why i selected my topic
A big focus of my thoughts and my family's thoughts lately have been about college. I am in my junior year of high school right now, which is of major importance for college admissions. In addition, my brother started his freshmen year of college this year. So between my college preparation and his college experience, we have been thinking about college a lot lately. With college ideas buzzing around in my brain so much, I couldn't help but to be drawn toward a topic about higher education.
When it came time to decide a location for my topic, my thoughts went straight toward Europe. Many of my family members spent a year abroad in college studying somewhere in Europe. My aunt spent a year in Britain, and both of my parents each spent a year abroad in France. When my mom was in France, she had a host family named the Bornecques, that she is still close friends with to this day. At that time the family was a couple, Odile and Ivan Bornecque. When the Bornecques had kids, three of them, Emeline, Matthieu, and Alexis, each spent a summer living with my family in America. My brother and I became good friends with all of them and have kept up with each other over the years. In the present, all of the Bornecque kids are in different colleges all over the European Union. They are very into traveling and attending different universities all over the European Union. When I came upon the topic of Britain leaving the European Union and higher education being impacted, my thoughts went to them and I was concerned that some of their future plans could be ruined. Some of them were considering an education in Britain, and they said that Brexit was a concern for them and could impact their future plans. With my personal connections and concerns about my topic and location, I settled on Brexit and higher education for my research.
When it came time to decide a location for my topic, my thoughts went straight toward Europe. Many of my family members spent a year abroad in college studying somewhere in Europe. My aunt spent a year in Britain, and both of my parents each spent a year abroad in France. When my mom was in France, she had a host family named the Bornecques, that she is still close friends with to this day. At that time the family was a couple, Odile and Ivan Bornecque. When the Bornecques had kids, three of them, Emeline, Matthieu, and Alexis, each spent a summer living with my family in America. My brother and I became good friends with all of them and have kept up with each other over the years. In the present, all of the Bornecque kids are in different colleges all over the European Union. They are very into traveling and attending different universities all over the European Union. When I came upon the topic of Britain leaving the European Union and higher education being impacted, my thoughts went to them and I was concerned that some of their future plans could be ruined. Some of them were considering an education in Britain, and they said that Brexit was a concern for them and could impact their future plans. With my personal connections and concerns about my topic and location, I settled on Brexit and higher education for my research.
My research journey
My research journey was a long and tiresome process many times throughout this project. It took more time and patience than I would have ever imagined. I hypothesized going into to the project that Brexit would lower the number of students and teachers interested in British universities, but I didn't know much more than that. On the first day of research, I spent the entire time researching my topic on the databases that the media center suggested, but after the entire class period, I figured out that this was a lost cause, as none of the information on the data bases was recent. My search improved once I went back to Google the next day, and I got several notecards finished. After several research days, I started on the rough draft of my paper and soon found out that very few of the notecards I had written had specific enough information to build a detailed and convincing paper off of. At this point I was very frustrated because I had to go back into my research process all over again and this added hours onto my work. After my improved research, it came time to plan out the main points in my outline. One of the things that I had to especially work on in my planning was expressing my ideas in a concise and comprehendible manor, and being precise in my thesis. I had acquired such a variety of information, that I had to spend a great deal of time on how to effectively sort and narrow down my main arguments. After all of my prework, I went about writing my paper again, which after all of my dedication in the preparation, was very manageable. My journey finally felt worth all of the struggles I faced, when I made my last edit and hit the print button for my essay. I was very proud of how far I had come and my perseverance through the whole process.
***(Currently no new developments have happened regarding higher education and the UK.)
***(Currently no new developments have happened regarding higher education and the UK.)
Header borrowed from "Geographical"