Today we have three more senior projects from SLO Classical Academy’s class of 2021-2022! Please click on the links at the end of their summaries to view their video presentations.
Hayden Eades: The Art of Grief: Creating a Short Film on the Process of Bereavement
My senior project is titled The Art of Grief: Creating a Short Film on the Process of Bereavement. For my project, I created a short film that ran for a total of seven and a half minutes. I wrote, edited, shot, and directed the entire film with one of my friends, Georgia Bischoff, cast as the main actress. I researched and read, as well as viewed films, both about the response that different people have to grief and the processes they go through. My final goal was to create a short film that covered the concept of grief and the death of a family member. I also wanted to gain some experience in directing, writing, and editing because it is what I hope to go into as a future career. This project helped me process my grief, and I hope it will create some meaningful responses in my viewers.
To view Hayden’s presentation, please click here.
Amea Haar: Don’t Just Complain: The Scholar to Scholar Program
According to the Harvard Graduate University Making Caring Common Project, “43% of young adults reported increases in loneliness since the outbreak of the pandemic.” The test participants felt that no one had cared about their well-being and, “according to a recent CDC survey, 63% of this age group are suffering significant symptoms of anxiety or depression.” It is clear something must be done to help meet this significant need, but what? Further research clarified how informative and important student relationships are in students’ mental health and success. Using this information, I came up with The Scholar to Scholar Program for SLOCA High School, which pairs experienced upperclass students with new lowerclass students to provide advice and help them ease into highschool. The point of the Scholar to Scholar Program is for students to receive support, not only from a teacher or parent, but from a fellow peer who has recently been in their shoes. An upperclassman can remind them that they are not alone and that they can survive and succeed in high school. Running a trial program my Senior Year came with many successes and obstacles. Overall, I learned a lot about not just complaining about situations that should be improved but taking action to change things for the better! I hope that you will be encouraged to do the same!
To view Amea’s presentation, please click here.
Sadie Richert: laudare te vult homo: Personhood and Praise in the Invocation of Augustine’s Confessions
Augustine of Hippo is perhaps the only bishop of a crumbling ancient empire who is praised today as knowing modernity “better than we know ourselves” (James K. A. Smith). While many study Augustine’s writing to illuminate the heresies he battled, the philosophies he reflected, and the Late Roman world he helped shape, countless others read his works because, even after eight centuries, they still speak with urgent relevance. Augustine’s Confessions is an especially momentous text: unifying liturgical monologues, historical chronologies, scriptural sermonettes, and personal revelations, while defying scholarly categorization.
For my project I analyzed Augustine’s original Latin in the invocation introducing Confessions. I have diverged in my research both from those who view Augustine’s insight as confined to the ancient world—thereby running the risk of stranding him in a crumbling Roman Empire whose challenges will soon become obsolete—and those who regard his work as wholly modern—describing Confessions as strikingly modern “therapy” for its “gloriously egocentric” author (Peter Brown).
Instead, I argue that Augustine writes a sort of biography of humanity, establishing existence as defined through God’s essence and ordered in man’s confession of praise. Not the feelings of Augustine’s youth, but those of every man are Confessions’ theme, because the struggle to find one’s nature and to lose oneself in praise is universal. As Augustine declares of the beauty he learned to love so late, Confessions itself is tam antiqua, et tam nova—ever ancient, and ever new.
To view Sadie’s full presentation, please click here.
For previous posts in our 2022 Senior Projects series, please see:
