Final Blog Post

Dear Mr. Igoe,

I chose to do my project on Revenge because I religiously watched the show and thought that it would be interesting to study what fuels someone into getting revenge on someone. I think that in terms of the speaking skill I fulfilled what I wanted to be accomplished as well as with the listening and thinking. Organization is where I struggled because I didn't keep up with the blogs like I was supposed to. Also, the research that I was doing got kind of boring at times. A lot of the stuff that I found was really repetitive so there were times when I didn't feel like I accomplished a lot.
I think that I had most success in my interviews and doing my research. In the beginning of the project I was very invested in looking up the big aspects behind the psychology and then I thought that it would be cool to interview people and see what their different opinions were about it. I definitely fell short with my blogging. I didn't do well with the blogging, I had a lot of difficulty keeping up with the work loads and being organized enough to remember to do it. That was the worst part about this project I think. I also don't think that I was organized enough to  keep up with my time management. Procrastinating is another problem that I faced and I hope to eventually overcome it. The most important truth I learned about myself is that it's extremely obvious to me that I struggle with organization, My favorite part of this terms work was being able to get away from seminars. I really enjoyed having a term where I didn't have to worry about seminars. It was a nice change.
A piece of advice that I would give to next years seniors is to make sure that they keep up with the work loads and don't let yourself fall behind on anything. And to also make sure that you pick a topic that you're excited to do and won't start to avoid doing it.
Sincerely, Nikki

Blogging/editing

Obviously blogging is an issue for me since I haven't been keeping up with it. I'm trying to figure out a way to make it so I stick with it. This week I worked on my research paper the entire week. I'm not sure what I want to do about how I want to present the final piece but I'm brain storming it. I've given my friends some of my work to go through and edit which I think was a good idea because they came back with good feedback. What I really need to focus on is updating my blog regularly and finding a way to remember to do it. 

Advice/ research

My outline for the research paper is almost done. I switched gears and started working on my advice column again. I revised each of the other two drafts I have and am starting to like the column without the Q&A from Emily Thorne. I still haven't finished interviewing so I can't finish my outline for the research paper until I have those interviews.

Advice Column

This week I've been working on my advice column. I've made a couple different drafts with different formatting. One of them was just me saying what I learned from the interviews so far and it was pretty much the basic format of how they usually are. And then the second one was a little bit of advice and then it was a Q & A with the character Emily Thorne from the show Revenge. I'm not sure which format I want to do yet. They both look pretty good. This was literally what I worked on all week and then I also watched some TV episodes just to make sure I was answering the questions right. I'm going to start laying out my research paper now. I already started it before but I don't like the way it sounded so I'm completely re-doing it.

Thursday/ Friday work

Yesterday in class Eliza gave me some ideas of how I can incorporate the show into my project. She said that maybe I can do an interview of the main character in the show, Emily Thorne, and then I can answer as if I was her to show how she feels about Revenge. Then I was thinking that I could also go back to the beginning of the show and study how she felt about revenge in the beginning, middle, and then the more recent episodes. I think that both ideas would work and really add to my final project. I'm  still trying to think of some more ideas regarding the TV show. As far as my column goes, I have started it and have made some good progress with it over the past couple of days. I haven't finished it yet because I still want to do some more research and interview more people.

Sunday 4/21

So far today I have set up some interviews with people on Monday and Tuesday. I also have a couple chapters left in my book which I will finish up sometime today. I'm starting to plan out the advice column and the conclusion column. I decided to make a conclusion column telling people what people answered during my interviews (anonymous) and then what I found out while reading the psychology articles. Now that I've read a lot of articles and am pretty close to being done with the interviews, I'm stuck on how I will incorporate the show Revenge into my project.

Saturday 4/20

Today I plan on starting to compare some of the answers that I have from interviews. So far I have interviewed about 6 people (3 guys 3 girls). I want to have  a total of 20 interviews so I really need to start organizing interviews and getting more on top of it. Some things I've noticed just from quickly glancing at the interviews is that the guys answers have been quite different from the girls. Today and tomorrow I plan on researching a guys revenge perspective vs a girls. I also want to finalize my ideas for the presentation on Tuesday to make sure that I know what I'll be specifically talking about.

class work 4/18 and homework

Today in class I helped Hannah out with her yoga project and then I interviewed some people and also looked up articles. While I was reading, I noticed that every article talked about the same experiment with testing the theory about revenge. I'm thinking that it could be interesting to mimic the experiment and see if I get the same results.
Another intersting thing I read in an articles was about how different cultures may have different situations that "trigger the need for revenge. "American students feel more offended when their rights are violated, whereas Korean students feel more offended when their sense of duty and obligation is threatened, they show in a paper in the January Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology." I thought that this was an interesting study, I never would have thought that a nationality or different culture could affect what people get upset about and feel the need for revenge. 
For homework tonight, I read some more articles and also read my book. I didn't read my book as much as I hoped during the week, so I think that I should be done with my book by early next week if I read this weekend. 

Monday 4/15 and Tuesday 4/16

Yesterday before and during class, I interviewed people. I had nine questions that I wanted them to answer and then the last question I asked them if they would mind sharing a story where they got revenge that would later be anonymous, this question was optional. During class I also interviewed someone and they were the first person that told me that they had never actually got revenge on someone. I've only interviewed four people so far, therefore I can't exactly start comparing results. Also during class today I finished reading an article that I started early during my study block. Tonight for homework I plan on doing some more research on psychology and also find more stories or articles that I could read since I'm almost done my book. I'm also going to start planning on what I want to be able to show the class next Tuesday just to make sure that I'm prepared for the presentation.

Revenge Article

This morning I read an article about revenge from this website http://www.psychologicalscience.org/index.php/publications/observer/2011/october-11/the-complicated-psychology-of-revenge.html .


By reading this article, I learned that a group of scientists had done a test with a group of people that had trusted friends to share an amount of money with them, when the friends didn't and up sharing the money with everyone else, the scientist tested the brain activity of the "victims". When they the victims were contemplating revenge, a rush of neural activity in the caudate nucleus had gone off. This area of the brain is known for processing rewards.


This was also observed in the blog:

" Behavioral scientists have observed that instead of quenching hostility, revenge can prolong the unpleasantness of the original offense and that merely bringing harm upon an offender is not enough to satisfy a person’s vengeful spirit. They have also found that instead of delivering justice, revenge often creates only a cycle of retaliation, in part because one person’s moral equilibrium rarely aligns with another’s."

Based on this information, I may plan on setting someone up in a specific situation where someone will not follow through on something they said and then observing how they react.

Work done Friday 4/12/13

I didn't have time to blog last night but yesterday I sat at the beach and read 15 chapters of my book "The Sweet Revenge of Celia Door". I took notes on what I noticed about the main character, Celia, and about how her attitude use to be and then how it's starting to change. At the rate I'm reading this book, I feel like I should be done with it by the end of next week. There are only about 20 more chapters left in the book. I'm wondering if I should start looking for another book to read or if I should find a magazine focused more toward psychology.

Proposal Decision/ Homework Wednesday, April 10

Today I decided which one of my ideas I wanted to write my proposal on. I was going to do my project on the idea behind "love" and "fairytales" but then I realized I didn't have that many questions or ideas for the project. So I came up with researching the idea of Revenge.  Today, I planned out how I would cover the different skills and also decided on questions that I would be asking when I interview people. The only problem I came across was trying to figure out what I would be doing for the writing portion of the skills. I want to do something besides writing a short story, but I'm not sure what I would do. I also went to the library and checked out a book about Revenge. Tonight I plan on finishing my proposal packet for tomorrows class.