Reflections

This past week, we submitted our final papers to the college board. A task that has made me feel incredibly accomplished. Although we have our presentations coming up (practice this week and final next week), I feel as if I've completed the biggest part. All of the information exists and all I have to do is have a conversation with some people about what I have done over the past eight months. I thought it might be interesting to see what doing this project has taught me, aside from a lot about synesthesia and Russian literature. 

First, there is a lot of research that needs to be done, and the sooner you find your topic, may not be the sooner you find your research question. So I knew from last year that I wanted to focus on synesthesia. After bothering Kathleen with dozens of questions, she suggested that I do my srp on it. I took her suggestion. Unfortunately, the field of synesthesia is very underdeveloped. You may say, hey! Great news for you! But the problem is that there are a lot of scientific stuff that still needs to be discovered, and I am a high schooler who does not have the money to fund scientific research or a lab. So, although more humanity based research can be explored, a lot of my topics led to surveys and interviews. Unfortunately, I did not have a group of people that I could interview. So I had to take a different approach. I researched semiotics, but came up short. I eventually came across research about synesthesia in literature, and decided that this is the field I should research. 

Second, your original literature review will not be your final literature review. During the research process so many things change, that the first thing you do, is not going to match your final results. What you need to do, is adjust for that. It's ok for them not to match, but make sure you don't match your results to your literature review. But rather your lit review to your results. It's actually kind of fun to see how your lit review differs, and see the evolution of your research. My first literature review was heavily focused on the scientific aspect of synesthesia, and explaining how it works. But now it's very little explanation of the science of synesthesia, and the justifications for the time periods and literature, and explanations of the information found previously. If you want to make yourself cringe, go to your first draft. 

Third, I felt that I would be extremely stressed out when we were first told what we needed to do, but the reality is that I could not imagine a more relaxed way of writing essentially an undergraduate research paper. Although this was our teacher's first year teaching this class, she gave us all the tools that we needed to succeed. In college, it's very likely that I will also have to write a research paper, and I will be left to my own devices. Although I will have the help of a professor in my discipline, I will not have the help of someone who understands me. My teacher led us through the steps of a literature review, and explained a multitude of methodologies. This information will help beyond what we accomplished this year too. Knowing how to write different methodologies will be helpful for whatever field I decide to be in. I'm glad that I got this experience. I may not be in college, but I learned how to write something for college, but with a little extra help. 

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