Nelson Makechnie (Senior Project)

May 20 Today was the last work day. Noah and I spent time together, and then I spent a lot of time on my own putting together all of our footage into a final video. We intended to make a 2-4 minute video, but ours ended up being a little shy of eight minutes. It’s funny, but we also have good content that is more meaningful. The shift in themes in the video represents our project overall—it was comedic at times, but there were also great lessons that we learned along the way, particularly in our interviews. We had a great time overall, and feel like the time was well spent. I am not very good at editing, which is apparent in the iMovie film, but some of the cuts are relatively clean. I am pretty happy with what I did for the video. Noah helped of course, but he was more focused on the record book. We each did work on both parts of the presentation, but focused more on our own part, because we wanted to keep all the components of the presentation pieces on one device to make p

May 20 Hands down, today was my favorite day. We interviewed Ashrita Fuhrman, who has broken over 500 world records, more than anyone else ever has—therefore, he has the record for the most world records. Technically, that record has been discontinued by Guinness, but he received the award prior to that decision by Guinness, and he still has more world records than anyone else. He was so incredible to talk to. He was put together, and very driven. He lives in New York, and says his neighbors are always watching him train for new records in his backyard. He knows who he is, and part of his growth in his philosophy of perseverance and self-improvement is done through meditation and record breaking. This is something that I personally strive for, whether I choose to continue pursuing world records or not. Aside from the enjoyment, today was a reminder of why Noah and I originally wanted to do this project—to push ourselves in a unique and creative way. Quote of the day: “Going beyo

Weekly Reflection 3 This week showed us that sometimes things take a while to get started, but with persistence, momentum will eventually pick up. Before this week, Noah and I were starting to get a little worried about the outcome of our project, and therefore our future. However, this week was exciting and successful. We created a new record, as well as breaking another one, a record previously held by the YouTube sensation Dude Perfect. Breaking the record for a trick shot held by a group with over 42,000,000 Youtube subscribers who specialize in athletic trick shots was incredibly exciting. However, my favorite part of this week were the interviews we did with students who hold Proctor Records. These students are some of the best athletes in Proctor History in their sports, yet they showed humility in their responses to our questions. They thanked their teammates and coaches, they said that their success couldn’t be made possible by their team. They talked about how good it fel

May 17 Today was rather interesting. Since I did Polar swim, I got back to campus a little before 7. I finished breakfast, and then got to work at around 7:30. Noah got to the dining hall at our typical time of 9:00. We took a break for assembly, and then we got back to working on our project. After lunch,we went to Noah’s dorm room. I was so tired that I fell asleep, and didn’t wake up for four hours. Luckily, I still got enough hours in because of my early session. In fact, I finished up my fifty hour requirement. Of course, Noah and I aren’t done. We need to finish putting together our presentations, but most of the hard work is done. The video script is pretty much done, and we’ve made good progress on the Proctor Record book. Additionally, it looks like we’ve landed an interview with Ashrita Furman after all. In case you don’t know, Furman holds more records than anyone else in the world, so this is huge. Quote of the day: “When th3 going gets tough, the the tough take a nap

May 16 What a day. Actually, it doesn’t stand out all that much. I spent most of the morning work session writing up a script for our video. Later, Noah and I did interviews with Mikala Eacrett and Papi Diallo. They are the Proctor record holders for Girls Lacrosse and Boy’s Soccer respectively. Mikala scored her 150th goal last weekend, so that gave us good subject matter to talk about. Papi didn’t know he had reached his 50th goal (he scored 56 total) until later on, so he had a very humble achievement—not that Mikala was boastful about her achievements. The interviews were both good, and we got them both on video. We will put some edited footage into our final video presentation. I would put videos of Mikala and Papi into this blog, but I’d like to keep them to ourselves until our final presentation. Quote of the day: “All my interviews are paid.” -Response to our inquiry about about a ten minute FaceTime interview for a school project. Daily hours: 3 Total hours: 49

May 15 Today was a work day. We didn’t try to break any records, because we feel that we have fulfilled that. We have each broken a record individually, and created a new one. We broke the same individual record (fastest mile while dribbling a basketball), created a “bizarre record” (most saltine crackers eaten in a minute while playing guitar), and broke a team record (longest pass of an American Football to be caught between the legs). For the last one, we only have me catching and Noah throwing on video, but on an unfilmed attempt, Noah caught one of my throws as well. Our main focus is on our other goals, interviews, the mini movie, and our record book. We have a couple of pages done, and almost all of the stats collected. We are just plugging away at our final presentation, and we’re excited to show our final product. Quote of the day: “I think a poet is anyone who wouldn’t call themselves a poet”        —Bob Dylan Daily hours: 3 Total hours: 46

May 8 10:00 Today I woke up late and felt pretty badly, but I got some good work done afterward, and did some extra while my partner went to lunch to make up for my tardiness. We spent our time meeting with Lindsey Allenby and working on the record book. Lindsey’s expertise, unfortunately, is not in the program we were planning on using, Adobe Indesign. What is also unfortunate is my lack of ability to understand technology. Noah and I found the most dumbed down tutorial video for Adobe Indesign we could find, but it was a totally new language to us. We eventually decided to try to make our book through the “Pages” program. If were doing a book solely for the project, we would make it on shutterfly, but we want it to be something students can add or replace record once they are beaten, so the book will be comprised of three-hole punched pages.     Tomorrow is a big day, and we I’m really excited to inform my blog readers about tomorrows project. Quote of the day: “Legac

May 14 Woo-Hoo! World Record number three done! Noah and I were inspired by a record set by none other than Dude Perfect. That’s right, we broke a record held by Dude Perfect. The record was 35 Yards to throw a football and catch it between the legs. We wanted to go to the turf field to break the record, but the field was wet, so every time we didn’t catch the ball, we would have to wipe it off, which would be very inconvenient. A regulation basketball court measures in at 94 feet, or 31.33 yards. With the addition of the width of a baseline, and the extra distance where I was standing when the football was caught, we were just over that distance, about 36 yards.     It took a very long time. We propped a phone up to film, and lucked out and were successful within 5 tries. Unfortunately, two students came by and moved the phone. Noah wasn’t in the frame because of this. The second time, when we came back after lunch for another hour, my phone ran out of storage and the phone

May 13 Our second record was broken, or rather created, today. We experimented a lot with saltine crackers. The goal was to eat the most saltines in a minute, which we knew would be a challenge. I thought the record was seven crackers in one minute, but it turned out to be thirteen. We me met with Buz Morrison, the Neuroscience teacher. The main problem with so many saltines is the dryness, so we started talking about ways to activate the salivary glands, as well as the benefits of being extra hydrated, or in need of electrolytes, which the body knows Saltines have. To do this, we purchased some snacks from Jakes. We selected extreme sour patch kids because of the strong scent, and Doritos. I don’t eat either of these, but I felt that the scent of Doritos would be very effective, since Doritos genetically modifies their products to hit all the tastebuds. Unfortunately, we still weren’t able to eat so many crackers in the allotted time. We decided to change things up and make a new

This week has been pretty successful. I’m happy about what Noah and I have done. It hasn’t all been easy, but we accomplished the goal I was most excited about, beating the record for the fastest mile while dribbling a basketball. I beat the record, which I was of course very happy about. What was really impressive and exciting, though, was Noah’s time. He had never run a mile on a track before, yet he was able to run it with basketball in five minutes, forty-seven seconds. This shows his incredible athleticism, and his drive to perform at his maximum capacity for anything, including senior project. Other than that, we’ve done work on our record book and solidifying an interview. We have gotten two response out of the many people we’ve contacted, one who said that all his interviews were paid, and one who asked if we could do the interview after June 2–that is one I really want to do. The man in question is a politician, and his record is for the most digits of pi memorized. He rec

May 10 10:30 Noah and I spent time today doing more research. I have messaged more record holders about doing interviews with us. Unfortunately, we still haven’t gotten any responses. We want to get these interviews, and continue to reach out to record holders, but we can’t get any responses—except for the one response saying “all my interviews are paid.”     We also met with Kelly today about editing our goals. Rather than doing a ten minute video, we will be doing a very short video (under three minute) and focusing instead on the Proctor Record Book. We are excited about this, and think that it will highlight some of the members of our community. For the next week, we are going to have to do a lot of work to put this together, but we are excited for our goal. Quote of the day: (In honor of Bono’s birthday, and a reference to how people look at me and Noah now that we’ve broken world records) “Because you know when you first become famous, you start walking a little diffe

May 9 10:50 Yesterday, I said that I was excited to let you know about our work today. I am happy to say that I am not disappointed. Today, I broke a world record. This whole school year, I have had to work down to a freshman by the name of Colin Shaver because of his status as a world record holder. It has been humiliating and degrading. No matter how much I did or how hard I worked, I could never hope to compete against his other-worldly power. Today, I have risen above his legendary prowess and beaten him. I held that power until Noah beat my time, finishing at 5:47 (his first time ever running a mile on a track in general-he collapsed afterwards). That is the epitome of a hero. I don’t feel any shame in standing next to his worshipfulness, though. I still beat Colin’s record. This summer, I think I will do this again and secure a place in the record book for sure. Quote of the day: “I sound like a broken record every time I break a record” (Eminem) Daily Hou

May 7 11:30 Today, Noah and I worked on our Proctor record book. We talked about the format of the book so that it will be easy to update, and then met with Spencer to see how to do this most efficiently. Tomorrow, we are meeting with Lindsey so that we can get feedback from someone experienced in putting something like this together. With all her yearbook-making knowledge, we are enthusiastic about this part. We also spent time with stats. We combed through old scorebooks for basketball, only to find that most one available ones didn’t have the information we needed. Still hoping to gather data for all-time leading basketball scorer, I messaged an old player on instagram, and we’re hoping that he will respond soon. We have the stats narrowed down to four players, but we are unsure who has the most out of them. We did get the hockey stats today, though, and we are working on getting the baseball stats as well. Quote of the day: Lose your dream, you lose your mind (Rolling Ston

May 6 10:00 Noah and I had a good time today. We had two sessions (together), 10-12 and 1-3. Both sessions were enjoyable, but the first wasn’t very fruitful. We spent most of the time writing emails. The only response we’ve gotten was a bit rude, but we’re hoping to get more responses soon. We are already planning an interview with Colin Shaver, a student with a record we are trying to beat. For our second session, we trained for the most leapfrogs in thirty seconds. The only attempt we got on video went very poorly. We jumped too early a couple time and hit our heads, and definitely weren’t close to breaking the record. However, our other attempts were a little better. During our rest periods between “sets,” we had some really great conversation about the arbitrarily and ineffectual structure of the educational system. Quote of the day: If you admire someone, you should go ahead and tell them. People never get the flowers while they can still smell them (Kanye West) Da

This week has been enjoyable, but ultimately disappointing. I have had a good time planning, and making attempts to break records. There are two records we have tried to beat so far. As I’ve said in my daily blogs, our first record, fastest time to eat an entire apple, has been put on the shelf. The current record is 38 seconds, a time that I thought would be obtainable. Despite my best efforts multiple times a day, I couldn’t break a minute, and neither could Noah. However, we’ve already found a record we think we can beat instead. This week, we will be attempting to beat the fastest mile while dribbling a basketball, which I am confident about.     Looking at my daily/weekly hours, it is apparent that I will need to spend more hours each day. While I think I’ve slightly undershot my hours, I definitely need to up my work on the project each day. This shouldn’t be too difficult––when I am working on our project, with or without Noah, I find myself having a good time. I enjoy trying

May 3 Noah and I are rather disheartened. After many attempts at beating the fastest time to eat an entire apple, we are truly realizing how futile our efforts seem. After much conversation, we have decided to table the idea, and replace it with another. Our new goal is to obtain the record for the farthest distance to throw an apple and catch it on a fork. The current record is 71 meters, so there will definitely be difficulty, but I believe we are capable of this. For this one, I think we will have my uncle, Ian throw the apple, and Noah will catch it while I film. Other than that, our project is going well. We attempted this together, but the distance is really difficult to get. Ian, however, is definitely able to throw that far, and is willing to help out. Quote of the day: It ain’t over ‘til the pig sings. Daily hours: 3 Total: 13.5

May 2 12:00 World records, as it turns out, are world records for a reason. They are very hard to beat.Noah and I are realizing how difficult it will be to eat an apple in under 38 seconds, or to beat 32 leapfrogs in 30 seconds. We will, however, press on and do our best. Neither of us like to quit, or settle for mediocrity. Luckily, we feel pretty good about beating the fastest mile while dribbling a basketball. We have a time comfortably under 5 minutes on a treadmill, so even with the added difficulty on running on a track with a basketball, running faster than 6:57 certainly seems attainable.     Additionally, we have the other parts of our project. We haven’t gotten any responses about interviews, so we will send out lots of emails in the next few days until we find someone willing to talk to us. After that, our Proctor Record Book should take a lot of time, but be somewhat enjoyable and will be a fun addition to the community. Quote of the day: You've got to know y

May 1 4:00 To put together a Proctor Record Book, Noah and I need data. We sent emails to coaches of athletic teams to find out stats. Some coaches were willing to let us look through their books from the past four years, and some even found stats for us. We don’t have answers back from quite everyone, but we are definitely on the right track. We didn’t do anything physical today––my legs are still burning from yesterday’s treadmill work. In the next few days we should be doing work on our goal to beat the record for most leapfrogs in 30 seconds. Our main focus, however, will be putting the record book together. This could be something really cool, and a way to further recognize members of the community. Motivational quote of the day: “Reality is wrong. Dreams are for real.” – Tupac Shakur Hours: 3 Total hours: 8