Daunting, isn't it...
Friday, 19 July 2013
The Main Attraction....
Ideas for my EPQ stem from Medicine. Logically, it's what I want to go into down the line, it's suggested by universities to students such as myself that if I am doing an EPQ, it should be medically related and overall, I have Medically related questions. e.g. Can blinking rapidly trigger epilepsy in a person that is light/sound sensitive; and that was just off the top of my head.
My first idea was to see and record how different people heal in their own ways. After the physical healing process is done on let's say a car crash victim, how do they find the ability to get back into a car or behind the wheel again?
Admittedly, that would have been difficult to carry out seeing as I would need a parade of seriously injured people or trauma victims, victims that would be willing to assist a seventeen year old girl in a school "project".
My second idea was much more reasonable that the first and was what I thought I would go with: comparison of a television show to real life. Specifically, I wanted to compare the hospital-based tv show House M.D. with actuality. I wanted to see if a) the medical situations were correct [would a hospital actually have a department for diagnostics; if so, how many people would be in it; would the situations they deal with actually arise in real life; etc.] and b) are the ethical decisions and conflicts accurate [in the show House defies the wish of the patient, the patient's family, his team, his friend/fellow doctor, and his superior on a regular basis simply because he is usually right.
This would have required me to get in contact with a hospital and enquire into the structure of the said hospital. It was suggested to me that I contact one in America since the show is situated in the States. This isn't too tricky for me since I have family friends who are doctors in various parts of the country, it just would have required effort. But as they say, if it's worth it...
My third and most recent idea came from watching House M.D., the same way I got my last idea (shocking, I know right?). Specifically, I was watching House M.D. season 2 episode 18: Sleeping Dogs Lie. It was about a woman whose main symptom was that she hadn't slept in 10 days. What was her illness you ask? If it wasn't obvious she had caught the plague (yes, black, the one and only) from a puppy that her girlfriend had bought her a month ago which (unknowingly) had been bred in the Southwest (reminder: this is from New Jersey, a state on the East coast, the same side as New York and Florida). From that my inquisitive mind's wheels started turning and my head started thinking--Self? What would happen if your brain was deprived of sleep? What would happen to your speech skills, cognitive skills, motor skills, memory, linguistics, and spatial skills? How would they all be affected and in which order? Why would they be affected? What does part of your brain depends on the amount of sleep you get? Why can high-efficiency people perform well without a lot of sleep? and so on, and so on. Literally. I can make difficult questions appear from nothing quite easily.
So, after this epiphany of an idea I emailed my Director of Sixth Form [she's in charge of the EPQ, it's not like we're buddy-buddy] about what I had just thought up and waited for her response while she was en route back from Barcelona [I wasn't ruining her holiday, she went to supervise a school trip...and possibly get a nice tan to boot]. she replied saying that she thought it was a good idea, I should seek the advice of a GP and that I should take caution since this would be me conducting the experiment on myself.
Based on her advice, I plan to seek the opinion of a few GPs and hopefully a neurologist. I happen to know one in America but I also hope to contact one in Shrewsbury (the nearest hospital) if they will have me. Ideally, I would like to be cleared for being in a good physical shape to conduct this experiment on myself or at least be in a position where the only variance is my amount of sleep and not some other biological influence. I would have to be off all medications that could possibly affect my brain. Luckily I'm not a schizophrenic or a sufferer of epilepsy or any other serious brain-related disorder so that shouldn't be too hard provided I'm not ill at the time of the experiment.
And to think I got this idea from watching tv...See, it's not all bad.
My first idea was to see and record how different people heal in their own ways. After the physical healing process is done on let's say a car crash victim, how do they find the ability to get back into a car or behind the wheel again?
Admittedly, that would have been difficult to carry out seeing as I would need a parade of seriously injured people or trauma victims, victims that would be willing to assist a seventeen year old girl in a school "project".
My second idea was much more reasonable that the first and was what I thought I would go with: comparison of a television show to real life. Specifically, I wanted to compare the hospital-based tv show House M.D. with actuality. I wanted to see if a) the medical situations were correct [would a hospital actually have a department for diagnostics; if so, how many people would be in it; would the situations they deal with actually arise in real life; etc.] and b) are the ethical decisions and conflicts accurate [in the show House defies the wish of the patient, the patient's family, his team, his friend/fellow doctor, and his superior on a regular basis simply because he is usually right.
This would have required me to get in contact with a hospital and enquire into the structure of the said hospital. It was suggested to me that I contact one in America since the show is situated in the States. This isn't too tricky for me since I have family friends who are doctors in various parts of the country, it just would have required effort. But as they say, if it's worth it...
My third and most recent idea came from watching House M.D., the same way I got my last idea (shocking, I know right?). Specifically, I was watching House M.D. season 2 episode 18: Sleeping Dogs Lie. It was about a woman whose main symptom was that she hadn't slept in 10 days. What was her illness you ask? If it wasn't obvious she had caught the plague (yes, black, the one and only) from a puppy that her girlfriend had bought her a month ago which (unknowingly) had been bred in the Southwest (reminder: this is from New Jersey, a state on the East coast, the same side as New York and Florida). From that my inquisitive mind's wheels started turning and my head started thinking--Self? What would happen if your brain was deprived of sleep? What would happen to your speech skills, cognitive skills, motor skills, memory, linguistics, and spatial skills? How would they all be affected and in which order? Why would they be affected? What does part of your brain depends on the amount of sleep you get? Why can high-efficiency people perform well without a lot of sleep? and so on, and so on. Literally. I can make difficult questions appear from nothing quite easily.
So, after this epiphany of an idea I emailed my Director of Sixth Form [she's in charge of the EPQ, it's not like we're buddy-buddy] about what I had just thought up and waited for her response while she was en route back from Barcelona [I wasn't ruining her holiday, she went to supervise a school trip...and possibly get a nice tan to boot]. she replied saying that she thought it was a good idea, I should seek the advice of a GP and that I should take caution since this would be me conducting the experiment on myself.
Based on her advice, I plan to seek the opinion of a few GPs and hopefully a neurologist. I happen to know one in America but I also hope to contact one in Shrewsbury (the nearest hospital) if they will have me. Ideally, I would like to be cleared for being in a good physical shape to conduct this experiment on myself or at least be in a position where the only variance is my amount of sleep and not some other biological influence. I would have to be off all medications that could possibly affect my brain. Luckily I'm not a schizophrenic or a sufferer of epilepsy or any other serious brain-related disorder so that shouldn't be too hard provided I'm not ill at the time of the experiment.
And to think I got this idea from watching tv...See, it's not all bad.
Monday, 15 July 2013
What this Blog is about...
I plan to use this blog as a journal, not a diary, to keep record of what I am doing in regards to my EPQ (Extended Personal Qualification). This will make it much easier to keep track of the numerous hours I plan to spend in research and in compiling my data along with assembling my final piece. I hope this blog is fairly straight-forward and could be used in the future as a template for other students wishing to do the same thing i.e. use a blog to keep track of your EPQ.
It's the 21st century people; things can happen.
It's the 21st century people; things can happen.
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