Europe!!!!! Meeting My Mentor

My Genius Project is not perfect, but one of the things that has completely worked out, without a doubt, is my mentor.
I found her as I was researching online if my idea was original. She is a designer that had worked with kelp as a material for lamps and other sculptors. The first perfect thing, her name is also Julia. The second, which at first I did not feel was perfect, but turned out to be perfect, was that she lives in London. I communicated with her over email, remembering how thrilled I was when I got a response last January. We corresponded through email a few times for I had questions that one would normally ask a mentor. My project was going pretty well and Julia acted as a catalyst for me, someone who did not answer my questions, but gave me hints in order to prompt me to learn things on my own.

Last summer was the set date that my mom, my aunt, my cousin, and I were to go on a trip to Europe.  This trip was planned even before I found my mentor, not only that, but she was going to be in London around the time we were.

Here is a quick detour so that I can tell the story in the order that I lived it.
 This was my first flight out of the country and in the airport I had to have my hands swabbed and checked. I used think that they just chose random people for things like this, so I just went with it and didn't think I would cause a problem. My hand swab came off as positive, so they proceeded to check my bags and bring me into a separate room for a pat-down. They did not find anything, but it definitely was a long diversion from both our trip and this blog post.

Back to what I was writing.
My mentor and I set up a meeting at Central Saint Martins, University of Arts, in London. This was one of the most prestigious design schools in London and she was doing some seminars there. Something that was extremely interesting is that they were setting up the student senior projects. Julia gave a quick tour of these projects and explained how each one either satirically proved a point or solved a impactful problem. There was a story behind each project and I couldn't help thinking that the these projects have the same message that the genius project does. The projects where all so incredible and I could see that same spark in the genius projects that have been introduced at my school. Click to see some of the projects

After seeing the projects, Julia and I sat down to share insight and stories, which is where my story about the airport comes into relevance. I let her know of my occurrence and immediately we had something else in common. It turns out that the same thing happened to her, whereon she divulged into why it happened. It has to do with the compound x that we work with.

I loved meeting my mentor and this chance to get to know someone from out of the country was something I never got to do before. I like to think that is why this part of my project is perfect.