The biggest strategy that helped me get things done was the Nike philosophy: just do it. If I didn’t force myself to work on things, then I wouldn’t get anywhere on my project and nothing would get done. It kept me on track for literal reasons because I forced myself to stay on track. The second thing that helped me stay on track was talking to peers with similar projects for advice on how to write certain sections. When I was confused, it was really helpful to hear about the thing I was stuck on from someone who was already done with it. One scenario I could’ve handled better was fixing my project after being approved with modifications by the IRB. I let that take way longer than it should’ve, and it took too much of my time. A second scenario I could’ve handled better was waiting for responses from bigger schools. I waited for three weeks before sending emails to different schools, and that was generally a waste of my time. Even though I got other stuff done during that time, I definitely could’ve been more productive than I was. In the future, I now have a lot of helpful time management tools.
Archives: AP Research
AP Research Post 2/3
Poor representation negatively impacts society’s perceptions of the LGBTQ+ community because it preserves flawed, one-dimensional, and stereotypical images of LGBTQ+ individuals. This poor representation also has an impact on people who are LGBTQ+ because they don’t see characters that make it seem like their identity is okay. Instead what they see is a blatantly inaccurate portrayal of their identity, something that might be better described as a mockery. When negative messages about being LGBTQ+ are spread, LGBTQ+ individuals become more inclined to believe these things are true, which can be negative for their mental health. A media that spreads negative messages about being LGBTQ+ and only offers negative, stereotypical representation will lead to LGBTQ+ youth thinking that there is something wrong with them. The number of LGBTQ+ youth that hate themselves and wish they were dead would likely decrease if they had good representation, if they had access to stories that seem realistic enough to provide hope. LGBTQ+ youth need to be able to see themselves as valid, which cannot happen with negative representation. My study impacts all of this because it highlights the fact that there is a problem with LGBTQ+ representation. It also shows that this issue of representation is a problem that can be fixed, and that it is an important problem to fix.
AP Research Post 1/3
The process of picking a research topic was a struggle. In all honesty, even a topic I thought I loved came to be something I regretted choosing after spending almost a year with it. The largest thing to tackle was finding a topic that met three criterion: relevant, something I care about, and something I wouldn’t get tired of after a year. I knew from the start I wanted to do something dealing with LGBTQ+ equality, and eventually I landed on the issue of LGBTQ+ representation in television. One thing I would change about how I did my data collection would be doing the survey and the content analysis at the same time rather than doing them separately. It would have saved me a lot of time if it hadn’t been suggested that I not do them at the same time. As a result of doing them separately, I ended up falling really behind in the class as a whole. Making this change would’ve improved the class as a whole for me because I could’ve been on track with everybody else and had important peer review help that I missed out on because I was so behind on data collection. I probably could’ve also collected more data if I had had more time to collect that data.