Teresa Cameron

California, USA
Age: 14

Global Transport Job:
Transporter System Configuration

 

Murphy: Hi, Teresa! I'm continuing my research and documentation of your project, Global Transport, and I'm glad that you've found some time to answer a few questions for me. Let's start by giving me a quick setting of how you got started on the project.

Teresa: Of course! As a 9th grader you are to begin independent study projects but still attend classes 3 days per week. With the help of my college preparatory counselor, my math teacher and my social studies teachers we were able to create a plan for my freshman year that would both fulfill requirements and meet my interest in transportation engineering.

 

Murphy: A major project like this takes a considerable amount of time and the good fortune of finding other people interested in the same topic. Talk to me about how you got involved with the project.

Teresa: As I was riding the train to school one morning there was an announcement that the train would not be running on weekends because of a new track. I was pretty bummed thinking about how I would see my friends on the weekend and why did this have to happen this year before any of us get our driver's licenses. Anyhow I sent a letter to the transportation commissioner who emailed me back the same day. She was interested in how many teenagers this would affect and how many more teens would use this new system and why. Since there wasn't much I could do about the already scheduled shut down, I started wondering how I could find out how many other kids would use a higher speed and more convenient train. This was on my mind when I had my interview scheduled for my independent project.

 

Murphy: That's terrific. It's great to be involved in projects with real meaning. Speaking of which, this project is a real-world issue and you have the responsiblity of creating real-world solutions, so tell me how you see your project affecting the local community and even the global community.

Teresa: Well, my math teacher was interested because Mr. Pat loves statistics. How would I gather the information from other kids? How reliable would it be? My social studies teacher was interested because of the community of kids riding the train could be cool. Also she was interested in how the train stops and effected the local economics of where the train stopped. If a high speed train were added with fewer stops would the local communities feel much of an impact? How had the building of this train in the past affect the stops.

As far as the global community I've learned that other kids my age and younger on relying on public transporation more and more. It was really surprising to me that the Japanese kids have been doing this much longer than I have. There cost seem high for new transportation but we require even higher wages here in the US for laying down these new tracks. It seems we do pay less for materials though.

 

Murphy: Those are interesting facts! You must have run into issues or frustrating points of research that prompted you to make a mental note of what to do differently on your next project. So what would you change?

Teresa: It would be fun to work with a person my age locally and others internationally. It was a lot to think about without having a partner to work with on projects. I would definitely like to work with more international folks as well and have some follow-up with these people later.

 

Murphy: While every reporter covers the topics he or she needs to record.. there are always interesting bits that come from the people directly involved, that are not always apparent to the outside... What else would you like to share with the world about your project and the process by which it was accomplished?

Teresa: I was really annoyed with the 1st grader at first. He was always bringing up unimportant garbage, but I talked to my counselor about this and we discussed how this was more of mentor relationship. That groups often had people from other backgrounds and we needed to use other communication strategies with such a youngite. I don't think about the tech stuff much because I it just makes sense to me to use these tools to help generate statistics. But it did really push me to learn how to teach other people and how other features might be important to people in other situations.