Episode 26: Reflecting upon the finale

The pat week was a wild ride. After giving another practice presentation on Monday, submitting my final paper on Thursday, and delivering my final presentation on Friday, I completed AP Research, and the AP Capstone project. Here's a link to my slides. And here's a link to my paper. I can't thank my friends and family enough for showing up during the presentation. There was a lot pressure going into my presentation, but I managed to pull through. I crushed my presentation. Even the CEO of BASIS praised me for my presentation.

Me shortly after giving my presentation, greeting GG and Sergio

I'd like to shout out my 2 mentors, Mrs. Haag and Dr. Ozkan. Mrs. Haag guided me through the process and kept me on track when I'd get behind or encounter errors. Every week something went wrong, I'd be extremely anxious. And when I went in for my meetings, she'd find a way to fix the error or help me rearrange my schedule to ease that anxiety. My expert advisor, Dr. Ozkan, helped understand and grasp the concepts of protein folding, and conserved regions. Without her, completing the project would be impossible. Also a mini shout out to my grad student mentors, who helped me iron out the computational errors in my project.

Shout out to my mentors

The overall lesson I've learned from research is that planning is king. A theme common across AP Seminar and AP Research is the use of outlines. In other classes whenever a large paper was due, the responsibility to plan and outline the paper was on us. That's not a bad thing because in college the responsibility will lie with the student, but I never really grasped proper outlining techniques. After taking the AP Capstone program, I finally understand how to create a proper outline. We learned to integrate sources and structure our paper before actually writing it. The actual creation and writing of the paper is not as important as the argument and sources backing the paper.

As a debater and proficient public speaker, I thought communicating my research would be an easy task. But Mrs. Haag can tell you that the early drafts of my paper assumed too much knowledge and probably didn't make much sense to the average reader. I learned that providing background on topics as technical as protein folding is integral to the reader's understanding. Given my previous experience in communication, I purposely chose a highly technical topic to challenge myself. Now I have the groundwork laid down in case I have to pitch anything out of the box to someone in the future.

Anyone reading my first draft

But don't let the previous experience in debate fool you, my presentation skills may have been on par, but my slides and script were not. After 4 Seminar presentations and a giant Research presentation, I have finally managed to create decent presentations. With minimal words on the slides and lots of pictures I learned how to convey my message to the audience.

The most important take away for me is to be confident. If anyone told me that I'd be writing a 30 page paper in Research two years ago, I'd respond with I am not taking that class. But I realized that I can write academic papers and I am capable of pursuing my interests.

Peace out

Episode 25: Finalizing Perfection

Hi guys,
I'm back and the journey almost over. I took my last mock with the sole purpose of giving my AP Human Geography teacher more spending cash for his honeymoon this summer. If I get a 5 on the AP, I can say that his lunch in Barbados was on me. This past week I gave two practice presentations.

When Mrs. Haag saw my discussion slides

The first practice presentation was surprisingly good. I came in at 7am to practice my script for an hour or two (not because I had to drop my sister off at 7am). Personally, I felt the presentation was a bit shaky and I was not completely in control of my script. The slides were a bit rough (clip art of gears and word clouds were not bright decisions). But Mrs. Haag said I did a decent job of conveying the technicalities and intricacies of my complex work in an engaging way. In addition, my hypothesis was unclear as I did not properly explain that my paper was exploratory in nature. The big pitfall of my presentation was the discussion section, I needed to link it back to my hypothesis to properly finish the presentation. I needed to familiarize myself with the slides and overhaul the discussion section.

The second presentation that occurred on Saturday gave me more insight into the overall significance and following of my paper. I realized that I needed to frame the paper in terms of flexibility relating to function for the audience to understand the discussion section. Also there were still some dodgy slides in my second presentation. I still left the word clouds in there for some reason, and the centering on some slides were awful. I think I had poor eyesight when creating those slides.

Overall, I feel that I have fixed the problems associated with slides. All my slides are animated and simple to follow,  while also conveying a decent amount of information. On the other hand, I plan to introduce flexibility relating to function much earlier in the presentation to assist the audience. Additionally, my discussion section has been cleaned up. Unfortunately, I have quick turnaround and I give my final practice presentation to Mrs. Haag on Monday. I plan to continue practicing and give my presentation to a friend during the remainder of the week.

Till next week,
Ashwath V.

P.S. Don't beep beep like a sheep.

Episode 24: 1 man, 1 paper, 1 presentation

The college season is over and I have more time to stress out about AP Research now. The past few days were pretty rough, but bouncing back is a sign of resilience so here I go. Also I got on the front page of the BASIS August Gazette for April Fool's (ps Rick and Morty Season 3 Episode 1 was leaked April Fools (mini meme of the week))

Me heading into the final two weeks

Anyway the assignment for this week is to discuss ideal PowerPoints. The ideal PowerPoint will guide the listener and clarify abstract concepts with simple slides. The ideal presenter will interact with those slides and explain things concisely. The slides themselves should have a very few amount of words, clear diagrams, and should not distract the reader. In fact the presenter and presentation must be in sync to a T. If there is a slide that is not interacted with, it's useless. My slides have come a long way to the point they are now. Certain slides have reached their perfection, while others are clearly lacking. Currently, I'd say I have 2:1 ratio of perfect to not so perfect slides. I feel really confident about my graph slide because I professionally animated that one.

In comparison to my AP Seminar style presentations, the research presentation focuses on the primary research aspect a lot more than the lit review. As such, fewer sources are discussed in AP Research. The context and purpose of the AP Research style are centered around your primary research, rather than around your argument like AP Seminar. Students are forced to engage with their hands on research.

My rehearsal plan includes memorizing the topics of each slide, and developing transitions to memorize as well, but the rest will be conversational. My strat will be taking those points in my mind and discuss my research with the crowd. Practicing is something I do alone usually because I need to be comfortable with the presentation before I recite it to someone else. I'll do it daily (probably like 2 sessions) before I have it nailed down. Then my next step is to do it blindfolded, or something ridiculous like that to ease my nerves and solidify my knowledge on the topic. To top it all off I'll prob join a research gang prep session and practice my presentation with the boys before I ship it off to the April 14th deadline.

Till next week,
Ashwath