Three Things I Learned Last Week

Over the last week, I have (among dying part of my hair purple, working a lot, and getting sick) been finishing up my research and analyzing my results, so I thought this week I could give my general ideas for the research process and any interesting things I found.

First, the research process is longer than you may expect. You may think that you can read 8-10 pieces of literature, but you will quickly find that to be false. Reading literature for pleasure and for research is very different, and the pace at which you read will differ greatly.

This is what a 100 page book feels like when doing your research.

When reading for research, you have to be much more attentive, because you’re looking for specific ideas and themes. When reading for pleasure, you can easily skip every other word and understand what’s still happening. Just make sure you take into account how much literature you’re really reading so that you don’t have to cut down on a lot, like me. Another reason I struggled was that when you’re doing a content analysis you set up a code, and you think that your code is perfect and it’ll work great. The reality is that your code isn’t great, and once you start reading you begin to realize it. So my suggestion for any content analysis people in the future is to develop your code and then do a test run. Take a very small section from each piece of literature and run your code on it. For me, it was only when I began reading The Jungle that I became positive in what I was doing. Unfortunately, that was my last piece of work. But to account for my new confidence, I went back and redid earlier pieces.

Second, don’t get too caught up on your original hypothesis. One problem that I faced was that I wanted my results to match my initial ideas, which made me more lenient with my code. Something that maybe wasn’t quite industry, may have been counted industry.

       The line between real and fake, isn’t always so clear.

In the end. this screws up your results, and is dishonest (which is why you always have to go back to your earlier results and check them). I found that with more works, there was less attachment to the original hypothesis though, but it would have been more helpful to have this attitude the entire time.

Third, your results may be inconsistent, and that’s ok! There is true happiness is the stars and planets aligning and giving you perfect results. Unfortunately, this will never happen. You will have nearly perfect results, you will have incomprehensible results, you will have inconsistent results. That’s ok.

Actual picture of my results.

You will have happy moments. Like you will find that the results that use the most natural language per page, will also have the highest number of uses of synesthesia. Then you will find that the results that use the most industrial language per page have the least amount of uses of synesthesia and a medium amount. Unfortunately, nothing will be absolutely perfect. Fortunately, where things are not perfect, they are interesting.

Word count: 535

Researching How to Analyze my Research

Welcome back to my blog! I hope everyone has had a productive and wonderful week. I, for one, have interacted with more people this past week than I have in probably my entire life due to my new job. Although many conversations centered around the presence of people’s dogs in the car (and in one case, a cat!!), I was able to discuss my research as well. I have been able to educate coffee-drinkers all across the valley about synesthesia, which in my opinion is one of the greatest parts of this research. Hopefully, as more time goes on people will be more educated on the topic and able to identify their own synesthesia or synesthesia in their family or friends. Although I have been discussing it a lot, I have also been continuing to implement my research and learning how to analyze the results.

In order to learn how to analyze my results I had to do some research. Thanks to United States General Accounting Office, I learned more about content analysis’s, when to use them, how to implement them, and how to analyze the results of them. Here is what I learned.

Step one: summarize the coded data. The easiest way to summarize the coded data is by observing the frequencies of each category. For example, in the table I provided last week the frequency of references to nature was higher than the frequency of references to industry.

Step two: discover patterns and relationships. So after identifying the frequencies it is important to compare them. In my case, I will be observing how the frequency of nature and industry compare to the frequency of synesthesia. So far, the frequency of synesthesia did not differ due to the changes in the number of references to industry or nature (spoilers! This week’s research will change these results, but you’ll have to wait until next week to see that). These patterns and relationships are the most important part of my research, because this is where answers to my question will begin to bloom.

Step three: test hypotheses. My hypothesis for my research is that with increased industry, there will be a decrease in the number of references to synesthesia. My hypothesis is based on a couple of ideas. Since the industrial revolution caused a change in lifestyle (the rise in trains caused goods to be more available from all around the world, people moved from an agrarian lifestyle to cities, and ideologies changed, whether to protect people’s work rights or safety in factories) I believe that there was a shift in language as well, thus changing how synesthesia is portrayed.

Step four: relating the results to other data obtained. Essentially, this portion of my results section will be identifying how the results I obtained play into the academic conversation. Unfortunately, there is not much of an academic conversation to be had. Overall there is little research done on how synesthesia is portrayed in literature, much less due to historical events, so my research will be influential in beginning it.

Hopefully this is not the only discussion I will be beginning. Comment below, and I’ll respond! It can be about anything you would like, whether it's about my research or the awesome cat that I saw. Thanks for reading and see you next week!

Word count: 552

AP Computer Science All Over Again: A Coding Problem

Hello readers! I hope you’ve had a wonderful week. Since school ended, I preformed in my studio’s ballet production, started training for my job, gone to Colorado to snowboard, and, the most important, implemented my research. I may be less than halfway through my research, but patterns are already emerging. I don’t want to be presumptuous, so I’ll let you guys come to your own conclusions.

As a part of my implementation I have a list of literature that I will be reading and annotating. The list of literature is as follows: “The Harmony of Words”, “Our sweet companions-sharing your bunk and your bed”, The Blind Musician, “A Cloud of Trousers”, The Lower Depths,  And the Quiet Flows the Don, “Vision in Spring”, “The Yellow Wallpaper”, Daisy Miller, and The Jungle.

So far I have read and annotated “A Cloud of Trousers”, Daisy Miller, and “The Yellow Wallpaper”. After beginning my implementation, I realized that my work was going to be much more difficult than I anticipated. Although I developed a code, nothing was as clear-cut as I had expected it to be. A content-analysis, at first glance, seemed easier to do than other methods that my classmates were doing. All I had to do was look and note certain key-words and phrases, and then once I had accomplished that, I had to count them all up.

I was mistaken. The code that I developed was not as inclusive as I had hoped. Problems began to arise as I was reading my first piece of literature, “The Yellow Wallpaper,” and I had to reevaluate my code. My original code included exact quotations or references to keywords or phrases: “energy”, “mining”, “milling”, “textiles”, and “printing.” However, in order to properly capture the effects of the industrial revolution I had to include the changes that the industrial revolution brought. Since the industrial revolution changed the lifestyle of some people from farming to cities, there were changes that were not included in my code. References to occupations and building that did not exist prior to the industrial revolution had to be included, because these new labors and buildings exemplify the changes that the industrial revolution brought. For example, there was a reference to a toy store that had to be included because although not energy, mining, or textiles, would not have emerged without the industrial revolution.

Unfortunately with the code constantly changing, it has been difficult to implement my research to its fullest extent. I have to keep going back and re-annotating. This has led to less progress than I had hoped for. With less than a month until our final papers due, I am scared that I will not have everything done in time. Due to my fears, I have decided to cut one piece of literature out of research. The literature is And the Quiet Flows the Don. There are a few reasons for cutting this piece of literature in particular. One, the length of the book exceeds what I am capable of reading and annotating in the time I have remaining. The book is the longest in my list, and with so much to do, and my still wavering code, it would be too much to read a four-hundred page book. Two, the book length does not match any of those in the American category. I did my best to pair a book from America and Russia in length, and And the Quiet Flows the Don, did not fit with a piece of American literature. For both of those reasons, I decided that I will not be reading And the Quiet Flows the Don.

Lastly, I would like to present my findings. Every week I will update this table with the new information.

Literature	Number of references to Industrial Language	Number of references to Natural Language	References to Synesthesia
“The Yellow Wall-Paper”	13	26	1
“A Cloud in Trousers”	27	26	2
Daisy Miller	19	32	1

Feel free to comment any thoughts you have on what I have already accomplished and thanks for reading! See you next week!

Word count: 678

Introduction

Hi! My name is Maria Mitina, but I go by Masha. I'm a senior at BASIS Scottsdale, and I am completing my AP research project. AP research is "an innovative program that equips students with the independent research, collaborative teamwork, and communication skills that increasingly valued by colleges" (College Board.) The aim of AP Research is to have students enter into an academic conversation that exists about a specific topic or issue.

For the past school year, I have been working on my research project on synesthesia. Synesthesia is a phenomenon in which senses mix. Essentially, when exposed to a certain stimuli, individuals will have a sense activated that is not the "normal" sense associated with the stimuli. For example, one synesthete will experience sound-to-color synesthesia, meaning that when listening to the music they will also see colors. There are other forms of synesthesia as well, like color-grapheme synesthesia, meaning synesthetes will see color when reading black and white text. Mainly, it is when an individual sees a certain grapheme, like the letter "a" as a certain color, like red. Interesting right? There are around 77 different types of synesthesia. If you want to find out if you have synesthesia, you can take this small quiz(link coming soon) .

My research is focused specifically on the portrayal of synesthesia in literature because there a lot of false perceptions on what synesthesia is, and very little exposure to the phenomen. Often times, the only exposure that people have to the phenomenon is through literature. In order for synesthesia to be properly perceived, the flaws in how it is portrayed must be identified.

Little research has been done on the portrayal of synesthesia in literature. However, Patricia Duffy, a synesthete who works for the UN Language and Communications Program, published a chapter in the Oxford Handbook for Synesthesia titled the “Synesthesia in Literature.” Duffy classified synesthesia into five roles in literature: accepted anomaly, romantic ideal, romantic pathology, synesthesia as indicative of pathology, and emotional completeness.

While research done on these portrayals has been helpful in understanding how the public views synesthetes, these categories have been rather general, instead of focused on a specific group or culture, or historically. Milton Albrecht said “literature reflects common cultural values” (Albrecht). Literature can often reveal how people viewed the culture of the time, and provide insight that isn’t shown through other historical documents. For example, The Great Gatsby portrayed how glamorous society in the 1920s was actually a facade covering up the many problems of the era. In this example, literature illuminated a different perspective on the time period. Literature can show many different hidden viewpoints, like the perceptions of synesthesia.

  This paper will focus on the late 19th and early 20th century. The world was experiencing an Industrial Revolution during this time, so everything was growing at a very rapid pace, and things were constantly changing. Since there was so much alteration occurring, this is a concentrated time period where changes in the community and cultural values can be seen. During the Industrial Revolution, there were obvious technological changes, like the boom of the railroad business. There were ideological changes, especially in Russia and America. In Russia it was from the Tsar to the Revolution, and in America it was from big business to big government. This paper will focus on these two countries due to these different shifts in ideology. Observing both countries will illuminate how synesthesia is affected by the culture.

In order to understand the shift in ideology, which could change the portrayal of synesthesia, the history of each country must be understood. Industrialization was becoming a huge part of Russian culture, but with industrialization emerged a larger middle class which in turn gave rise to a political environment, especially radical groups. Working conditions were harsh and wages were low. People became angry and started to revolt. The Tsar was handling the situation very poorly and in order to appease protests created the Duma, a democratic parliament (Carmichael).  Soon after, he dissolved the Duma. In 1914, Russia joined World War I, but the government proved to be incompetent so the people demanded to remove the Tsar (Fitzgerald). So began the Russian Revolution.

In America, industrialization was really marked with the creation of the transcontinental railroad. The railroad allowed for simple transportation of goods and people. This made life a lot easier, and as a result, there was more invention and industrialization. Something unique to America’s industrial revolution was a huge migration of people. Around 14 million immigrants moved to the US during this time. As a result of the rise of industry a few prominent business owners began to emerge, for example, Andrew Carnegie and John D Rockefeller. The nature of American’s work changed. They worked in factories doing a single job and never seeing the end product. They believed their work to be meaningless, and the working conditions were horrible, unsanitary, and dangerous. Workers would work for most of the day for little pay. Often times women would work because the wages weren’t enough to support a family, and even more often children would work. Over long working hours, safety concerns, and child labor law concerns, unions began to emerge, advocating for the rights of the individuals. They came together to revolt when railroad wages were cut. As a result of these huge business owners, people became unhappy and called for progressivism. The primary goal was to cut corruption of the US government. This continued until the beginning of World War I (“The Industrial Revolution…”).