My initial thoughts on my midterm presentation were that it went pretty smoothly. I think that I delivered the information well and was able to convey the ideas of the main points of my research to the audience concisely. However, I think that there is a lot of improvement to be made. I don’t necessarily think that I did “bad” or that my experience was negative because I did have a lot of fun, but I think that the feedback and constructive criticism from the judges was very much needed. There were a lot of holes in my research and “so what” part of my essay that they pointed out to me. I think I have a better idea of things I need to focus on for the second semester.
The most important piece of feedback that I have received is that I need to interview some kind of physician, whether it's your typical one or homeopathic one, or person who does research on medicine in general. Since a lab is not available to me to “dissect” medicine and learn their effects directly, I think that I need to talk to professionals who have had lab experience, or have dedicated more time than to researching medicine. If there was one thing I was to learn from this experience is that you can’t research completely on your own, you have to collaborate and communicate with others because you can learn from them and find a new, and quite possibly, a better direction of study. I think I will take up Mrs. McTiernan’s (a pharmacy teacher at my school) to offer guidance on my research.
Although I think I managed my time fairly well leading up to the midterm, I do wish I spent more time doing research. If I had another chance of creating a new presentation, I would have focused on the more scientific comparison of natural vs. synthetic medicine. I think people want these days would be more convinced by solid facts and logos, and I think I was lacking statistics. I think for future SDAs, I will make them a lot more research-focused and academic; I may use the academic scholar SDA.
I think the next question I will explore is: does natural medicine work just as good and if not better than synthetic medicine? Overall though, what I am most proud of is that some judges after my presentation had long conversations about how much they loved my topic and presentation. We were able to talk about our personal experiences with different kinds of medicine. It was nice to see that my topic connected with people.
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