Syeda's EPQ

Today was my first meeting with my supervisor Miss Heath. The first thing she asked was why I've chosen depression as the centre of my project. This was a fairly difficult question to answer, as depression is a topic close to my heart and my father suffered with it. This being why I wanted to earn a deeper understanding of it, in order to recognise that little bit more the struggle my dad went through and how much it's affected his life. I've realised that this will be a very personal project, however I need to make sure that during it, I take care of my own mental health and stay as objective as possible throughout my dissertation. I raised the idea that I'm thinking about interviewing someone with depression, to get a clearer insight into the daily struggle those suffering have to go through. Miss Heath agreed that this would be valuable, however if I interviewed my dad, the process will most likely be emotionally challenging for both my father and I. She recommende...

This was our last EPQ lesson before we break off for summer, so Miss gave out a lot of information and tips to aid us with our summer work and research. She mentioned going over our working title, and checking to see if it was too broad, in which we would need to narrow it down to make researching and writing a dissertation easier. Miss also advised that we take advantage of the summer holidays, and use the time to attend lectures, interview people/ go to museums or galleries etc. As my topic centralises around depression as an illness, and why authors should include characters with depression (to spread awareness), I intend on interviewing someone suffering with depression to get a deeper insight on how learning about it in their youth would have helped them cope with it in the foreseeable future. We were then given the Assessment Objectives (AOs): AO1 (20% - 10 marks) : Manage : Identify, design, plan and carry out a project, applying a range of skills, strategies and methods to...

For the next few weeks, until the summer holidays, we will have EPQ lessons every Wednesday. The most recent lesson was on the 4th July, with the main bulk of the hour being on referencing and evaluating sources. In terms of finding the information we need efficiently, with the time limits in mind, Miss advised that we; - think outside the book - we should judge its information by the contents page, instead of assuming how useful it'll be just by looking at the front cover - find relevant information - we should make sure that we are drawing out relevant information from valid sources - practice various note taking techniques  - and find the one that works for us the best - cite sources when we find/ use them - so that we know exactly where the information came from, because if we forget to do this, you can imagine the days of panic and frustration that will follow (That has happened to me before, where I spent days trying to find a particular reference I had used in my ...

As set by the teacher running the EPQ course, I have completed my risk assessment and am currently in the process of making a plan on Trello . Once I have set out my initial plan, I will leave a link on a future blog post (if possible) so that anyone interested can see my progress and planning. I couldn't find a way to attach my Word file, so here it is screenshotted instead:

On the 27th June, we had our second EPQ lesson. In the lesson we were told to discuss our progress and the problems we have faced so far in groups, which was fairly helpful as we had a class discussion at the end to discuss the various problems that were raised and how to work around them. The main problem we all seemed to share was a lack of motivation. Miss advised that we pick a topic that we actually want to work on, and have a serious interest for so that we don't have to force ourselves to complete it unwillingly, as we won't get the best learning experience that way. The meeting was mostly about planning, and how we should plan in advance and leave time for other important dates such as UCAS or coursework dates. We were also told about making contingency plans, so that we are prepared for sudden responsibilities or tasks that may take temporary priority over our EPQ progress. To ease the planning process, we were given the option of either making our plans on paper, ...

I haven't progressed much with my EPQ as last week was Work Experience Week and the week before was A-Level Mock Week, meaning that I didn't have time to expand my ideas and think about what steps I need to take to continue my EPQ experience. However, I have been thinking about the popular books and the literary texts that interest me, and I'm pretty certain about including J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter series, although I'm not sure which book though yet. This is mostly due to the fact that I adore the series, and there have been references to mental health throughout the books, such as Hermione's OCD and what we can infer as Harry's PTSD. However, there are limited references to depression, which is a very widespread mental illness today.

In our first EPQ lesson, the teacher gave us an overview of the course itself, and how we should begin to prepare for it. We were also given advice on how to keep records effectively and neatly, so that when we need them, they are easy and efficient to use. We were told to; - keep records right from the start - to begin creating a bibliography, or at least start keeping records of sources of information used - to update our plan regularly, and updating every change/ thought process As I have already thought about my ideas, and created my first working title (even though this will probably be adapted as the project goes on), I started to think about where I would get my information and research from. My main source of information will be from the books I choose to focus on, such as books I feel do/ don't portray depression very well. Also, in order to gain knowledge on depression itself, I will use the internet and various texts from libraries to aid my research.