Final Presentations!!!!!!!

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Last week we completed our final presentations. I was so nervous to present, especially since our group had so many people come to watch us. We have the most sponsors out of any group plus we had parents and members of the City of Chelsea's Board of Health came as well. I really don't like presenting so having all these extra people there watching made it worse.

This being said I think our presentation went amazing. No one messed up what they were supposed to say or needed to use their note cards for reference. Many people asked us questions and I fell that we handled them in a way that showed that we had a good grasp of our project and knew what we were talking about. I am glad that it is over and that I no longer have to worry about presenting or editing the presentation. It was exciting to see the team do so well, but I am glad that it is over.

The Ultimate!

The day that our group had been preparing for a very long time had finally come.  We practiced our presentation so many times that we could say it in our sleep along with learning every fact about climate change and Chelsea. Our group nailed the presentation along with taking full control of all of the questions that were asked.  In my opinion, it was apparent that no matter which member of the team answered a question, we all knew the material so we could all answer them.  We presented at the Marriott Courtyard in Boston.  Before the presentation, we had a reception with some tasty food that did widen our pallet other than just Chipotle, Cosi and food trucks.

Our group presenting our Final Project

Following the reception, the night was started with some words from Dean Vaz, and our Advisors Professor Mathisen and Professor Tuler.  Our group presented fourth and overall, all of the groups did very well.  All of the work that each group put into each of their projects was quite impressive.  We all got to show our project to each other, the sponsors, and our family and friends who came to watch. Personally, I was very happy that my mom made the trip to come see me present and my uncle Tony also traveled from MIT.  We of course had to take a selfie.

My Mom, Tony, and I at the Final Presentation

Our group was then announced following the group that worked with the Department of Environmental Protection and was introduced by Professor Tuler.  We had practiced a lot, and it all paid off.  Our group engaged the crowd when we spoke and we projected our voices to fill the room with our knowledge.  It was great to feed off of the crowd’s excitement and when we finished, the rush of adrenaline was amazing.  After, our group again showed our knowledge through the way we answered questions. 

Our group and the Sponsors talking after the Presentation

During the day, we had tweaked our presentation to the comments and practiced it throughout the day.  When we were not practicing, we were busy making edits to our final draft for our report for the deadline at 5 pm that day.  At the end of the day, or even the term now looking back at it, this has been such a rewarding experience.  I am thankful for the team that I was and the final outcome of the project.  The bonds and friendships that I made can last a lifetime and I am going to remember my experiences at the MIT Sea Grant College Program and the city of Chelsea forever.  The sponsors were very helpful throughout the project and we are also thankful for the help from Judy, Julie and the JohnsJ. As well as our advisors, Seth and Paul!

Kaven and Practice Presentation at Sea Grant!!!!

On Tuesday, we were at Kaven working all day long. It was a very long day, but we were able to get a lot done. We worked in our mapping, deliverable and report. We shared a pizza for food. Our group also went to the writting tutor to get advice on how to better organize our methodology. It was 11PM when we finally went home to get some rest for our practice presentation next day.

Morning

Night

On Wednesday, October 10th, we had our practice presentation at MIT Sea Grant. We were excited to present for the first time to our sponsors. We did some changes to our slides according to the feedback we got in our first practice presentation. We were a little nervous, but everything went very well. Then, one of our team members left... She [Jullian] fulfilled her dream of attending to THE BRUINS OPENER, holy cow! She had fun and sent us pics from there.

Lauren and Jill practicing before the presentation

Practice Presentation

On monday we practiced our final presentation in front of the other groups at the project center. I thought that we did a really good job of presenting. The group has really learned to conduct ourselves very well when presenting in front of a group. I feel that our group has a very good understanding of the project and were able to easily answer any questions that came along after we presented. We need to work on tightening up what we say a little bit some topics felt a bit repeated. We went a bit over on the time but that is okay. I think as long as we make sure that we clearly present everything on the slides and dont stumble over topics it should be around the ten minute time limit. Overall I think we did a really great job and after some minor edits to the project we are going to be ready to present in Boston on Thursday, although I am still a bit nervous.

Edits and The Toxic Tour

     Today we worked in making these changes, preparing the PowerPoint presentation for the final presentation next week and polishing our final deliverable. Later in the afternoon, we had the opportunity to go to the Toxic Tour. The Toxic Tour was in Dudley Sq., and it gave us the opportunity to learn about ACE and environmental justice; it was interesting to hear about this since we learned about the socioeconomic characteristics of Chelsea. The tour guide did an excellent job in showing us the community. We learned that there were no green spaces around Dudley Sq. and that the community had to get involved for them to be accommodated. We also learned about current issues such as transportation (mainly traffic, the lack of a train system, and pollution) and environmental issues. The Toxic Tour allowed us to learn more about environmental justice efforts in Roxbury and was a great bonding experience with one of our advisors and the other Boston IQP teams.

First draft of deliverables

Yesterday we had a meeting with our sponsor s and our contacts in Chelsea to present our first draft of deliverables. The meeting went really well and our contacts in Chelsea were really excited to see what the final product is shaping up to be. It was a big relief to hear them say that they that they like it. One thing we did discuss it excluding some sections from the guidelines that are going to the Planning Board, Zoning Board and Conservation Commission and only give the full guideline with extra information to the Planning and Development department.  We still have a few more pieces of information to add.We plan on sending out the guidelines to an engineer to help us see if there is anything we may be overlooking when it comes to concerns and disadvantages that come with certain adaption. But overall yesterday was a very good meeting and was very exciting.

Also Professor Tuler called our team the best dressed team in the Boston IQP!!!!! 

Working in our Background section - Writing Center @WPI

This past Tuesday, we had the opportunity to attend to a writing tutoring session with the Writing Center at WPI. This meeting made us rethink what we have in the background section. We learned a lot of good tips on how to organize the information. We will remove some information that is not relevant to our project anymore and then add new information. We will also change the whole structure of our background section. 

It was very helpful to our team to hear the opinion of Nathan, a student that already went through IQP. Nathan shared stories from his own IQP experience and helped us to address some of the comments that we got from our advisors.

Working in improving the organization of our background section - Writing Center @ WPI

Hard Work, Getting Rewarded!

On September 25^th, our team conducted a phone interview with the chairman of the planning board of Chelsea.  Our group was excited to get more feedback from the boards that we were writing the guidelines for.  The phone interview gave our team some important insight that we did not consider so it modified the scope of the project for our team.  Our team had also been working more on how we were analyzing our interviews.  This is where this last interview had a little bit of a difference than the rest.  The interview was not as accepting of climate change and there was some skepticism surrounding the topic. Our team put in a lot of hours on the train, doing work after midnight on the train ride home from the Red Sox game.

Working on the train after a Red Sox game.

After most of the transcripts for all of the interviews were completed, our team organized the data into matrices so it was easier to compare the answers to similar questions and to make sure we could fully look at each interview.  The answers from the interviews will be used to help make the guidelines and the recommendations the most accommodating and the most fitting for the city of Chelsea for them to be able to use.   It is pretty neat to see how far the project has come and how much the project has changed.  The group overall has gotten a lot stronger and the group has grown significantly along with the project.  It will be exciting to see how the project goes down the final stretch.

The IQP team with Mookie Betts during the NESN telecast!

While typing up the final interview transcript for the phone interview on Sunday, during the Red Sox / Yankees game on NESN, our team was selected as the #NESNFANPHOTO of the game.  That was cool to get our teams picture on the TV and to spread awareness of Climate Change with Mookie Betts!  Our team could not believe that we were on the TV screen!

Fenway Funday!

Wednesday was a really busy day for our team. We started our day off by rearranging and editing our background chapter. We're really excited now about the changes we've made and we finally feel like everything is falling into place. Reading over the changes that we made on Wednesday, I'm really excited about the report we've been working on!

Making use of the projector to go over our background chapter!

At 1pm we had our sponsor meeting and were really excited to go over our team's progress. Santiago showed all the mapping data that he's created so far and we learned about which colors we should use on the maps to make them most effective.We went over all the sensitivity analysis tables we created, the interview matrices and we were able to share a lot of what we learned through our busy schedule of interviews last week. I felt that this was our most productive meeting and that both our advisors and sponsors were really pleased with the progress we've made.

Leaving our meeting, we emailed out our background chapter and headed out for some really fun team bonding! We spent the rest of the day at Fenway Park watching the Red Sox play the Tampa Bay Rays. This is something our team has been planning since ID 2050, and I was really excited to finally get to see the Red Sox this season (even though they're having a really bad year). It was "Fan Photo Day" and so we got to stand on the field and take pictures with a lot of the players.

Santiago and I, with Red Sox third baseman Garin Cecchini,
before he hit his first major league home run 

This was even more special because it was Santiago's first baseball game and first time at Fenway; he even got on the jumbo tron! 

The Red Sox ended up winning 11-3, even while starting 7 rookies! It was an awesome night of baseball, hot dogs, singing and de-stressing, after a really positive and productive day of working on our project.

Going over our agenda and the notes from the meeting while in our seats!

Boston Harbor Cruise

     

     On Monday September 22nd, our team attended a Boston Harbor Cruise with the other groups from the Boston IQP Group and our advisor Prof. Tuler. It was very enjoyable since the day was very nice out, and it allowed us to have a break from work.  We had the chance to share our team accomplishments with other teams and to get to know more of Boston. It was interesting to see all the ships in the port and how everything looks from the sea. This cruise also gave us the chance to see more of Boston. We also learned about the progress of other groups; it is impressing to realize how much can be done in a week.