Hey readers!
I'd be completely remiss to not give specific thanks to Dr. Herbots and Mrs. Haag for their amazing guidance and mentorship throughout my project. Dr. Herbots was the greatest expert advisor because she basically gave me autonomy in what kind of project I wanted to pursue, allowing me to combine the use of Ion Beam Analysis and 3LCAA to my heart's content. Yet, she provided with amazing guidance through all the steps, helping me in the lab, interpreting the results with me, and objectively judging the conclusions I made to help me strengthen them. She was truly an expert advisor, and I want to thank her for her amazing mentorship for the last 1.5 years!
Apart from being an amazing teacher and mentor, Mrs. Haag definitely gave me a lot of personal support throughout the grueling research process. For all the obstacles I faced with reducing the number of samples and semi-changing the experimental design, Mrs. Haag was always supportive and understanding, arming me with contingency plans and encouragement. I genuinely couldn't have done it without her!
Both AP Research and AP Seminar definitely forced me to confront my fear of writing (lol... it's true). Before Seminar, I used to get super nervous about writing anything, so I would never start English assignments until the last minute. The rigorous planning that we conduct and the outlining we do made that job so much easier, and now I honestly take pride in my writing and love it. In college, I'm going to have to write a lot, so that was extremely helpful. Moreover, I learned to formulate an argument in a paper, which really really really helped me out in writing scientific papers. Because of these skills (which I DEFINITELY wouldn't have without Seminar), I could first-author a paper in a scientific journal in junior year.
Miss you baes!
Wow. I turned in my final paper on Thursday and delivered my final presentation on Friday evening, so this amazing journey has come to an end. For all my readers who couldn't make the presentation, here is the link to my slides. For you especially curious readers, here is the link to the PDF of my final paper. Thanks to everyone who stayed/came for my presentation... you guys are the best -- I felt so supported and happy to share my results with everyone!
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| Nailed the presentation like Iso Joe nailed that game-winner... |
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| Mrs. Haag = OG |
On a more content-related level, the amazing way Mrs. Haag and AP Research helped me was ultimately in communicating my research. I'd been in the lab since the beginning of junior year, so I didn't need AP Research to get me started in research. BUT even though I had given poster and oral presentations and even written a published paper in junior year, I couldn't convey important aspects of my research in an understandable manner to everyone. I would either go way too technical and not reach the ultimate purpose or importance of the research, or simplify too much. Going through my project with Mrs. Haag -- thoroughly reviewing the literature on my own to nail the terminology down, planning my own experimental design, writing a proposal, and explaining my project to her -- really helped me get the importance of my research project and allowed me to easily convey the significance.
What this manifested in was not just my own personal satisfaction of being able to communicate my research effectively (oh, don't worry that was huge), but also lots of accolades I wouldn't have otherwise won. So, in October, I got the best oral presentation at the American Physical Society meeting basically just because I had just done a lit review and explained all of my research to Mrs. Haag (also Seminar slide tips). I could convey my information clearly and understandably. AP Research also allowed me to convey the significance of my research conversationally -- I felt it really helped for interviews for colleges and talking to adults about my research.
Moreover, I was able to author another paper on the research I did for my research project, and we're submitting that for publication later this month. This Tuesday, I'm presenting a poster at the Materials Research Society meeting, with basically data entirely from my AP Research project. So, AP Research let me conduct real, interesting, and ground-breaking science but also understand it extremely well to communicate it to others. And that's pretty powerful.
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| As Dr. Jette said, it's all about power. |
So, I really owe a lot of stuff to AP Capstone and Mrs. Haag, and I will definitely continue to use the skills I gained in the program to understand and communicate research with writing or speaking.
Well, that basically raps this year up... I can't even believe it. For all you readers that have been following for a while now, you're the best... I hope you enjoyed the wild ride we've been on...
I've genuinely gave the last two years of AP Capstone my best, and it's the greatest feeling!
Signing off for the last time,
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| Yash-ip out <3 |
Miss you baes!
Yash
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Yash -- thanks for this last blog post. I am really proud of the work that you've done, particularly given the amount of time we spent trying to get each other to understand our points of view. I felt like it was me demanding that you make connections clearer followed by you explaining the technical, intricate details of your project. Together, I think we worked on clarifying all of the brilliant things you created, so that people could understand and appreciate it more.
ReplyDeleteYash! This was a really good and sentimental last post! I wasn't there for your actual presentation, but I saw you come in dressed really nicely, and I am positive you gave a beautiful, amazing presentation!! I also read your final paper, and I thought it was really good and the gap was really clear! I'm also glad that you feel good about your project, that you produced something that you're proud of! and that you've improved your writing skills so much, and that you are able to communicate effectively with different prestigious fancy sounding societies! I'm proud of you! Keep it up! You will do great in college and after college and I wish you luck!! (117)
ReplyDeleteBig boi! I'm gunna miss you bae! I'm glad that you were able to receive such expert help from your expert advisor to get you through your research, because we all know how much work you put into doing this research. I'm glad that there was a lot that you were able to get out of this research, such as how to better present information in an understandable way (and overcome your fear of writing lol!). Anyways, it seems like you really enjoyed the research that you did, and so I think that makes everything worth while. Even though we are done, all I can see is keep up the hard work going forward! Good luck Bae <3!
ReplyDeleteHi Yash,
ReplyDeleteYO THIRD FLOOR BAE, happy to hear that your research project has ended dope and that you actually crushed the presentation! All the good stuff is over! And you should be proud of your Hema drop research. The complicated mess you had at the end of your primary research finally started to make sense at the end of it all. Expert mentors are truly experts in their field, and we should both be thankful for their advice. I was not able to make your presentation, but your entourage was fire lol. The slides' theming was great.
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Ashwath V.