Brainstorming my idea's for PP

I knew that I would really enjoy the Personal Project, if I came up with a good idea. That's the first step in my personal project, and I already got stuck. I though no worries, we will have an assembly about the personal project this wednesday. But unfortunately they only explained about the PP, not give advice on what to make. Then I thought of it. The perfect idea. Something that I have wanted to do sinse I was 6, but I was too young back then. I was going to walk the "4-daagse". This is an anual event in Nijnmegen. You walk either 30, 40 or 50 kilometers (depending on your age) every day for four days in a row. I was getting really excited about it because my grandfather did this lots of times when he was younger, my sister and my cousin gave it a try (but it was cancelled after the first day because it was just too warm), now it's my turn. You had to be 12+, and because I have only moved here at the beginning of the year this was the first opportinity I would get to finally join. You're probably wondering why my journal is called "Making of a Mechanical Clock" and not "Walking de '4-daagse'". This is because I was going to sign up for the 4-daagse, but then I found out that the sign up's closed only a few weeks ago. There goes my perfect personal project, and although I am already quite a while further, I'm still annoyed that I let this perfect PP slip through my fingers like that.

I was stuck, I had no idea what to do. I asked my friend to help, but she didn't take it seriously. She though of the most useless idea's and laughed at her own thoughts. My dad was a great help. He sat down and told me to say anything that comes up in my mind. He himself came up with some good ideas aswell. We were not at home, so he wrote an email to himself with all the ideas that we came up with. He then printed them out as soon as got were home, and gave it to me. The email is now my Appendix 15.

Me and my dad are Dutch, therefore the email is written in Dutch. I will translate everything now.

1. My first idea was to learn a new instrument. My dad learned trompet when he was little, but didn't remember much. We still had the trumpet though together with a few books. I wasn't too thrilled about this because I hate performing or giving a presentation in front of a lot of people. And if I would have choosen to do this I would choose a project which will force me to perform. Also I was scared that my commitment and entousiasm would drop, and therefore I would just not be borered to practice anymore after a few weeks.
2. Learn a new language is one of the hardest project I wrote down. I didn't have to speak it like a foreiner, and I was going to choose an easy one like German, because I already speak fluently Dutch it couldn't be that hard. Later I also though that I could learn a language for deaf or blind like braille, or sign language.
3. Build a website. I once took part in this ICT compitition in my old school, and my teacher have me this software to make profesional websites to the whole team in case we had to make one. I don't have this anymore because my hard-drive got replaced, but I could send him an email asking if I could have it another time. He said that using this software was quite complicated, but it will give amazing results if you do it properly. He said that he used to make money for making websites for people when he was younger. My dad really wanted a website about himself for business purposes. So he said that maybe I can learn how to use this software, and make one for him.
4. Baking a wedding cake. I would really like to do this project. I could practise doing techniques on very small cakes. I would make a final piece in the summer holiday, and make one again for the presentation day. The biggest set back was that it wasn't really a good PP, and it would cost a lot of money.

5. Design and build a huge guinea pig paradise. This idea had a line through it because it just wasn't a very good idea. I have three guinea pigs (now two) at home. And I would love to build a bigger cage for outside on the grass for them, because inside they have a big cage, but we put them outside as much as possible so they can eat the fresh grass. It's just that the cage outside isn't very big. So I thought maybe I could build a cage which is massive, with multiple levels. But my guinea pigs are old and not as active, so they wouldn't use it anyway. And it would take hours to clean the top levels, therefore the bigger it would become, the more inconvenient it would be for us.

6. Design and build a pillow storage cage. We have a big cough outside with several pillow on it. But whenever it start raining we have to store the pillows in the living room. So my parents want to get a box for outside where we can store the pillows in, so my dad said: Why don't you make one. I crossed out this option because this would be an extremily easy project to do which doesn't need any research, and not too much time to make.

7. Plant a spice garden. I wonder now why I didn't cross out this idea immidiatly. Holland it a bad place for growing spice (I think), and I only had one summer. I barely needed any research, and it was extremily easy to do. Enough said I think.

8. Walking the 4-daagse. I immidiatly crossed this out, because I just had to get this out of my head, there was no way I could do this. I could sectretly and illigally join, but then my school wouldn't really apreciate that I guessed. And I wouldn't get the medal which would be proof I did it. I also wanted that medal, not just for more proof, but also to keep for the future.
9. Run for 10km. My friend Finja wanted to run half a marathon for her Personal Project. But ended up choosing something else, and because I told her before how I though that was a really cool idea she said that I was allowed to use this idea as well if I wanted to. But about two months ago there was the CPC run, and this guy of around my age ended up in the hospital because he ran 10km. In the newspapers they therefore adviced children my age not to run more than 10km. My dad read that, and said I wasn't allouwed to do half marathon. So therefore we wrote down to run 10km, which would be a big achievement for me, but just not big enough because there are a lot of people my age who can easily run 10km. Therefore I crossed it out.

10. Make a cookbook for vegetarian people. My friend suggested that I could become vegetarien, but that wouldn't be a good Personal Project itself. So I though what if I would become vegetarian and make a cook/tip book on how to become vegetarian. With delicious and healthy vegeratian food which I cooked when I became vegetarian. But because doing a cookbook is so unoriginal as lots of people are making a cookbook, and I don't really want to become a vegetarian anyway, I crossed it out.

11. Learn how to make and eventually make an Indian rice table. My mom sugested this out of nowhere. She said that I could learn how to make this dish by dish and in the end prepare the whole thing. She said that Indian people would start cooking days before the dinner to have the whole thing finished. But personally I don't really like Indian food. But I kept it on anyway.

12. Design clothing. My dad asked what most people in my class do, and I said cookbook or designing clothing and stuff, so he just wrote it down. I never thought about doing this, and I really never will. So as soon as I got home I crossed it out.

13. Knit a sweater. This would have been a great Personal Project if you didn't know how to knit. But I learned how to knit when I was around 6 years old, and have enough practice making this not a very good project. I still added it to the list because I love to knit, and I always wanted to make an actual sweater, not just scarves. I crossed it out because my friend coincidentally is also making a sweater for her Personal Project, therefore I thought it wouldn't be such a good idea to do the same if I would have chosen this.

14. Help with the voting for the new minister-president of Holland. This was a big NEVER. But my dad liked the idea and added it on anyway. Making this the second one I crossed out.

15. Train a dog for blind people. I thought this would be so cool to do. I always wanted a dog, but wasn't allowed to have one. But if it is for a school project my parents would consider it. The problem is that you only get one go at everything, and if I don't train the dog well it wouldn't become a guidance dog, and therefore I would have to keep it for the rest of it's life, and that is not an option, so although I didn't want to I had to cross it out.

16. Build a mechanical clock. My dad mentioned this, and my friend mentioned this as a joke. But I didn't take it serious till I did some research on it I found out that the basics are quite easy. Just the making would be the problem. I originally though I would get all the pieces made from metal at some do-it-yourself shop, but then I was scared that they wouldn't have all the pieces, or all the pieces would all be very expensive.

Ok so after all that, I took the once I didn't cross out, and made a table. I made a column for money, one for time, one if it is a 'good project', one if it is an 'appropiate project'. There is a small difference between a 'good' project and an 'appropiate' project. When the project is appropiate I mean that if I go up to someone and explain my idea, it will sound like a good PP, not that they will think: "Are you sure that's a good idea?". When it's a 'good' project it is well... a good project. A project that could easily be classified for PP's. So with good I mean that the title sounds good, while appropiate means the whole idea sounds good. Just take a look at the examples on Appendix 15.

Whenever the arrow is up in the first two colums it is good. So for instruments I wrote down that it would be expensive (which is negative), but time consuming (which is positive). And for the good/appropiate project, there is only one which has a different answer for both colums. The website has a cross for 'good', and a tick for 'appropiate'. This is because is I tell someone I am building a website, it doesn't sound like a good project, but when I explain it, it will sound like a reasonable project. There was only one project which had four ticks, learning a language. I had a arrow up for time, which is positive, but this would take too much time. I had a arrow down for clock on money because I first I though I would buy the parts all seperate which might be very expensive. I did some research on clocks to see if it also wouldn't be too complicated and found a picture. This picture has been the base of my whole project. This picture I have shown every person which asked me what I am doing for my personal project. This picture gave me courage to make this clock, which sound cheesy but is true.

This photo is from a website of this guy who sells do-it-yourself packages to make you own mechanical clock. I thought if everything would go wrong and I would just be clueless on what to do next I could order this packet and make it using the instructions. With this in the back of my mind I choose this as my project. Later after doing a bit more research I found that this guy lives in Hawaii, so if someone in Europe would orders these packages it would take approcimately 6-8 weeks for it to arive. So now I know I don't have a plan B, and I just have to be able to do it all myself.