The Best, The Underground

This is the last project for my Entrepreneurship course and also the last Action Project of my senior year. The purpose of this project was to make a business pitch that you can eventually pitch to investors. I learned a lot about how to do an effective pitch and what will get people in the door. I'm also excited about using these entrepreneurship skills to my future skate/graffiti/hip-hop business.

My Skateboarding Passion

This is the Final Action project for my Endurance course and also my last action project as a student at GCE Lab school. The purpose of this project was to create a "survival manual" that maps out my personal journey and how I will pursue it and what will help, and hurt me along the way. in this project we had the option to do a custom content portion on the rubric, for my custom content I decided to add a video of me skateboarding because it relates to my mission. I learned a lot about myself in this course and a lot about what I am capable of if I put my mind to it. I am very proud of this project I'm general because it is my last humanities project I will ever do at GCE and I feel like I put a lot of heart into it. Thank you and please enjoy reading my survival manual.

25 amazing hours

For my 25 service hours I participated in a construction project. For previous hours I worked with my dad taking apart the front of a house and reconstructing it. For these 25 hours I continued to work at the same place but this time we moved to the roof, We had to redo the chimney because it was in very bad shape. We also had to move a deck and lay down new roofing and new brick on the edges. Lastly we had to reconstruct the deck and put it back in place. The last time I worked at this construction site it was only me and my dad but this time we had one of my dads friends. The entire project from start to finish was about 27 hours but I only needed 25 service hours. After the whole project I walked away with a little more knowledge about construction such as roofing. Another thing I learned was that construction is very dangerous because during the job my dads friend burned his hand. He burnt his hand with the roofing material because in order for the roofing to stick to the roof you have to torch it until it melts to the ground. I also learned that you always have to be ready for the unexpected because after the burn happened he quickly ran over to a bucket of water that they had set aside for that exact reason. In the end, it was a very fun experience and I would really like to do it again in the future.

BKJ, Roof work, (2016)

The Underground

This is the second Action Project for my Entrepreneurship course. The purpose of this project was to choose an already existing company or make a company of your own and create a business plan that has all the elements of a professional business plan. I learned a lot about how to write a business plan and everything that goes into a great business plan. I am very proud of my business plan because I got to take my dream business and get one step closer to my dream. After doing my business plan for this project I am very confident that I want to start my business. Please see my business plan below.

Skate and succeed

This was the second Action Project for my Endurance course. The purpose of this project was to dedicate at least 12 hours to something new, a fear or just something you want to try and for every hour you must document what you did and how it helps you move towards your ultimate goal. I learned a lot about myself in this project. Before this project I thought that I was brave and wasn't scared of anything, especially when it came to skating, but this project proved me wrong. I am very proud of my video and I hope that i can take what I learned from this project and use it to continue to improve at skateboarding.





During the process of this 12 hour challenge it was very difficult for me to face some of my biggest fears within a sport I thought I was very comfortable with. When I first started the challenge I thought that I would not improve very much because I learn slow when it comes to skateboarding. During the first few hours I was surprised to see that I had already learned a decent amount of new things. Towards the end of this mission I had learned 6 new trick, 4 new grinds, how to skate a rail and also how to skate a ramp. Now that the 12 hours is done I am going to keep pursuing my mission of getting better at skateboarding and maybe one day I will even be a professional, but for now I'm going to take it one step at a time.

The Future Me.

This is the first Action Project for my Endurance course. The purpose of this project was to write the first chapter of your autobiography predicting how your life is going to be 30 years from now. I feel like this project helped me take a deeper look within myself and now I feel like I have a clear understanding of how i want my life to be in the future. I also thought of everything that could go wrong along the way and now I feel like I am going to be a bit more cautious in life. I learned that I shouldn't rush things in life, I should just let things happen naturally. I am very proud of the story I wrote. One of the most difficult things about this project was, I had to basically figure out what I was going to do in life before it even happened. Please read my story below. Enjoy!

BKJ, My Two Passions (2016)

As a kid I always had a love for animals and I had a dream that I would grow up to be a veterinarian. As I grew up I realized that a vet might not be the right option for me. When I was young I experienced the death of 2 of my dogs. From that point on, I knew that I couldn’t be a vet because I could not stand the sight of an animal die or be injured. Later on in my teenage years I thought a little bit about being a police officer because I admired them at the time and that was one of the most common thing for a kid to aspire to be. When my high school years came I started up my rebellious stage just as most teenagers do. My freshman year I Ironically decided that I wanted to pursue graffiti art. I was never serious about the art, I just did it for fun in my notebook. Sophomore year of high school I decided that I wanted to be more serious about graffiti art. All throughout the rest of my high school years I was doing graffiti and skateboarding.

After high school I decided that I did not want to go to college. In high school I met a fellow graffiti artist named Revoe from California through social media. At first we just talked about each other's art and then eventually we grew a friendship and even talked about meeting after high school (same age). In some of the conversations we talked about opening a graffiti shop in Chicago after high school. Instead of college I decided to travel for a little before I pursue my dream to start a business. I decided that I wanted to go to California and meet my friend. For a good 5 years I lived in California. When I was in California I got a job working at a skate shop and I worked there for 3 years. One day I woke up feeling homesick and I decided I wanted to go back to Chicago.

Before leaving for Chicago I told my friend that I wanted to go back to Chicago and I asked him if he was still interested in starting a business with me and he said yes. Less than a half a month later we were on a plane to Chicago. When we arrived in Chicago I showed him around and we found an apartment and bunked together. We both found jobs and started saving up to fund the business. After a while things just fell apart, We basically let procrastination get to us and 4 years had passed and we still had not even planned out the basics of the business. One night Revoe asked me if I wanted to go paint a CTA train and I declined because I was exhausted from work. The next morning I woke up to find that Revoe was still gone and I began to wonder where he was. Later that day I was sitting on the couch and I got a phone call from jail and I found out that the reason he did not return is because he got caught and was sentenced to 5 years in jail for vandalizing a CTA train.

After I found that out I knew that I had to hold off my plans to start the business. One night I went to the bar because it was a very stressful day at work and I just needed to let off steam. While at the bar I met a woman named Maria, me and her talked all night and decided to keep in touch so we exchanged numbers. After about 2 months me and Maria became very close and actually started dating. We moved in together about a month later and had a very strong relationship. A few years later I decided it was time for me to take our relationship to another level. One night I took Maria to dinner and towards the end of the night, I got down on one knee and asked her to be my wife. When I asked her to be my wife she started crying and said “YES!” A few months later we had our wedding and it was amazing, almost everyone we knew showed up to support us in the new stage of our relationship. Everything got better from then on, we moved out of the apartment and bought a house and I was promoted to manager at a local skate shop in Uptown, Chicago. When I was at work one day Maria called me and said she had something very important to tell me when I got home. When I got home later that night we sat down on the couch and she announced that she was pregnant with twins. Excited to be a dad, I started to prepare for the babies to be born. Every week after work I would stop at the store and buy something new for the baby room. Nine months late baby Brian and Daniel were born. A month passed and I was thinking that life was perfect, I had 2 healthy, happy babies and a beautiful wife. The only thing that stayed on my mind was Revoe, he was getting out in a few months and I was excited to finally see him again.

Three months later Revoe got out of jail. When I went to go pick him up he got in the car and started to tear up because he was finally out of jail. I told him what he missed such as me getting married and having twins. He was surprised to hear the news. When he got out of jail he obviously had nowhere to stay because all of his family was in California so Me and Maria invited him to stay with us as long as he needed. One day I was talking to Revoe and he explained to me that it is very hard to find a job because of his criminal record. Ironically, later that same week, I had a fight with my boss and got fired. When i went home later that day I announced that I got fired and Revoe said “now is a great time to start that business we were gonna start years ago.”

Just a few weeks later we had begun planning out our business. We knew that we both wanted our business to have elements of graffiti in it but, I had the idea that we also make it a skate shop too because skateboarding and graffiti are interconnected in a way. With a little financial advice from Maria's father and a long time writing out business plan, we had our business started. The first few weeks of our new business was tough because nobody knew we existed. We started to formulate a way to advertise. I realized that I could just go to the skate park and start telling people and they would spread the word about our business. Just a month later our business is very successful and we have at least 20 customers a day. We also added an addition to our shop in the past week where people with little or no experience with graffiti and skateboarding can come in and learn from other. The addition to our shop does not bring in profit but it benefits the community. As of today our business is still thriving and we will continue to do the best we can to stay open for many years to come.

Action Project or Test?

This is the first Action Project for my Entrepreneurship course. The purpose of this action project was to get us better at taking tests. GCE's main idea is breaking away from tests because Action Projects stick with us longer and it is just better than a test and that is why we do Action Projects. Now that I have been here for almost 4 years I have gotten worse at taking tests and studying and taking notes so that is why we had this Action Project. In preparation to this Action Project, we had to take very detailed notes about all the components that go into owning a business. We also had to study for the test and then eventually take the actual test. I learned a lot about what components go into starting and owning a business and I find all that information very valuable because I want to start my own business in the future. I am proud of the way I handled the test. When prepping for the test, I thought that it was going to be very hard but the test was not that hard because of the preparation we had done as a class before.

AMD, Test Taking (2016)

In this unit, we focused on 10 main elements of starting or owning a business. The concepts that we focused on were Entrepreneur, Manage, Marketing, Sales, Mission, Vision, Legal structure, Investing, Accounting, and Exit plan. The reason we talked about these topics is because these are the main topics that you want to focus on if you are looking to start and run an efficient business. I feel like this unit prepped me for the second Action Project. For the upcoming Action Project we are going to be making a business plan. I feel that I now fully understand these concepts and will be able to use them to create a solid business plan. I referenced about 2 or 3 businesses in this unit such as Campus, Modest, and American express but, one that really stuck out to me was Modest which is a graffiti/skate shop just outside of Chicago. The reason this business stuck out to me is because I feel that they are a great company and I am guessing they are very profitable because whenever I go there almost all of the spray paint is gone. Another reason they stood out to me is because I also want to start a graffiti/skate shop so, they are very inspirational to me. One person that really inspires me is Eric the founder of GCE. The reason he is so inspirational to me is because I feel like he and I are alike in some ways. When he came into class one day I remember him saying that he never did good in school as a kid and I see myself being the same way. He turned out to be a successful businessman and that made me still have hope for myself. After getting my results back I was very surprised because I got a pretty high score. I wrote a page for each question and I felt that my endings for each questions were pretty weak and some of my wording was bad but I feel that I did very well even though I was still confused about some of the ten topics. My strategy for competing the test to the best of my ability was avoiding the questions that talked about the topics that I did not feel I fully understood.