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Never had I thought that finding a student or teacher from each state would be so difficult. The first states that popped into my mind as “hard,” would have been North Dakota, Minnesota, Rhode Island, etc. However, it was just the opposite as I found people from all three of those states.

Through this I have found out that there are many Apex students that come from the same state, but considering I only took one submission per state, that made this a bit harder. The three states I found with the most students at Apex were New York, California, and Florida. This was one of the more interesting facts I discovered because all three of these states are in different places in the nation.

I did not end up reaching my goal of all fifty states, but ended up with around thirty. You can find pictures and information about each state and student pairing in the link under my article. Some states that I did not end up finding were Kansas, Wyoming, and Arkansas. However, I felt pretty accomplished after I found students from the states of Hawaii, Alaska, and Rhode Island.

One of the other hardest parts of this project was finding and taking pictures for each student. As you go through the Story Map, you will find that not all states have pictures beside them. It was very hard to track down people and take pictures. Not only that, but some people did not want to have their picture featured. I either did not see these people during the day (making it hard to meet up with them to get the picture,) or did not know them well enough to ask.

The best part about making this article was how FUN it was. I got to learn about many of my peers and meet new people. I also got the chance to learn about a new program, called Story Map, that was very fun to make. Any chance I got, I asked the person sitting next to me on the bus or in class if they were from a different state. I advertised on social media, where I got most of my information. I started a poll on Twitter, asking how many of my followers were from out-of-state, or from North Carolina. I found out that fifty-eight percent of voters are from North Carolina, while the remaining forty-two percent are from out-of-state.

Overall, this was definitely one of the more fun articles. I was able to find out a lot about my peers and where they come from. I was able to learn how to work a new program that could maybe be used write future articles about it. This two-week effort was difficult but well worth it in the long run, hopefully I will be able to do more projects like this to learn even more about our fellow Apex students!