I’ve been at SMSA since 6th grade and one thing I always heard of was capstone. All I knew before was that it was mandatory if you wanted to graduate and I tended to shrug it off until I hit my senior year. The beginning of capstone I had absolutely no idea what I would be doing for my senior project. My original idea was to organize a flag football game and raise money to donate to a nearby shelter. After speaking to Mrs. Boutilier I realized that my original plan wasn’t great, but I wanted to help people out in some way. Mrs. Boutilier suggested that I take up the SMSA Cares project and I agreed with her. Immediately I began to brainstorm ideas to help raise money for SMSA Cares, and fidgeting with my bracelet gave me the best idea. I wanted to make SMSA bracelets for students, staff, and families to wear and all while supporting the SMSA Cares foundation. I was looking for something simple and for something fairly priced, and finally I had found a website that let me customize the bracelets and the total for 300 bracelets was only $100. When the order came in I started to sell the bracelets to students all around the building, with the help of multiple students and staff. After I started to sell my bracelets at sporting events to families and to help support other people’s capstones by helping sell their projects. I also began to make and sell coffee to the SMSA staff to help them with their mornings. All the money raised by both the SMSA Cares bracelets and the SMSA Cares coffee went to the service projects from the class of 2022. While selling bracelets I learned that I needed to learn some life skills like money managing, bookkeeping, and leadership skills. From the start of capstone I didn’t know how to do much managing by myself and needed help from Mrs. Boutilier, and she kept telling me that I needed to learn this for myself. For me the biggest challenge was actually taking responsibility and pulling through with my capstone and selling the bracelets. The main thing I focused on was taking the time to go to sporting events to get field work and to sell bracelets there. I realized that giving money and supporting other projects felt better than me doing my own project. I felt like I was doing something good for those in my community and all while doing something good for myself. My project was an overall success, we sold over 300 bracelets and raised over $350 total. My experiences with orders and selling will help me in the future with possible business marketing and just general life management. This capstone also helped me count money and this would help me with counting money at my job. Working on this capstone, I realized that I needed some growing up to be done and that I was still lacking in some skills. This learning experience made me realize that giving back to people makes life more enjoyable and makes the world better not just for myself but for everyone around me. To me it was a lot of work and it could be for anyone based on what you’re doing but I’ve learned that it’s worth it and you’ll look back on it as something you’re glad you did. Helping others is an amazing thing you can do which you’ll make the best out of if you work hard enough for it.