Research Progress Blog #5

     Coming into this week my paper was pretty close to being done. I decided I didn't want to rush myself into finishing it early and just took an hour with it each night. By Thursday night all I did was a read through for flow and making sure my paper followed the checklist we were given last Friday. Even though doing it this way kept the stress of the paper on me it also gave me the opportunity to sleep on it and re-read it with fresh eyes. I changed some things on Thursday night and if I had the chance to read it again I would probably change more. What's written is written though and now it is out of my hands.

     Along with editing my paper I started to brainstorm ways to make my presentation effectively cover my topic without being boring. I decided that there is no better way to keep teenagers attention than with food! Since this class is in the morning I decided I wanted to find a muffin recipe that used a few of the substitutions I mentioned in my paper. I found these blueberry oatmeal muffins that actually use a lot of the substitutions I mention in my paper. Because of this I think for my presentation I will start with the muffin then use it as an example to guide me through my paper.

     I'm a little nervous about baking something for the presentation because you never really know how a baked good is going to turn out. This is a popular blog so I trust that they turned out good when she made them but me making them is a different story. I've baked plenty of things before but when things aren't definite they worry me. I am going to make the muffins Sunday night so I know I have enough time to focus on the cooking. Since I'm presenting on Tuesday I think leaving them in an air tight container should keep them fresh (fingers crossed!).

     I'm really excited to make these muffins. Like super excited (probably too excited). Its just I've been reading about these substitutions and how awesome they are for months and I haven't had an excuse to try them. I mean if its for school my dad has to let me buy these ingredients. The cool thing is though I already do have most of the ingredients so if these turn out they really could become an everyday breakfast.

     I have my presentation outline sketched out and now I just need to add in the wording and more details. What I found though was I know a lot about my paper. Like I'm not going to have to memorize facts to present I'm just going to need to memorize the order. I get anxiety about speaking but by going on a day with only half the class and feeling comfortable with the people in the half I think I'll have just enough nerves to give me the energy for a good performance.
 

Motivation

     To me this video felt like an animated TED talk. TED talks are always interesting but because of the animation I couldn't stop watching and listening to this video. The color scheme of simple black and red kept me focused on the words being said more so than the pictures. Another thing the animation did was very quickly reinforce what Pink was saying. If I didn't catch a word or missed a point the illustrations were a fun way to catch me back up.

     Obviously for a teenager school is going to be one of those things that you need motivation for. Its not something you roll out of bed in the morning longing to do. In school I think we can equate money to grades and purpose/mastery to how your teachers feel about you & you feel about yourself. There are definitely some  classes where I could get an 'A' without really understanding what I'm doing. If the class is gym and I feel like I'll get nothing out of it or I don't respect the teacher I might take that path. One of my main motivators though is not disappointing myself or my teachers when I know I can do better. The last day of third quarter I had three tests. In all of those classes I had at least a 98%. I could've not studied, bombed them all, and still kept my 'A'. But then I started to think about my teachers grading those tests. They would know I didn't study. I would feel like I let them down. I mean they spend their whole day teaching and I can't even try on a test? So, I studied for them all and got A's. Now semester exams were a different story. My motivation every year to get A's on my exams is that I get exempt from the final. Well this year since I don't have to take any my goal was to get the grade that could still give me an A for the year. The only class I was worried about not even being able to get a C on was AP Bio. So I studied for 12 hours and ended up getting a A. Maybe if I had put that much effort into my other classes I could have gotten all A's. But what I lacked was the motivation for that. I think this is because semester exams are supposed to be hard. Teachers understand that you have 6 others to take and that you probably won't perform to your usual caliber.

     Throughout the video I think Pink made very good points and backed them up with a lot of evidence. Its hard to argue against someone when you don't know much about the field and they are providing study after study in their favor. It makes sense to me that simple tasks can be improved upon when you are given a money incentive. These tasks are usually accomplished best by the hardest worker, not the most skill. One thing I wish he did more was go into more detail about why more money made you worse. I get that it does but are there any reasons why? I'll definitely have to look that up soon.

     Since I am going to be in college next year I started to try and apply this video to how motivated someone is in college. After thinking for awhile it occurred to me that it is just a completely different idea. I think money is the number one motivator in college. You are not going to want to fork over thousands of dollars to just sit there and do nothing. I remember reading about one study where kids who paid their own admission to college did better. This makes perfect sense to me. It follows the phrase "get more bang for your buck." If it actually is your buck you're going to want to get as much out of it as possible! I'm just thankful my parents don't know about this study.

I'll leave you with my favorite motivational quote: "Failure doesn't come from falling down. Failure comes from not getting up."

Research Progress Blog #4

     Spring break went how I expected. We got home from our daily activities around 9, I would fire up my laptop, and just outline facts. By Saturday morning when we got home I had my organization down with my research but absolutely no flow. Realizing this made me very thankful that the due date was moved to Tuesday. That weekend I spent most of my time trying to make my sentences mesh and my paper feel less like a fact sheet.
  
     On Monday it actually wasn't freezing and if you know me then you know I can not stand the cold, so clearly I had to go outside. I live near Pioneer park so I walked to the park, ran around the track there, then walked back. Maybe it wasn't the most productive hour of my life but it felt good. It cleared my head and left me ready to get to work. The rest of my evening was spent trying to bulk up my now flowing paper with more research.

     When I went into my email to download my rough draft on Tuesday I saw I had an email from Cooking Light. I had messaged them the very first day we were asked to find someone to interview, so about a month ago. I received a response fairly quickly but it was just a sentence or two saying they just recommend everything in moderation. Well, the people at Cooking Light must forwarded my message directly to the chef because I now had this brand new source to use for my paper waiting in my inbox. As you can see in the photo pictured right she wrote a lot. I hadn't even asked an questions in my email; just a quick "Hello I'm writing a paper." Immediately I sorted through and added it to my paper. She covered everything from fats to sugars so I think it was really beneficial to not only my paper, but my understanding of how to change a preexisting recipe.
 
     One thing I've realized over the past few months is that this paper is always on my mind, in a good way. By that I mean in my free time, if I'm looking at recipes, instead of just getting ideas for my kitchen, I'm finding comments that lead me to research things for my paper. I never would've know to research about flax eggs if i didn't find myself casually scrolling through a vegan recipe blog. The research part has been so easy because I truly enjoy it. I said in my last post that I was worried I was going to be burnt out on my topic it and hate it by the end of this project but, just the opposite is happening. The more I find out the more I want to learn. When I learn about a new substitution idea I want to look into it more. Researching has also taught me tricks in the kitchen that I've been testing. One thing I've tried is replacing all-purpose flour with oat flour. To make the flour I took some rolled oats (like the kind you use to make oatmeal) added them to a coffee grinder and pressed go! I was left with a nice flour consistency that worked out perfectly in my muffins.

     The reason this paper has been tough for me is because I'm the type of person where if you give me an assignment that doesn't have an official 'end' I won't stop working on it. What I mean is that if I have 5 math problems for homework, I know once I get an answer for all five I'm done and can move on to the rest. Well with papers they never really have an end. You can't look at a draft and say its done, it could always use some editing. So Monday and Tuesday night I found my self constantly adding more and changing wording and by 11:30 on Tuesday night I was done. Done in every sense of the word. I had emailed it and never wanted to see it again. Because of this, on Wednesday I took a much needed break. I had already had all my sources in easybib so I created my works cited in seconds. After a days mental rest from working on this paper I took the comments made from onto my rough draft and put them into action. This weekend I am looking forwarded to starting my section five and tweaking sections 1-4 a little more.