I just finished the revisions to my thesis paper. All I have to do is turn it in and then I'm done. After sending the first draft of my final paper to Dr. Bisha, my only edits that I had were minuscule and easy to accomplish. I have a lot of bitter-sweet feelings with being done. I would love to be able to do more work in this area when I get older, but truthfully, I have no idea if it will go anywhere. So that's where the bitterness comes from. The sweetness comes from me truly being proud of myself for the work that I've done. I saw myself go from the most timid Communication Studies major my Freshman year, to being blown away with myself re-watching my speech.
I've been working on this project for 9 months now. I can officially say this project was like a full-term pregnancy. There were mood swings, hormone imbalances, stress, lots of junk food, and I spent a lot of time preparing for it. Weird metaphor, I know, but it seems fitting in my situation. We spend months perfecting our projects, in hopes that they can one day turn into something successful. I've watched this project grow through the months, much like fetus does. I think that most of all, I have a sense of relief.
This project has taught me more about myself than I thought it would and I think that is a really good thing. I've learned a lot of time management skills. Like, a lot. For the first time in my life I didn't procrastinate this project because I truly wanted it to turn out perfect. I spent days at a time just tweaking things here and there and sending it to professors to make sure that it looked and sounded good. I worked on my presentation for two weeks straight, instead of just the week of. I began revisions for my paper before Easter Break, and wanted to have a solid amount done by then, which I did. When I returned from the break, I hit the ground running with this paper and am not stressing about the deadline or whether I will finish in time with the right word count. I would like to personally thank this project for my new-found time management skills because they truly saved me from numerous mental breakdowns this semester.
As I get ready to turn in my paper, I still worry about things being perfect, but I know that I've truly put my all into this project and this paper and that there's nothing else I can do with it, besides hope for the best that I can get an A. :)
Thursday, May 2, 2019
Tuesday, April 23, 2019
Final Pieces Coming Together - Journal 7
I now have two weeks to complete my final senior thesis paper. What a whirlwind of emotions. I've been working on this project for the greater half of 9 months now, and as much as I hate to see it go, I'm relieved to move on to the next step of my life, being the real world.
I met with Dr. Bisha last week before Easter break started so that I could know if my literature review and method section were at the point of being able to turn in. I did those portions so early because I fully know how intense putting together my data analysis is going to be. I wanted to be able to focus on the analysis portion for the next two weeks and not have to worry about the other sections.
The motivation getting me through these next two weeks is the fact that in less than three weeks, I'll be graduated. I'm in the home stretch right now and I don't plan on slacking now (even though I want to). As I've mentioned in my last journal, I have quite a few things to add in to my data analysis section. When I discovered all of my new data about central and peripheral processing, I had nine days until my presentation, so I had no time to go in to my paper and put in all of the new information. On top of that, I will be answering the questions that were addressed in my Q/A from the English and Communication professors. Among those will include: What will make an effective online training course?; How would I create my own Title IX training?; What would I do about the different group sizes of students?; and, Is age a determining factor of the responses to my survey and the two different training sessions?
Luckily, I do have answers to those questions and the hardest part about adding it all to my paper will be to figure out where exactly to put it all. At this point, I'm thinking that towards the end of my analysis to help bring the whole thing together. I will still be keeping everything that I've already had in the data section, which is good because I'd much rather have things to add than things to take out.
As I go through this editing and adding process of my paper, it will be very tedious, but I'm truly looking forward to end result of this paper since I have been working so hard on it since September.
I met with Dr. Bisha last week before Easter break started so that I could know if my literature review and method section were at the point of being able to turn in. I did those portions so early because I fully know how intense putting together my data analysis is going to be. I wanted to be able to focus on the analysis portion for the next two weeks and not have to worry about the other sections.
The motivation getting me through these next two weeks is the fact that in less than three weeks, I'll be graduated. I'm in the home stretch right now and I don't plan on slacking now (even though I want to). As I've mentioned in my last journal, I have quite a few things to add in to my data analysis section. When I discovered all of my new data about central and peripheral processing, I had nine days until my presentation, so I had no time to go in to my paper and put in all of the new information. On top of that, I will be answering the questions that were addressed in my Q/A from the English and Communication professors. Among those will include: What will make an effective online training course?; How would I create my own Title IX training?; What would I do about the different group sizes of students?; and, Is age a determining factor of the responses to my survey and the two different training sessions?
Luckily, I do have answers to those questions and the hardest part about adding it all to my paper will be to figure out where exactly to put it all. At this point, I'm thinking that towards the end of my analysis to help bring the whole thing together. I will still be keeping everything that I've already had in the data section, which is good because I'd much rather have things to add than things to take out.
As I go through this editing and adding process of my paper, it will be very tedious, but I'm truly looking forward to end result of this paper since I have been working so hard on it since September.
Saturday, April 13, 2019
Post-Thesis Presentation and Next Steps: Journal 6
Today, Saturday April 13th, is two days after I've given my Senior Thesis presentation. After 8 long months and a lot of preparing, I finally presented all of my research and data. And I honestly think it went really well. I felt the most prepared for this presentation than I had for any other presentation that I've given in my college career. And that's saying something. I cannot even begin to express the level of happiness that I have now that I've finally presented my work. It is seriously the biggest weight lifted off of my shoulders. But now I get to look forward to all of the edits I need to make for my paper.
I think the most difficult part for me on Thursday was figuring out how to coherently answer the questions that the faculty had for me. I knew my topic and I tried my best to anticipate what the questions would be, but even with that preparation, I still struggled. One of the main things that the professors wanted me to answer was if a facilitator was always necessary and are there some types of online trainings that would work. In my head I believe that I had good answers, but the words were not coming out the way I intended so I obviously need to spend more time thinking those through and adding them to my paper.
Now that I finally have feedback from Dr. Bisha on my initial first draft of my paper, I will be able to go in and actually make all of those changes. And luckily, I have three weeks to do it. The most tedious part about revising my paper is the fact that all of my central and peripheral processing information is not included, since I came up with that idea about a week and a half ago. Not that any of it is hard, but I will need to still add more into my literature review, probably spice up my method section a little bit, and then really make a big difference into my data analysis. I think the way I plan to attack this is to print out copies of each section and then go through with a red marker and fill in the pieces that need to be added and even taken out. Once I go through that for my lit review and data analysis, I will continue to send my updated copies to Dr. Bisha, as well as maybe Dr. Vrooman just to make sure I don't miss any important pieces of information and that it all sounds coherent.
As I go through this process, I will give two more updates on how things are going and different feedback that I'm given from my professors. Hopefully I can knock the majority of this out the week we get back from Easter Break, which is in two weeks. That way I can stop worrying about all of this as soon as possible.
I think the most difficult part for me on Thursday was figuring out how to coherently answer the questions that the faculty had for me. I knew my topic and I tried my best to anticipate what the questions would be, but even with that preparation, I still struggled. One of the main things that the professors wanted me to answer was if a facilitator was always necessary and are there some types of online trainings that would work. In my head I believe that I had good answers, but the words were not coming out the way I intended so I obviously need to spend more time thinking those through and adding them to my paper.
Now that I finally have feedback from Dr. Bisha on my initial first draft of my paper, I will be able to go in and actually make all of those changes. And luckily, I have three weeks to do it. The most tedious part about revising my paper is the fact that all of my central and peripheral processing information is not included, since I came up with that idea about a week and a half ago. Not that any of it is hard, but I will need to still add more into my literature review, probably spice up my method section a little bit, and then really make a big difference into my data analysis. I think the way I plan to attack this is to print out copies of each section and then go through with a red marker and fill in the pieces that need to be added and even taken out. Once I go through that for my lit review and data analysis, I will continue to send my updated copies to Dr. Bisha, as well as maybe Dr. Vrooman just to make sure I don't miss any important pieces of information and that it all sounds coherent.
As I go through this process, I will give two more updates on how things are going and different feedback that I'm given from my professors. Hopefully I can knock the majority of this out the week we get back from Easter Break, which is in two weeks. That way I can stop worrying about all of this as soon as possible.
Tuesday, April 2, 2019
One Week Until Thesis Thoughts- Journal 5
Right now, I'm sitting in the library procrastinating putting my presentation together for my thesis next Thursday, April 11th, which will be a day that goes down in infamy. Basically it just determines if I graduate or not, no big deal. I also decided to see what other good or potentially heinous things happened on April 11th in history. Apparently, the river ferry, "Princess Victoria" sank in the Thames River in Ontario and killed 180 people. I know that sounds gruesome and horrible, because it is. I chose this specific event to relate it to how my future could also go on April 11th. I could also be a river ferry that sinks in the TLU river. Who knows? We'll find out in nine days though, don't worry.
On a much brighter note, the whole point of this particular blog post is to discuss my recent discoveries that I've made regarding my thesis. I'm not sure if 'discovery' is a good word, but I've essentially found a much better way of describing my thesis with some new sources. Thanks to the help of Dr. Vrooman and his book that I should have read a long time ago (Freshman year), I was able to read about the Elaboration Likelihood Model, which discusses how we process information that we are being given. There are two different ways that that happens. One is the peripheral way, which is shortcuts that our brain takes. I like to think of it as the feeder roads to the freeways. That being said, the central way of processing, which is the important things we need to go home with, is the freeway in this example.
My thesis as of yesterday had just been that face-to-face training was more effective than online training and I kind of had an understanding as to why, but it was way too broad of a thesis to try and argue coherently without getting off topic. With my thesis, which more or less a few scholarly words is: The online training course, Think About It, is less effective than the face-to-face training because there is no facilitator to bring the audience back from peripheral processing to central processing.
So, if you're still following along, this is what's going on in my brain right now as far as how I plan to elaborate on this more. Back to the freeway analogy. If you drive on the feeder roads instead of the highway, what happens? You have more stoplights, people to merge with, and potential backups at entrances and exits to the freeway. When you take the freeway, you have everything in front of you. You can go to whichever lane you need to be, there are some backups that occur, but realistically those won't last the entire time anyway. When you do the freeway you're getting the most bang for your buck because even though you may end up in the same place, you get slowed down by so many obstacles by taking the feeder road. This is what happens when we process information. In our peripheral, there are distractions that are holding us back from fully gaining all of the information handed to us. With central processing, we still get the same information but we are more cognitive and aware of what's going on because you have to when cars are going 75+ miles per hour.
Okay, I know that was a lot. I'm kind of typing word vomit right now just trying to get some ideas going through my head as I prepare to go more into detail of my analysis with my new thesis. I hope this all makes sense in the end, and hopefully you continue with life taking the freeway all the way down I-35 instead of the feeder roads because they will back you up even farther. So my next steps from here in terms of feedback and the paper: Dr. Bisha will give feedback for our paper, and then after we present we get feedback on the presentation. From there, we continue to make changes to our paper as we need to. So stay tuned for updates throughout that process as well.
On a much brighter note, the whole point of this particular blog post is to discuss my recent discoveries that I've made regarding my thesis. I'm not sure if 'discovery' is a good word, but I've essentially found a much better way of describing my thesis with some new sources. Thanks to the help of Dr. Vrooman and his book that I should have read a long time ago (Freshman year), I was able to read about the Elaboration Likelihood Model, which discusses how we process information that we are being given. There are two different ways that that happens. One is the peripheral way, which is shortcuts that our brain takes. I like to think of it as the feeder roads to the freeways. That being said, the central way of processing, which is the important things we need to go home with, is the freeway in this example.
My thesis as of yesterday had just been that face-to-face training was more effective than online training and I kind of had an understanding as to why, but it was way too broad of a thesis to try and argue coherently without getting off topic. With my thesis, which more or less a few scholarly words is: The online training course, Think About It, is less effective than the face-to-face training because there is no facilitator to bring the audience back from peripheral processing to central processing.
So, if you're still following along, this is what's going on in my brain right now as far as how I plan to elaborate on this more. Back to the freeway analogy. If you drive on the feeder roads instead of the highway, what happens? You have more stoplights, people to merge with, and potential backups at entrances and exits to the freeway. When you take the freeway, you have everything in front of you. You can go to whichever lane you need to be, there are some backups that occur, but realistically those won't last the entire time anyway. When you do the freeway you're getting the most bang for your buck because even though you may end up in the same place, you get slowed down by so many obstacles by taking the feeder road. This is what happens when we process information. In our peripheral, there are distractions that are holding us back from fully gaining all of the information handed to us. With central processing, we still get the same information but we are more cognitive and aware of what's going on because you have to when cars are going 75+ miles per hour.
Okay, I know that was a lot. I'm kind of typing word vomit right now just trying to get some ideas going through my head as I prepare to go more into detail of my analysis with my new thesis. I hope this all makes sense in the end, and hopefully you continue with life taking the freeway all the way down I-35 instead of the feeder roads because they will back you up even farther. So my next steps from here in terms of feedback and the paper: Dr. Bisha will give feedback for our paper, and then after we present we get feedback on the presentation. From there, we continue to make changes to our paper as we need to. So stay tuned for updates throughout that process as well.
Monday, March 11, 2019
Theorist Dialogue, Behind the Scenes- Journal 4
During this week of class, our assignment was to find a theorist that we would want to have a conversation about our topic with. This was kind of hard for me to figure out at first because I had no idea about any other theorists besides the typical ones that I learned about during rhetoric. And honestly, Kenneth Burke would probably not enjoy my topic as much as some other theorists might. So I started digging.
When I started my search I looked at training and development theorists, and ended up at learning theorists. My search ended with Albert Bandura with his Social Learning Theory. This theory was something I had never heard about, but stuck out to me. When I started reading more about Bandura and his theory, I knew right away that he would love to have a conversation with me about the Title IX trainings that I'm analyzing.
Bandura has four processes of how people learn and that's what he bases his theory off of. Those four processes are how something gets our attention, then how we retain it, then reproduction where we think that we can do something, and then the last one which is having the will to do something that we've just learned or watched.
In terms of how my project goes, I think that it would be super cool to figure out how exactly those four processes work and then put it into a training session to ensure that the students, faculty, or staff get out of the presentation or training what they are supposed to. If these four processes aren't put into play, then it is less likely that anybody will take anything away from it for a long period of time.
I really enjoyed this assignment because researching Bandura was really fun and so was learning about different ways that people learn. It's also very exciting that I now have something else to use for my literature review, which I think will give it a lot of the umph that it's been needing.
When I started my search I looked at training and development theorists, and ended up at learning theorists. My search ended with Albert Bandura with his Social Learning Theory. This theory was something I had never heard about, but stuck out to me. When I started reading more about Bandura and his theory, I knew right away that he would love to have a conversation with me about the Title IX trainings that I'm analyzing.
Bandura has four processes of how people learn and that's what he bases his theory off of. Those four processes are how something gets our attention, then how we retain it, then reproduction where we think that we can do something, and then the last one which is having the will to do something that we've just learned or watched.
In terms of how my project goes, I think that it would be super cool to figure out how exactly those four processes work and then put it into a training session to ensure that the students, faculty, or staff get out of the presentation or training what they are supposed to. If these four processes aren't put into play, then it is less likely that anybody will take anything away from it for a long period of time.
I really enjoyed this assignment because researching Bandura was really fun and so was learning about different ways that people learn. It's also very exciting that I now have something else to use for my literature review, which I think will give it a lot of the umph that it's been needing.
New Epiphany- Journal 3
The week after we did our oral argument presentations we sat in class and discussed any new pieces to our data or analysis that we'd discovered. At first I couldn't come up with anything and was just talking out of my butt trying to rack my brain for anything. And then as I was telling Dr. Bisha bout the survey results that I'd had so far, I made that realization that most of the responses had a couple of things in common with each other.
I discovered that the commonalities were about consent and drinking among the first year students. I'd made that discovery before and had never thought anything of it until that moment in my conversation with Dr. Bisha. There are many other components to Title IX than just consent and drinking alcohol. In fact, those aren't even the main topics. It's about so much more like sexual harassment, discrimination, and domestic violence. No where in any of the responses did the students say the majority of those things. A few of them talking about consent and sexual harassment, but most people don't even understand that there are so many other parts to Title IX.
I decided that the students didn't grasp these other concepts because they weren't focused on enough. In just about each section, alcohol was involved and the idea of consent. Which is good. But not the bigger picture. And even if the other topics of sexual assault or domestic violence were considered, alcohol is always the underlying factor in all of the scenarios that the online course talks about. If there is repetition, the students will remember it for a short time, but it won't last long enough. Dr. Bisha told me that I should look into articles on memory and repetition and see what scholars say about the idea to add on to my literature review. Which is also good because my lit review is lacking severely.
This epiphany that I got during this class helped spark my interest again. I feel like I was at a stand still in my excitement about my topic but because I finally had somewhere that I was going, it helped me to get excited again and want to do more research and get down to the bottom of why students aren't understanding all of the concepts given to them.
I discovered that the commonalities were about consent and drinking among the first year students. I'd made that discovery before and had never thought anything of it until that moment in my conversation with Dr. Bisha. There are many other components to Title IX than just consent and drinking alcohol. In fact, those aren't even the main topics. It's about so much more like sexual harassment, discrimination, and domestic violence. No where in any of the responses did the students say the majority of those things. A few of them talking about consent and sexual harassment, but most people don't even understand that there are so many other parts to Title IX.
I decided that the students didn't grasp these other concepts because they weren't focused on enough. In just about each section, alcohol was involved and the idea of consent. Which is good. But not the bigger picture. And even if the other topics of sexual assault or domestic violence were considered, alcohol is always the underlying factor in all of the scenarios that the online course talks about. If there is repetition, the students will remember it for a short time, but it won't last long enough. Dr. Bisha told me that I should look into articles on memory and repetition and see what scholars say about the idea to add on to my literature review. Which is also good because my lit review is lacking severely.
This epiphany that I got during this class helped spark my interest again. I feel like I was at a stand still in my excitement about my topic but because I finally had somewhere that I was going, it helped me to get excited again and want to do more research and get down to the bottom of why students aren't understanding all of the concepts given to them.
Saturday, March 9, 2019
Post Oral Argument Presentation- Journal 2
A couple of weeks ago we had to do our first oral argument presentation in front of the English and Communications Departments. I was pretty stressed out thinking about it because I didn't want anybody to tell me to start over with my data or analysis. To prepare for the presentation, I had to make sure that I sent out my new and updated survey to the first year students, as well as the student leaders on campus. With this information I was able to have more clear and concise answers that I think are good enough to get me through until my final presentation and final paper. Since I am doing qualitative research on the survey results, it isn't the number of surveys that matters, but the quality of the answers.
Having my survey information definitely helped me feel more confident when preparing for the presentation. I was also able to meet with Dr. Bollinger and get some more resources for my literature review, which is a section that I was, and still am, lagging on. One thing I had to make sure that I mentioned in the presentation was my plan for adding on to my literature review and taking out some unnecessary information. I think that making these changes to my literature review will help bring me so much closer to end result of my literature review.
When I gave my presentation, we were able to get feedback from each person in each department to figure out next steps and different things to consider. As I was preparing for the worst, I believe that I had really positive feedback from each professor who gave it to me. Dr. Bollinger gave me some good advice, but also added on some points and thoughts that strayed away from where I was going with my topic. I still appreciated his feedback, like I always do, but it was more of a way for me to think about next steps for the future once I graduate.
After my presentation was done, I was surprised I didn't receive any feedback from Dr. Vrooman, but I had an email from him that had an article attached that I could use for my literature review, which I probably appreciated a lot more. Not only was there the article that he sent me, but there is about two whole pages of references that I can use as well to really enhance my literature review.
I think that overall my oral argument presentation went really well and has allowed me to successfully move forward with my research and my data collection for my analysis as well as researching for my literature review.
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