Research Project

Another dynamic aspect of the Washington Semester Program that I have not talked about is the Research Project component of the curriculum. Some schools require their students to do the research project over taking an elective, but my home school allowed us to choose. I chose to do the project to challenge myself, and to gain exposure on how to write such a long paper as this. The way my teacher instructs our class on how to write this paper is by meeting individually every other week at a set time. This is helpful because we get to ask questions and get advice that is specific to our projects.

The topic that I have chosen to write about is wrongful convictions based upon eyewitness misidentification. This subject area is of growing popularity within our society, and has become one that is need of research to improve our judicial system. The system needs to be assessed and fixed so that these innocent people are not incarcerated for the actions of another. Within the area of eyewitness identification I plan to investigate how these identifications are conducted and how this process effects the way people identify a criminal.

For the first part of this project, we had to write our research proposal. In this proposal we had to determine our thesis question, the research background, and what methods we would use to conduct the project. This part of the project was not too difficult, and the questions I did have, my professor was able to clearly answer them in our meeting together. Tonight and for the rest of this week, I will be gathering more information to write a working outline. This will be difficult because it is the framework of the entire research paper, including all the parts from the beginning to the end. Therefore, I need to start putting all my ideas and past research together in a logical and clear way. I’m nervous for this part of the project because I really need to write in depth about my research. The more in depth I go with this part of the project, the easier the following steps will be. I just hope I can get it all done by Monday!
Wish me luck!

-Andreanna
P.S. Happy Valentine’s Day! <3