Set 3

For this research project, I had a fun time learning about climate change and how it impacted severe weather. But overall there were a few strategies as well as resources that were very helpful in getting my research done efficiently. First, have a topic that interests you. I feel that having a topic that you know a decent bit about but not everything is helpful, as well as a topic you like. If you know the basics and like the topic it will be easier to retain the information as well as find new information. Second, knowing how to skim articles. Some articles that are out on resources such as Jstore are extremely long for example 100 pages, which is a lot of material to read. So a good strategy is knowing how to find sections that are beneficial to read as well as how to skim parts that are good to read but also very long. Finally, a specific resource that was beneficial to me was Jstor. Jstore has a lot of really good resources that I can look at and find exactly what I need. Canva was also pretty helpful as I had used Canva in the past and I know exactly how to use it, and having an already created template that I just had to create was pretty nice. The most important part is having resources that spread wide as well. I feel that if I had 5 resources just about climate change, my research project would have been hard to complete. But splitting up my resources into some climate change, some severe weather events and some solutions made it a lot better. Overall, the research component can be hard, but some strategies can make it a lot easier. Also having experience from AP Seminar made this research project a lot easier because we had already done things similar but way longer than this. 

Starting with this project, my main goal was to figure out exactly what I wanted to major in college. I wanted to know if I wanted to do Meteorology or another major like Aerospace or Astronomy. I was hoping that going to these internships and learning about Meteorology as well as doing community service relating to it would give me a better understanding of exactly what I would look forward to if I wanted into a career in meteorology. While the 2 internships I did were only in news meteorology, and there are other branches of meteorology, it would still give me a taste of the meteorology job overall and exactly how studying weather would be. And going into this, it did do that. When I went to these internships, I learned more about meteorology, especially news meteorology, and how it is getting the weather from different sources, making graphics, and then publishing it for everyone to see and doing newscasts on it. This did help with my original goal about if I wanted to do meteorology in the future because when going to these internships, I was interested in what was happening, making it seem like it's a great career option in the future, and I got to learn more about exact classes in college I need as well as what schools lots of meteorologists went to. The top school that most meteorologists and Virginia go to is Virginia Tech, which is where I want to go. But also my goals have somewhat morphed from when I started this project. Talking with many of these meteorologists has linked me to possibly wanting to make a career in meteorology in the future, but that's not the only thing I have to worry about. This project has morphed my goal into what major... into what path. While meteorology is a single major, there are many paths and different types of meteorologists you can be, one of them for example being news. So really this project has turned into me trying to figure out what I want to do in the future, not exactly what major or area I want to be.

Overall this project has helped me in a lot of ways. Since my last journal, I have completed a lot of internships.. around 20 hours in total. Over these 20 hours, I have had fun meeting new people and learning exactly how their job and life goes. It's very interesting to see the differences in the news stations: How NBC29 does their weather versus how CBS19 weather does it. But overall I am very thankful for all that I have learned while at these news stations. Going and doing these internships has influenced me a decent bit about what I want to do in the future. I do believe I want to go to Virginia Tech.. as well as major in Meteorology as well as Aerospace engineering if possible. I don't know what to do in the future after that yet... but I am trying to figure that out soon! Doing these internships also helped me build connections for the future, and learn some tips for college and picking classes, as well as just doing meteorology in general. I also got to learn a lot of tools that will be helpful in my career as a meteorologist. I even got to practice doing a weather cast while at the NBC office, which gave me a glimpse at that career. Next up I have to deal with my community service, as my last internship is coming up very soon, and I will have 22 hours of internship completed. I am in contact with someone regarding community service and working on a weather awareness website, but we have to figure out dates and times. I hope that this community service will work out though, because if it does not I will only have around 10 days to be able to find someone new as well as complete the community service. After all of that, I then have to deal with my research topic. I don't think it will be too difficult, this is because we had to do things very similar to AP Seminar, and therefore I have experience in doing it already. Overall this project is amazing and is very much helping me prepare for my future and career.

Edit: I have done some of my community service and research and overall it was pretty fun. Learning about climate change and how it affects severe weather was interesting. I knew some of this already but I learned even more via research. And for my community service, I loved helping Jala make an impact on the community with Leap's services. Overall this project is very enjoyable.