1.

The goal of this reflection is to ask you to examine your work over the
course of this year. Start by going back to your original two proposals
for a Capstone project. Consider the decisions you made along the
way, beginning with the choice of one project over the other, and what
influenced those decisions.
My project has definitely come a long way since the original two proposals.
Obviously, I abandoned the second proposal, which involved tracking news coverage
across different areas of the US to see how the media shapes peoples perceptions
of news. (Ironically, this project would have probably ended up very similar to
Maddies project, so Im glad I went with my other choice.) I chose my first idea
because it was the one I had originally come up with and I had sort of had my heart
set on doing it since the summer when we were told to brainstorm ideas. I actually
didnt know wed need two entirely different projects when I came into the course, so
I spent much less time developing the second one, and I liked the first better anyway.
It seemed more manageable to study my peers, and I had a more personal
connection to the topic.
I ended up having some trouble with the project I did choose, though,
because I had too many ideas I wanted to include. I always wanted to trace thinking
and acting independently, but in my original proposal I wanted to study emancipation
from the ideas of both teens parents and their peers. I had actually designed some
really cool studies from the peer angle of my project, that involved stimulating
exercises as part of the study rather than questions about the participants lives. But
in the end I decided to go from the parents angle because there had been less
research done from that perspective, so I though my research would be more unique
even though I preferred my other methodology.
My last major decision was to abandon my idea of creating a documentary
and instead write a research paper. I am SO happy I made this choice. A
documentary simply would not have been possible to complete in a few months.

2. In virtually all of your cases, your projects expanded and/or contracted

throughout the year. What you saw as possible in October became less
likely come winter. Other factors affected the viability of your project:
the snow days, of course, as well as logistics, copyright, privacy rights,
etc. Identify what hurdles/impediments/obstacles/etc. shaped your
work and how you overcame, adjusted and/or avoided them through
modifications to your project and its scope.
Originally I had thought to do a documentary/short video comprised of clips
explaining the different aspects of my study. This was such a bad idea for the project
I ended up doing. Most of the data I collected was best represented in graphs, or in
very short recounted anecdotes--neither very suitable for an interesting
documentary. But time was the biggest issue with that. I would not only have to film
and edit the video, but I would have to teach myself lots of technical skills I dont
have. Luckily, my project was fit perfectly for a research paper, and I really enjoy

writing. I would say that if someone is going to make a documentary for Capstone,
they have to come in knowing all there is to know about documentary filmmaking and
editing, and Id suggest they make a film about a currently ongoing issue theyre not
in charge of running-- definitely not a time-consuming study they also have to
conduct.

3. In the course of the research process, you went through various stages.
What parts of the research process do you feel most confident about,
now that you have completed the course? What aspects of research do
you feel you need to improve? Some of you suggested that you needed
more statistics skills. Is that true for many of you? What additional
skills do you feel you needed to make your projects better?
I feel most confident about the writing process. Once I have all my facts together, I
am confident I can weave them together in a coherent and interesting way. I do think
I need to improve what statistical skills I have. I guess it was kind of naive of me to
expect that, just because my study was conducted from a sociological standpoint, I
wouldnt have to have some background knowledge of how to mathematically
analyze my findings. I also think thats something a lot of people could overlook, too.
I guess a skill that would always be helpful would be something related to getting the
word out to people. That is, how to promote and incentivise participation in your
project. Other than that, though, I think the biggest obstacle was time. For me, at
least, although I know I had one of the least technical projects.

4. All of your efforts led to a final project, in a series of products that you
turned in. Are you proud of the final project? Was there more (or less)
that you wanted to do?
Im definitely proud of my final product. Its the longest thing Ive ever written, and I
think its pretty good! I dont think there was anything more I wanted to do. Less is an
interesting question, though. I felt like some of the written work we had to do leading
up to the final project ended up being kind of redundant. The essential questions
work and the research proposal, etc. had a lot of the same questions. And, for me at
least, the 3x7 and the 3x12 were almost exactly the same, although I guess extra
presentation practice is always good. I know a lot of people felt like all the written
work we had to turn in at the beginning of the year took away from our ability to focus
on our final product. Given the snow days, the food portion of the course took up a
larger percentage of it than some of us expected it to.

5. If you remember, we asked at the start of the project: So what? Aka:

Why is this project worth doing? What makes it important/meaningful

beyond your own personal curiosity about the topic? So.now that
your project is complete, please reconsider the question. What is the
projects relevance beyond your own passion for it? What makes it
important? What have you contributed to the bigger/wider world of
knowledge? Tell us about that.
My project may not directly contribute to changing the course of human history. But it
does add to the current body of knowledge in terms of the research done on this
topic which on its own can answer the so what question. I do also think the topic is
important in general. Parenting is extremely important, for obvious reasons, and
studying trends of independence in parent-child relationships like this can help both
parents and teens get on the right track to having successfully independent lives.
The independence of young people is also important to anyone who works with
them--teachers, college staff, employers. And since technology is such a huge part
of our culture, its definitely important for people to know the effects it has, especially
since it tends to expand at a rate faster than the rate at which its sociological effects
tend to be studied. So technology is important, and teenage independence is
important, and its important to know their relationship.

6. Concurrently you were asked to do a series of presentations (that grew

incrementally longer) over the course of the year. You should have all
the videos of all of these on your weebly website. Stand and Deliver
helped to shape the nature of those presentations, as did our
examination of various TED talks. What challenges did these
presentations pose? What feedback and support helped you to
overcome these challenges and help you grow as a presenter? How do
you feel about your own presentation skills now? Are you more or less
confident of doing these in the future?
I like to think of myself as a pretty good speaker, but this experience definitely
helped me expand those skills. I struggled the most with the first presentation,
but I really do think that was because I didnt fully understand the Stand and
Deliver elements to the process that we were graded on. For example, the
dessert really confused me, and I wasnt really sure how to give my project a
good one that wasnt completely redundant. Luckily, I was able to find a quote
that did that job well, and I used it in all my other presentations. Some
especially helpful feedback I got was to try to include more stories and less
numbers in my presentation, which I implemented with what I feel was
success. Of course, these presentations always posed the challenge of stage
fright--especially the Ted talk--but I was able to overcome this with practice. I
feel more confident about my presentational skills now. Talking in front of
hundreds of people was a good experience to have.

7. Finally, we would like to know how you feel the experience of doing a
Senior Capstone project prepared you for college and future
professional life. Tell us what you think the ultimate value of taking
Senior Capstone was for you on a personal and educational level.
I definitely think this course prepared me for college. Its more than likely that I will be
conducting a similar project in college, and, especially if I do a thesis, writing a paper
of a similar length. I dont really think the prep work we did leading up to the project
will help me as much (at least directly) as doing the actual project itself, but I do think
it helped me organize my thoughts for my Capstone project and so itll help me
indirectly with organization in college. For me, this was the ultimate value of taking
Capstone. It was definitely more educational than personal. Nevertheless, I find my
final product really interesting, and I was personally invested in my project
throughout the process.