Week 10: Keep Calm

Welcome back all you beautiful people and my lovely subscribers! (Cheesy opening, but I am super excited and extremely terrified to tell all of you what's to come in the following weeks!)

Senior project presentations are coming soon and I am looking forward to sharing everything I have learned and experienced during my stay in Vietnam and my project as a whole. I cannot thank you enough for being able to do such a personal project that touches close to home. I would be lying if I said this project went smoothly, but through the obstacles that I had to tackle, I learned new skills that will definitely benefit me in the future.

This week I finished about 90% of the surveys, however my computer screen broke Tuesday morning and all of my data was saved on the hard drive. I am going into the the Apple Store tomorrow morning to get it checked out and hopefully I can retrieve my data. After looking at majority of the surveys, I am getting mixed responses on whether the students believed nutrition has an impact on their school performance.

While reading through my surveys, one of the questions asked "What do you eat in the morning before a test?" My favorite ingenious response was "breakfast." Many students left questions blank/unanswered or many did not fully understand what the question asked and circled a random response. So, this led to their final verdict on the impact of nutrition undetermined or unable to reach a definite answer.

Aside from all the surveys, I am also working on my PowerPoint slides that will be used for my presentation and my final product that I really need to start on. These last two weeks will be hectic, so wish me luck and I will update you all on my well-being and mental state next week! All jokes aside, my project is coming along well and I am not going through a breakdown (yet).

Have a wonderful week everyone!

Best,
Crystal Vo

Week 9: Survey Overload

Hi everyone! Welcome back to another weekly update. Last week I took my spring break and this week I am back and ready for the final push before the end of the year. If anyone was curious, I spent my spring break at a California retreat in the beautiful landscape of Oak Canyon Park, located in Silverado, California.

This week I met up with my on-site advisor and faulty mentor, Mrs. Raechl Kynor, to discuss further plans for my project and how I should target compiling over 300 survey responses. As much as I loved interacting and meeting the students in Vietnam, I wished there was a way I could have documented their responses on the spot without collecting a daunting amount of hand-written responses. But surveys were the only way to keep answers anynomous and private, so we decided that an excel file would most coherently organize the data. The survey that was handed out to the students in Vietnam consisted of 21 questions, including both multiple choice and short answer type questions. The questions were geared towards individual outlooks and perspectives on how they viewed themselves, whether or not diet was a priority, and how their daily habits impacted their ability to preform in an academic setting.

My concern was how I was going to efficiently document all the short answers from the students. Mrs. Kynor and I agreed that we would first tally the multiple choice answers and I will further look into the short answers that stand out or bring an insightful aspect on the relationship of nutrition and academic performance. I have only managed to tally about half the surveys, but I will hopefully have them all completed by next week.

Next week, I will come back with a more concrete conclusion as I near the end of my term project. Every week this project has not failed to help me grow as a person as new perspectives and ideas are brought to my attention.

As always, please comment any questions you may have about what I have discussed here or in my previous blog posts and I will try to answer all of them to the best of my ability.

Have a wonderful weekend and I will see you all back here next week!

Best,
Crystal Vo