My favorite part of this project was learning about the Vietnam War and the people that served in the war. I loved looking at the Gulf of Tonkin Incident documents to decide who I thought had started the war. The Things They Carried By Tim O'Brien taught me so many different perspectives about soldiers during the Vietnam war. Even though it was a novel, the way Tim O'Brien wrote the stories made it feel like it was all true, and you had this connection with the characters he wrote about. This project happened at a perfect time because the Ken Burns Vietnam documentary had just come out. The documentary is interesting and captivating. It was helpful in understanding how things happened chronologically during The Vietnam War. The most eye-opening and amazing experience I had during this project was getting to talk to Calixto and hear his amazing emotional stories. Calixto told us about shooting a member of the Viet Cong. He also told us about the time he got shot twice and had to crawl his way to safety in a dried out rice paddy. It was heart-wrenching to see him talk about his experiences and watch him be brought to tears. Learning about The Vietnam War made me extremely interested in it because I learned so much about the horrors that soldiers faced.
To show the vast amount of knowledge we learned from this project we decided that a simple stand and present exhibition would not do justice, so we conducted empathy interviews and went through the design thinking process to create a jaw-dropping exhibition. Our exhibition was a journey through 6 different rooms that all exhibited different parts of the time during The Vietnam War. The first room was a look into an American living room during The Vietnam War. There was an excellent video showing the anti-communist propaganda the government showed the people in America. There also was some great acting that showed how many families felt when their sons were sent to the war. The second room was a foggy jungle that showed what the soldiers were experiencing. There were Viet Cong traps and barrels of Agent Orange, and there was also a hurt soldier that had been wounded by some type of Viet Cong weapon. The third room was a look into the brain of a soldier. We got to experience what was going through their heads while they were in Vietnam and what happened in their heads when they came back from Vietnam. We also shared first-hand accounts of Veterans and their stories. The fourth room looked at the Vietnamese perspective. We got to see what the Viet Cong fighters wore, we learned about famous Vietnamese people and got to see how people felt about the war and the US involvement. The fifth room was about the deep division that America was experiencing. There were people protesting and anti-war songs performed by students. The sixth and final room was a room for people to reflect on what they had learned.There were more Veteran interviews and some places for people to leave feedback.
I took on a project manager role for our exhibition. I hoped that my skill to complete tasks by the deadline would be useful and it was. I learned how to use this skill of completing tasks but also how to have a little bit of fun in the process. I also worked on being nice and helping my peers complete their tasks as well. Being a project manager was hard because I was so excited to build a room of my own and have something that had my name on it. The point of a project manager was to make sure every room was as good as it could be, and I knew that was more important. During my experience of being a project manager, I had to gain a new skill to be able to refine others work. I was already really good at finding problems with my work but I had to gain the skill of making other people’s work better. Another huge thing I had to work on in this project was the empathy part at the beginning where we decided what our exhibition should be like. At the beginning of the project I was not good about taking other people's perspective into what our final project should be like but by the end of empathy interviews I started to understand how asking people what they like in exhibitions can make our exhibitions better. The biggest skill I strengthened during this project, was the skill to do empathy interviews and I realized how important those can be.
I think this project strengthened my idea that there are no winners in war. I saw how Veterans were killed and scarred mentally and physically. I read about how the government leaders reputations were destroyed and how they did awful things just to win the war. Even the winners of The Vietnam War lost so many of their people on their side. The Vietnamese civilians that had no involvement in the war were bombed and killed. Even the land that the battle was fought on was destroyed. To this day so many years after the war, there are still negative effects on the land from the herbicides that were used by the US. I have learned that my idea that no one wins in war is definitely true. I have heard many different people talk about how awful the memories of war are for the veterans that fought but I had no idea how awful it actually was. Listening to veterans talk about the things that they did and the things that happened to them in the war was so amazing and also so terrifying. I also got to learn about the panic the US felt from the red scare and the propaganda that was fed to the US civilians. I think it was crazy to see how exaggerated the US government said the communist threat was. Another part of this project that opened my eyes was getting to read some of the documents about the war from different sources and to see how much they contradicted each other. This project opened my eyes to so much, and I’m grateful I got to participate in it.
To show the vast amount of knowledge we learned from this project we decided that a simple stand and present exhibition would not do justice, so we conducted empathy interviews and went through the design thinking process to create a jaw-dropping exhibition. Our exhibition was a journey through 6 different rooms that all exhibited different parts of the time during The Vietnam War. The first room was a look into an American living room during The Vietnam War. There was an excellent video showing the anti-communist propaganda the government showed the people in America. There also was some great acting that showed how many families felt when their sons were sent to the war. The second room was a foggy jungle that showed what the soldiers were experiencing. There were Viet Cong traps and barrels of Agent Orange, and there was also a hurt soldier that had been wounded by some type of Viet Cong weapon. The third room was a look into the brain of a soldier. We got to experience what was going through their heads while they were in Vietnam and what happened in their heads when they came back from Vietnam. We also shared first-hand accounts of Veterans and their stories. The fourth room looked at the Vietnamese perspective. We got to see what the Viet Cong fighters wore, we learned about famous Vietnamese people and got to see how people felt about the war and the US involvement. The fifth room was about the deep division that America was experiencing. There were people protesting and anti-war songs performed by students. The sixth and final room was a room for people to reflect on what they had learned.There were more Veteran interviews and some places for people to leave feedback.
I took on a project manager role for our exhibition. I hoped that my skill to complete tasks by the deadline would be useful and it was. I learned how to use this skill of completing tasks but also how to have a little bit of fun in the process. I also worked on being nice and helping my peers complete their tasks as well. Being a project manager was hard because I was so excited to build a room of my own and have something that had my name on it. The point of a project manager was to make sure every room was as good as it could be, and I knew that was more important. During my experience of being a project manager, I had to gain a new skill to be able to refine others work. I was already really good at finding problems with my work but I had to gain the skill of making other people’s work better. Another huge thing I had to work on in this project was the empathy part at the beginning where we decided what our exhibition should be like. At the beginning of the project I was not good about taking other people's perspective into what our final project should be like but by the end of empathy interviews I started to understand how asking people what they like in exhibitions can make our exhibitions better. The biggest skill I strengthened during this project, was the skill to do empathy interviews and I realized how important those can be.
I think this project strengthened my idea that there are no winners in war. I saw how Veterans were killed and scarred mentally and physically. I read about how the government leaders reputations were destroyed and how they did awful things just to win the war. Even the winners of The Vietnam War lost so many of their people on their side. The Vietnamese civilians that had no involvement in the war were bombed and killed. Even the land that the battle was fought on was destroyed. To this day so many years after the war, there are still negative effects on the land from the herbicides that were used by the US. I have learned that my idea that no one wins in war is definitely true. I have heard many different people talk about how awful the memories of war are for the veterans that fought but I had no idea how awful it actually was. Listening to veterans talk about the things that they did and the things that happened to them in the war was so amazing and also so terrifying. I also got to learn about the panic the US felt from the red scare and the propaganda that was fed to the US civilians. I think it was crazy to see how exaggerated the US government said the communist threat was. Another part of this project that opened my eyes was getting to read some of the documents about the war from different sources and to see how much they contradicted each other. This project opened my eyes to so much, and I’m grateful I got to participate in it.