Summary
For my first project, I contextualized the medical ideas behind herbal and crystal healing. Herbal and crystal healing methods have been used throughout history to assist with many things from protection to spiritual enhancement.
Social Studies: Self in the Modern World
For the Social Studies aspect of my project, I compared my personal experiences with Amethyst and Topaz crystals to Ancient & present cultures. I also compared my experiences with my peer's experiences through an interview. I also created a fake Etsy page containing information about the crystals as well as my products. |
English IV
For the English aspect of my project, I wrote a High School Survival Guide. The Survival Guide contains different herbal and crystal healing remedies and methods for issues relevant to high school students. For example, many high school students have stress and fatigue. Ex: a small snippet of my book. (down below)
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Honors Portfolio Art II
For the artistic aspect of my project, I created jewelry from Amethyst and Topaz crystals. I chose these two crystals because their healing abilities relate to issues that I have on a daily basis. For example, I am constantly stressed out about something no matter the circumstance, thus I made jewelry from the crystals that assist with stress!
Artist Statement: I created my own jewelry from healing crystals. I selected crystals that I was going to use, I utilized relevant issues many high schoolers, such as myself, deal with on a daily basis. Personally stress, anxiety, and fatigue. I chose two crystals -Amethyst and Topaz- that I believed could help enhance my spirituality. Amethyst is a crystal that is supposed to have the ability to provide protection, calms, soothes, and control harmful behavior. Topaz crystals have the ability to calm emotions, provides protection against external stressors, restore physical energy and maintain a quiet emotional nature. When I talked to my peers and friends, I found that they also had similar conflicts with things such as stress, and fatigue. So, I put the crystals to the test and gave them to people who shared these issues. After wearing the jewelry, I interviewed those who wore the crystals. A majority of them truly felt calmer and more spiritually in line. Although crystals were used for ancient medical practices, people still use these crystals for healing. Even though we have modern advanced medical practices, people still stick to tradition. I believe this is because a lot of the modern medications have dangerous and unhealthy side effects. For example, any Opioid medications have addictive properties, that eventually lead to death or use of other drugs. The Opioid epidemic began to surface in the late 1990s in the United States and Canada. Doctors began to overprescribe these medications after being told they had no negative side effects. The Pharmaceutical companies keep making money off of patient’s addictions. My Aunt passed away due to an Opioid addiction, and since then I have not believed in contemporary medications unless they are crucial. As for the crystals, they don’t have any negative side effects because they are natural, and they have yet to be scientifically proven to be effective. |