Published: November 28, 2009 08:03 pm      

From tattoos to tractors: PSHS students shine on senior projects

PRINCETON — A 75-pound pyramid, spider studies, tattoo art and a restored 1950s farm tractor are among this year’s items proving that Mercer County’s senior high students are ready for graduation.

Seniors expecting to graduate are expected to demonstrate their creative, linguistic and organizational skills by completing a senior project and submitting it for judging. To meet project requirements, seniors must do research, write an essay and create a product or demonstration. They must also do a presentation before a panel of judges and be prepared for a question and answer session.

“There have been many wonderful demonstrations,” said teacher Sandi Slavey, facilitator of senior projects at Princeton Senior High School.

The projects the seniors undertake are not simple science experiments or displays that can be finished in a couple of hours. Fifteen hours or more of work must be documented if the project is to be accepted; in many cases at PSHS, the students exceeded this requirement.

One student, Eric Arrington, designed a project featuring Olympic-style strength training.

“He actually trained two people,” Slavey recalled. “He followed their progress, and they both dramatically improved. He was surprised by his end result.”

Another senior, Johnathan Barnett, took on the job of building his own computer; he tailored it for his college career, Slavey said.

But not all senior projects require the help of volunteers, advanced technical knowledge or lots of money. A well-done one can take no more than note paper, patience, and a willingness to observe. When senior Amanda Walker-Nance asked her facilitator for suggestions, the idea of “observing something” was put forward, Slavey said. This something became spiders.

“It shows that you don’t have to have lots of money,” Slavey said. “She caught spiders and she put them in jars, and she fed them insects.” Walker-Nance carefully recorded her observations and presented a detailed report featuring descriptions of her work and the life of arachnids such as “Grumpy the Wolf Spider.”

One particular project required both research and a willingness to get messy. Jared Minnix, for example, turned the task of restoring a 1956 Farmall 100 tractor that had once belonged to his great-grandfather, James B. Eads, into his senior project. It was one example of many challenging endeavors.

Students who have completed their senior efforts described some of the challenges they took on. Andrea Owens, 17, had a project featuring dance.

“The techniques of it, and how it can be a sport as well as an art form,” Owens said.

For her project’s product, Owens choreographed a dance and a video to record it. While this took work, the project’s most complicated task involved the written word.

“It was probably the paper and writing it out, printing it out. A dance is a hard topic to explain in words,” she said.

Eighteen-year-old Emily Crosier chose another art for her senior project: the work of professional tattoo artist Kat Von D, who has her own reality television show.

“Part of it is going to be about how she grew up and what inspired her,” Crosier said. “And about her show and how she’s gotten to the top.”

Crosier plans to make tattoo art a career, but she could not do an actual tattoo for the judges. Choosing the next best thing, she created a stencil like the ones used to guide an artist while apply a tattoo to a person.

“It’s a portrait of Kat,” she said.

Adam Terry, 18, studied monuments of a different sort, the ones created by the ancient Egyptians.

“In my presentation, I talked about their architecture, how they built it and why they built it,” Adams said.

Egyptian rulers had huge structures such as the Great Pyramids and the Sphinx constructed as a symbol of their power and wisdom. Terry’s product demonstrated the sheer size of these monuments when he built a 1/220 scale model of the Pyramid of Khufu. Such a massive structure yielded a massive scale model.

“It weighed 75 pounds,” said senior Cameron Mallory, who was one of four people needed to help carry it.

“It was three feet, six inches at the base and two feet, three inches tall,” Terry recalled.

Completing a senior project helps students learn essential tasks such as how to conduct research and set priorities; skills that will be useful both in college and in a career. For instance, besides learning about architecture, the project taught Terry other skills.

“Knowledge of how to manage my time is the main thing I got out of it,” he said.

— Contact Greg Jordan at gjordan@bdtonline.com