with different cultural practices, in no way can I relate to the struggles that are found on the reservation. The Native American community struggles with mass amounts of alcohol abuse, domestic violence, and much more. Poverty strikes throughout and there is little to no way out which leads to a cycle of bad living conditions. This cycle must be broken and it is vital that there must be an awareness of what life on the reservation is really like. Cultural appropriation is covering natives which causes a blind eye on what it is really like to hold indigenous blood. It is time for this to change and a movement must be made.

In order to break the cycle of poverty and alcohol abuse, there must be a path of escaping. It is hard because not only do natives feel staying full blood is crucial for their future, but it also will take a lot of time and money. Most natives do not want to leave the reservation which means that change wold have to happen in their backyard. This could be funding Native American education, introducing a more competitive form of sports, and much more that is regularly found in our school systems. An idea that I believe will help break the cycle is a shooting competition that goes around different tribes. Competitions will be held throughout various tribes and, eventually, it will come down to one winner. Not only will there be pride and bragging rights, the winner receives a money award from the revenue brought in. I chose shooting because, not only is it affordable, but gun culture is a large piece of native history. This connection between important American Indian history and innovative sport competitiveness will spark interest of many and offer a way out of the poverty cycle found in reservations.

As a young person growing up in a world of technology, I have not been able to experience and event without trying to capture it with my cell phone. When going to concerts, sunset, or even vacation, I am surrounded by the clicking of phone camera’s or “hey that was a good picture.” I am not one who enjoys technology or trying to get the “perfect picture.” I have an old man mentality where I live in the moment and when its done, all I have left of it is a memory. I do take pictures sometimes but I maximize the “living in the moment” movement.

When seeing the picture of the Vatican, it almost makes me sad seeing all those cameras out and looking at the moment through a phone. From this it is a question of whether or not young people have an unhealthy reliance on our smart device. The answer to this is yes, we do. With a thirteen year old sister I see the difference between my childhood of playing in the woods and hers, watching shows on her ipad. This lack of hands on experience not only has physical effects on the body, but it is creating a world where we are more comfortable “DMing” or tweeting to people rather than talking to them. It has not made much of a difference yet but in the near future we will see change that I do not predict to be too good. We can not walk around without our phone anymore and feel uncomfortable or naked without them. It is insane how fast this new technology is developing and I do not like the dependence on technology we as people are starting to have.

Although I do not like the technology, it is something we all must deal with and adapt with. There is no point in fighting against technology so it must be adopted in our lives. It is not all bad; technology serves as a great connection device and can bring us together. We see different sides of everything whether through a picture, video, Facetime, etc. Without technology, understandings of each other would be masked. To be conservative with it, technology can be a good thing.

By watching the videos about Design Thinking, I furthered my knowledge on how to invent a product that will be successful. The different stages of producing an item that will sell are all included and clearly stated step by step. Not only that, Design Thinking provides an outline on where to even start your innovation. It is an organizer as to how to attract customers and state your mission.

How might we feel better about ourselves and happier for the patrons of the Solomon Pond Mall and the town of Marlborough by designing a new waste management system that benefits the environment with the installation of recycling.

The design thinking-outline was a great help in keeping my mission clear and easy to follow. Although I am not making a physical product, design thinking still relates to my Innovations project and I will continue to use this process in the future.

As I have been looking around for the past couple of days I have realized some issues that must be acted upon. One of the top issues have I noticed is that the Solomon Pond Mall does not offer recycling as a form of waste management. The mall produces thousands of pounds of trash in a day in the food court and whether the object is recyclable or not, it is thrown in mainstream trash. Although a physical object would not come out of this project, the installation of recycling in a producer of waste this big would have a huge impact on many different areas of environmental protection and overall cleanliness. Another problem that caught my attention was the lack of environmental classes and involvement in public schools. It seems to me that schools are focusing on advancements in technology and are slowly forgetting about the more natural sides of science. Although technology is a vital part in our lives and it is important in strengthening this topic, I would like to see more inclusion of environmental topics found in a limited selection of electives such as Environmental Science. The last issue that I came up with was how much the cold weather affects the battery life of a phone. Now that it is winter, many phones start to die way faster than they would any season. The drainage of battery that fast is nothing but annoying and a nuisance. I thought, maybe I could invent a case that has the capability of controlling a healthy temperature around the phone so that the cold has little to no affect of the battery life.

I am still trying to choose between whether to act upon the lack of recycling at Solomon Pond Mall or my idea of a temperature controlling phone case. Installing recycling at the mall would strongly benefit the environment but the phone case idea would be beneficial to not only technical standards, but personal too. Over the next week I will come to a decision but at the moment I am not sure.

Being given an endless amount of money and all the time I could ask for I would definitely travel the Pacific Islands on a surf trip. This trip would focus on finding the best surfing spots and exploring different cultures across the world. Camping on the beach with my closest friends, we would go wherever we wanted whenever we wanted and only focus on having a good time. Meeting locals from each area, I would hope that I can understand, first hand, some of the thousands of different cultures and beliefs in each area traveled.

Not only enjoying my time traveling through the Pacific Islands, I would also want to donate high amounts of money to environmental protection and sustainability programs that could benefit the decaying health of our environment (land and water). Overall, I would hope that my trip through the Pacific Islands would not only benefit me, but the people and environment around me.

Thanks for joining me!

Good company in a journey makes the way seem shorter. — Izaak Walton