July 31 and August 11, 2014 - Club Fair (Reflection 9/21/14)

These past two months have been the first real beginning of the launching of my CAS project, in which I decided to conjoin with Kiara and Callie due to our desire and similar goals in wanting to expand and make the Neural Activity club our own. In July, we set up a booth at Palisade High School's Back to School Night to recruit incoming freshman and get them interested in the club. Since implementing the club in all the area high schools is something new, instead of the club just being at the county level, I admit that I had my doubts about the success of the club and our ability to recruit members. Would kids even be interested in a club like this? Will this club and idea of its success I had initially envisioned be wrong? I didn't know what the outcome was going to be, but I can say that at Back to School Night I discovered that there is immense interest in a club such as this. The students we approached and those who approached us were extremely interested and excited about this opportunity that they have to be involved in something that positively advocated to teen potential and gave them an alternative to the pressures they may come to face in high school or already have faced. Both incoming freshmen and their parents approached us, commending us for our efforts in starting this club, telling us their concern for young adults and the increasing drug problem in the community and the entire state. I was initially really surprised at the amount of support that we got just from the Back to School Night alone, but once I began to really think about it, I knew that we had this support because the club is something that is truly needed in this community. There is a major increase in drug use in Mesa County especially among teens, and Neural Activity not only provides teens with fun activities as an alternative to negative influences, but we also learn about drugs' effects on the adolescent brain and can therefore back up what we are advocating against. So the Back to School Night was a success in getting incoming freshmen interested in the club. In August, when school began again, we had our booth set up at the club fair, in which all the freshmen can explore the different clubs at Palisade and choose which one they want to join. In doing this, I talked to many kids about what Neural Activity is and what we plan on doing throughout the year. Every time I talked to a student I received the response of "Wow that sounds awesome" or "that is so cool!" It was really neat to be able to see all my younger peers be so excited about getting involved in Neural Activity, and that lunch period we got more than three pages of sign ups of kids who were interested in joining the club!