Final Paper

Link to Final Paper

Trigger Warning

The moment I finished answering my final oral defense question, my mind just went numb. I was done. Full-on Senioritis kicked in immediately. I did not want to do anything. My IQ dropped by a 100 points. My sanity suddenly returned to me. Stress became a foreign concept to me—waiting to be rediscovered during my college days. AP Research immediately ended...UNTIL I REALIZED I HAD TO WRITE ONE LAST BLOG. In the words of Mrs. Haag: AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH. So here I sit drunk off of Froyo and high off of Youtube videos, debating whether or not I want to write this last blog. Do I want to feel Mrs. Haag’s wrath or do I want to watch another Youtube video? Man, that’s a tough decision...alright, so that is it for this week’s blog, thank you for reading, I will be wasting away my life watching Youtube videos until COLLEGE.

Finally we are done.

HA! Just kidding. Did you really think that I would do such a thing like that? Well, if you did, you are right.

Ok. I was kidding. I am for real this time. Or am I?

Ok. Ok. I’ll stop. In all seriousness though, this has gotten me to 200 words, so I am already halfway to the word requirement. FINE. I will actually stop trolling. I am actually going to be serious now. Like actually. Trust me.

AP Seminar, in my opinion, was a lot tougher than AP Research. It was the learning curve—that transition from 10th grade level of thinking to Seminar level thinking— that we had to go through that ultimately made Seminar so tough. The techniques that I learned in Seminar ultimately made my life in Research a lot easier, since Research was essentially a larger, more comprehensive, more independent version of Seminar.

For me, AP Seminar improved my thinking and my writing skills. First, I learned new techniques on how to think about an argument or a topic through different perspectives (or lenses). It forced me to think about potential counterarguments and also taught me to address such counterarguments. Seminar changed the way I looked at and formulated an argument, but most importantly it improved my writing. I learned how to properly formulate an argument, organize my line or reasoning, and word my claims.

AP Research was essentially Seminar on steroids. Most of the tools that I had gained in Seminar were used in the literature review of my paper. Everything else in AP Research was another brand new learning experience. But, although the independent research part of AP Research was incredibly difficult, it was not as steep of a learning curve as the one we had in Seminar.

Research essentially took the tools we learned in Seminar out of the “bubble” that was the BASIS Scottsdale classroom and forced us to apply everything we learned to “the real world.” Also, Research really forced me to up my presentations skills. Yes, Seminar taught me a lot about presenting, but it was Research that really took it to the next level.

Last, but not least, the OG, the BAWS, the Ms. Hol—I mean—Mrs. Haag. She worked her butt off for us. She really helped us all the way through the process. If it weren’t for her, I might be out on the streets begging. Mrs. Haag literally killed it this year with everything, she was there every step of the way and helped all of us feel confident about our Research experience.

But the best lesson I learned was how to plagiarize and get away with it.

Ok. Ok. I’m just kidding. I think I just gave Mrs. Haag a heart attack there. I did not plagiarize (I actually got a 5% on my Originality check so everyone calm down).

But, the biggest lesson that AP Capstone taught me was…how to procrastinate.  

Jk. AP Capstone was a really valuable experience and I am really confident that it taught me skills useful for college and beyond that other classes could not teach me.

Word Count: 666 (I swear this was totally on accident...so...Happy Easter?)

So Close, Yet So Far...

Less than a week left!!!! Oh, I can’t wait for when I’m eating the delicious pizza (or whatever I paid  23 buck for) at Oregano’s. Man, we are soooooo close to being done. Anyways, the biggest hurdle that is left is that dreaded 15-20 minute presentation.

I have given two practice presentations in front of Mrs. Haag and other teachers (who I can’t thank enough for spending their precious free time to watch me ramble on about anime). During my first presentation, there were quite a few things that needed to be changed. First, the text on my slides was too small and the color scheme made it very hard to read, which was really distracting. Also, I realized that there was a few key links that I was missing. I did not provide a definition for anime in my speech, and my explanation of the methods was confusing.

So I tried to fix all of that before the Saturday re-do. First, I changed my color scheme (which did not really help at all), and increased my font size. My text, although much bigger, was still hard to read, so I am thinking of changing my background color. Also, originally when I explained the methods, I went through my steps very vaguely. But I then decided to use an example to explain my methods, which turned out to work beautifully. Finally, I added a definition for anime. BUT! Even then, after all these changes, my presentation on Saturday (which was a little better than the one on Monday) still had a lot of issues.

The biggest issue, as Dr. Helmers kindly pointed out, was that my timeline for literature review was not clear. So in order to address that point, I decided to put an actual timeline into my slideshow, which I found, surprisingly, cut down a lot of words in my script because the timeline gave me a much more streamlined approach to talking about the history and rise of anime in America. Two other issues that Mrs. Haag, Dr. Helmers, and Mr. Molk pointed out on Saturday were that I did not cite my sources often enough, and that my conclusion was slightly off topic. I still have to work on those two parts, but I am confident that by Monday, I will have a presentation and script that will be close to perfect. My next meeting with Mrs. Haag is Thursday afternoon, so I am aiming to have everything tip-top, on point by the next meeting, because it will be too late to change anything by that time if I have any major issues on my presentation.

Overall, after the practice runs and the feedback, I am more confident than I was a week ago. And I am really looking forward to this all being over.

Word Count: 469

Practice, Presentation, Perfect...

I’m not gonna hide it. The presentation that I had when I met Mrs. Haag this week was terrible. No animations, nothing. Just a dump of haphazardly thrown together pictures. No transitions between slides. A deplorable color scheme. After editing for a week and thanks to the incredibly helpful comments that Daphne, Rema, Kimy, and Mrs. Haag provided, I think my slideshow is in much better shape.

To me, an ideal PowerPoint is one that adds to, not distracts from, your presentation. Originally, I had no animations on my PowerPoint, and I found that I was projecting ideas and bullet points before I had even gotten to that point in my presentation. Animations were great tools, they allow you to project bullet points as you go and help the audience to follow along with your speech through your presentation, rather than be distracted by it.

I feel pretty confident about my overall presentation and script. I think that the editing process as a whole has been great and the past week has really helped me to improve both my script and my presentation. Even though I have practiced it, I am a little worried about my speech being a little too long because many times I hit very close to the 15 minute mark. But, like everyone else, I think, my biggest concern is actually standing up there and giving the presentation. I just don’t want to mess up, so I am using different tactics to help me with my speech. The first thing I did was write down a list of bullet points that represented the flow of the main ideas within my speech. I then memorized this list, rather than my script. Then I familiarized myself with my script. Now, when I practice my speech, I try to use my memorized list and my familiarity with a script to “improvise” my presentation.

I found a cool little trick that was super helpful. I recorded myself saying the speech, and when I was busy doing something else, I just put on my headphones and listened to myself speak over, and over, and over again. It was a little painful at first, but it did a VERY good job in helping me remember my material.

I think our presentation is pretty different from our Seminar presentations. Our Seminar presentations were essentially our literature review and did not have the same complexity that our Research presentations have. We have a lot more moving parts in our Research presentations, because we have to articulate the similar arguments we had in Seminar along with our methods, results, and discussion. Also, Seminar was a straightforward solution-problem argument and presentation. In Research we have a more complex structure where we show a problem, then go into detailed about one solution (which is our research) and argue for why it works and helps fix the problem.

Overall, my biggest fear is just messing up in front of an audience. But I know that with two weeks of practice, that will not be very likely—but it still would be a possibility. So.I can’t wait for it to be all over.

Word Count: 524

Signed, Sealed, Delivered

Remember those TED talks we used to watch in classes, and still sometimes do. Those were some of the most interesting and effective speeches and presentations that I have seen. I decided to watch some TED talks and try to make my presentation as interesting as theirs.

Ken Robinson's TED talk "Do Schools Kill Creativity?" is regarded as one of the best speeches ever given on TED.

What I realized is that their speeches are a series of stories. Now, I can’t simply tell stories, because the College Board will destroy me for that (see title of Ken Robinson’s speech above). So I decided to convert my literature review into a story, but keep the basic structure of the other parts of my paper the same. I had to rewrite and reorganize my entire literature review in a way that I could show the academic gap and context around the question, while still “tying evidence to claims” as the College Board’s rubric wants.

Like I said, my literature review was the only part of my paper that really needed to be modified for my presentation. The other three sections in my paper followed a similar structure in my speech. But, in order to satisfy Rubric Row 3, I decided to add an entire section talking about my original hypothesis/ideas and how they were changed/challenged by my results. Another thing that I added was a terrible story at the beginning of the presentation which I am hoping to use to hook my audience. It is supposed to be funny, but if you don’t find it funny, please just say so—it is not really a necessary part of my presentation, I was just hoping to add some flavor to my presentation (for Rubric Row 4).

My biggest concerns for my script is its length. I currently have around 2800 words, which I think is too much for 15 minutes, so please feel free to point out any places that are unnecessary or too wordy. Also, I am worried that because I know so much about my topic, that my speech could be too confusing. So again, if you feel like I am missing some parts or claims, just point it out and I will try my best to fix it.

Overall, I am very happy that we have moved on from our paper. Although my paper is not perfect, I think my paper is still a lot better than it was two weeks ago, thanks to all the feedback I got from my peers. Although I am extremely nervous for the presentation, I can’t wait for that day to come so it can all be over!

Word Count: 444

Papers and Cars Getting Wrecked

Last week was bitter-sweet: bitter in that I realized there my paper is terrible, sweet in that I have hopefully fixed most of the holes. My paper was destroyed and completely wrecked, like this car:

As I had expected, most of the biggest concerns were with my results and discussion. My results section was too wordy, repetitive, and confusing. I had tried to explain every single nuance that I found with my thematic analysis. However, after talking with Mrs. Haag and reading my feedback, I found that it was not necessary that I talk about every single nuance of every single theme. Now, I have condensed my results section to less than half the length of the original. Now that my results section is much more concise, hopefully my results will be easier to understand, and hopefully they don’t look like this:

My discussion section also faced a lot of backlash last week. A lot of the feedback focused on a paragraph where I made unsubstantiated claims and conclusions about the complexity of anime. I moved that paragraph and integrated it into the future research section of my discussion, because I realized that part was out of the scope of this paper. Instead, I replaced that part of my discussion with connections back to the literature review. I connected (or at least I tried to) my results to the studies of previous researchers and to the significance of the overall academic research. I’m just hoping that they are not in as bad of a shape as this:

I think that I have a pretty good handle on the first 3-4 rows of the rubric. These parts of my rubric pertain more to the literature review and the methods, which have been looked over and revised several times, and I am confident that these parts are a lot more solid and well written. It is the last few rows of the rubric that I need to work on. I included only one picture in my paper, and row 7 requires that there be multiple diagrams to enhance credibility of the author. So I will probably add at least one more diagram—a thematic flow chart—to my paper.  Row 5 and 6 deal with my methods and discussion, and I am afraid that since I have only had them read once, that they are still quite raw. I am mostly not sure about how I have showed the significance in my discussion section. The purpose of my question was to find WHAT the thematic changes between American and Japanese anime are, and this question was easily answered in the results section because all it required was a list of the thematic changes. However, in my discussion section, I try to explore the significance of the themes I find and their importance to the academic field as well as other significance. This is the part where I still need to work on.

Regarding the presentation, I don’t feel to bad about the content and slides of it, I am confident that I will have a decent script and slideshow. What I am more nervous about is the actual presentation, but again, we will have plenty of time to practice it, so I should not fear. There is nothing about the presentation that I am really unclear about, I really just want to get that daunting presentation over with. We are so close to finishing, I can’t wait!

Word Count: 573

Somewhere Over the Rainbow

BOOM! 4,996 words of pure perfection. 4,996 words of brilliance. 4,996 words of sleepless nights. 4,996 words of blood and tears. Ok—maybe not the last one—but the other three are definitely spot on. Anyways, my paper is so beautiful, so perfect, that I really don’t see any point in writing this blogpost. But, if I don’t write a blogpost, Mrs. Haag would kill me. I am still young and have a bright future ahead, so, I guess I just have to find something wrong with my paper. Well that’ll be hard.

I like to start with the bad news first. It took me a very long time to find the following flaws and weaknesses in my paper, so please bear with me here. I believe my biggest flaws to be in my results and discussion. I have included a lot of information into my results section, detailing every single manifestation of the different overall thematic differences between dubbed and subtitled anime. I fear that the amount of information that I included is overwhelming and confusing. If I were to provide a visual representation in my results, it would most likely be a table consisting of the different themes and their sub-themes/manifestations. But I do not even know if the table will be useful or more hurtful if I include it in my paper.

Regarding my discussion section, I am not sure if I properly answered my question. It is not that I didn’t answer my question, it's more whether or not the way I answered my question in my discussion section is actually easy to understand. I especially need feedback on my “Answering the Question” section of my discussion section.

So close yet so far.

Now onto the parts of my paper that are good: all the parts that are not bad. Jk. Jk. Jk. I’ll take this seriously now. I think that the strongest parts of my paper are in my literature review and my methods. Obviously these parts of my paper are the strongest because they are the ones that I have been working on the longest and I have edited the most. My strong parts in my literature review are in how I introduce my academic gap for my question and also how I provide the context for the academic gap.

In all seriousness, my paper definitely needs a lot of workshopping—especially our two more recent sections. These next few weeks editing the paper will be a critical and hard task. But, we are almost there and only one more month until we are done.

Word count: 428

"I Missed on Purpose"

So, we lost the Seniors v. Teachers (more like the Seniors/Juniors v. Teachers + Mr. Haag) basketball game. But at least it was fun…I guess…. Never fear, there’s always next year…oh wait.

Can we make it best to three?

On the bright side, I finished my results section, but it was just toooooooo loooooooong. 1425 words?!?!?! My entire paper is already at 4800 words. Please kill me. Good news is that I know some places in my methods and literature review where I can cut down my word count by around 400-500 words. I’ll probably find some way to cut down my results too. Bad news? I have no idea how long my discussion section is going to be. But it will all work out at the end, right? (I’m really sorry if you like your bad news before your good news).

Anyways, let's start with my (VERY) basic overview of my discussion section. I will be referencing the following three sources:

1. Donald, Ralph R. “Antiwar Themes In Narrative War Films: Soldiers' Experiences As Social Comment.” Studies in Popular Culture, vol. 13, no. 2, 1991, pp. 77–92.
2. Weakland, John H. “Themes in Chinese Communist Films.” American Anthropologist, vol. 68, no. 2, 1966, pp. 477–484. New Series
3. Bongjin Cho et al. “Cultural Values Reflected in Theme and Execution: A Comparative Study of U.S. and Korean Television Commercials.” Journal of Advertising, vol. 28, no. 4, 1999, pp. 59–73.

The first two sources, I will use to discuss the basic layout and guidelines of a typical discussion section of a thematic analysis paper. The third source will be used for my conclusions.

In his paper, Ralph Donald’s conclusion is simple, but lacks lots of connections. Donald found 4 different antiwar themes through his thematic analysis. But in his discussion he only explains why these antiwar themes exist but not how they correlate with each other. John Weakland, on the other hand, does not give the same broad conclusion that Donald had. However, Weakland does give a very detailed explanation of the contradictions and the connections between all of his themes. Obviously, I want to synthesize the structure of the two sources in my discussion section. So the following is the outline of the overall flow and content of my discussion section:

1. I will first discuss any interesting connections that I find within my themes
1. I will provide a visual aid in the form of a thematic map
2. My conclusion based on my results
1. First I will compare my results to Cho Bongjin et al. to show that the thematic changes follow common cultural differences between America and Japan
1. However there is no loss in complexity, these changes are too insignificant, minute, or small to significantly impact the overall thematic structure/content of the anime
2. Then I will compare my results to previous studies that hypothesized that anime lost its complexity and thematic properties during the dubbing process
3. Significance
1. These themes re-emphasize and shed new light on the cultural differences between American and Japanese values
1. Individualism v. Collectivism
2. Also, these themes show the inherent/basic values in collectivist and individualistic societies
3. Perhaps the most important is that these themes can be used with future research studies to give more specific examples of the thematic differences between a dubbed and original/subtitled anime.
4. Limitations
1. Even if the themes listed here were changed, it does not mean that every aspect of these themes themselves were changed during the dubbing process
2. The thematic analysis was subjective, so the thematic differences can be subject to change
3. The three anime used, although culturally important in America, don’t necessarily represent all of the anime that has been brought to America
5. Future Research
1. My literature review was organized in a way where I posed a broader question: Why do American audiences find anime to be appealing because of its themes, even after there are thematic changes during the dubbing process?
1. My research was posed as the first step of answering the overall question, so the next step would be to find what themes are kept when anime is brought to the United States
2. Another possible research opportunity is using another sample size to find the thematic changes

So that is my basic outline of my discussion section. There are still a few holes that I might need to fill here and there. Also it does not have much detail, but hopefully it will be as complex as my literature review.

Word Count: 724

The Annals of AP Research

Only 7 more weeks of AP Research. Man, it’s almost over. I can’t believe that we are already finished collecting and analyzing our data. My research has yielded results that I did not see coming, and I have noticed connections between my themes that I had never even thought of before. But I guess, that is the whole point of my research. I found 6 overarching thematic differences between Americanized and Japanese anime and around 15 different sub themes. I am excited to write my results section, however, with so much data/details it is difficult to find a format to effectively present the themes. Therefore, I have looked through pages and pages of JStor and my Google Drive folder to come up with the following three sources to guide me:

I have thoroughly scoured the annals to find the best sources to use for my results section.

The first source that I will be using is the thematic guide by Dr. Braun and Dr. Clarke. This was the same paper that I used in my methods to layout my thematic analysis. Braun and Clarke also outline how to present the results of a thematic analysis. Having said that, Braun and Clarke’s paper does not go into detail about a specific format for the themes that I have found, rather they give general guidelines on what the results  and discussion sections should include. Perhaps the biggest advice they give is to use “vivid examples, or extracts” that demonstrate the essence of the theme “without unnecessary complexity” (23).

The next source I looked at was Ralph Donald’s “Anti-War Themes in Narrative War Films.” Donald conducted a thematic analysis on around 20 different films. In his results section, Donald follows a very simple, yet effective structure. Each theme is given its own section. Then, within each section, Donald uses different examples from his analysis to portray the theme in action. Donald only found three overarching anti-war themes but for each he gave an example from each of the 20 films he watched.

The final source is John Weakland’s “Themes in Chinese Communist Films.” Within his results section, Weakland first gave a list of all the themes he found followed by a brief description of the essence of the theme. After that list, Weakland talked about all of the themes as a whole. He looked at the connections between the themes, how the themes are related, how they contradict, and so on. However, unlike the previous two sources, Weakland did not provide any specific examples of each theme.

I am aiming to make my results section Ralph Donald’s results sections. I believe that Weakland will be more useful for my discussion section. First, I will devote a small subsection to each theme, I have 6 in total. Within each subsection, I will talk about the different manifestations of the themes and give examples for each manifestation. My only worry right now is going over the word count or leaving the reader confused, but I know it will all work out at the end (hopefully).

Word Count: 491

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

(Sorry, I just couldn’t think of a good title for this blogpost.)

It is scary to think that after next week, we will already be nearly ⅓ of our way done with our research project. At the beginning of the year, I thought I could take it slow and take my time doing my research during the third trimester, but boy was I wrong. This past week has been hella (sorry) busy. Not only did I finish my analysis of the rest of Cowboy Bebop and Spirited Away, I also managed to organize and categorize all of my data in a manner that makes it a lot easier to understand and interpret. On top of that, I redid my methods and changed the way I show the academic gap in my literature review. I really did not have a clear picture of what I was doing when I wrote my methods, however, now that I know exactly what I did, I can hopefully articulate me methods a lot more clearly.

Finished coding all the episodes of Cowboy Bebop. It's a good show, I recommend that you watch it (even if you are not into anime.)

Unfortunately, there is no school Monday, so my regular weekly, Monday morning, meeting with Mrs. Haag had to be postponed until Thursday. So I will take this opportunity to discuss my data analysis. Originally, when I had planned out my methods, I assumed my raw data collection would be me simply noting down the changes between the dubbed and subtitled versions of the anime. Then, I had planned on my analysis being me assigning codes and then categorizing my codes into themes as my data analysis. However, due to Mrs. Haag’s brilliance, I have already finished the latter part when I did it alongside my data collection.

I know it may be a little hard to read, but this is just a quick overview of some parts of my thematic categorization. Each color represents a general theme, and each column is a sub-theme. The data points below are the examples that represent each theme.

Therefore, my data analysis will be me trying to finalize my list of themes. I have found all my themes and sub-themes through the categorization of my data, however the list is not final since I still need to refine the themes’ names, give them definitions, find compelling examples of them, and determine their validity. The biggest part is determining the intra-reader validity of the themes. I am planning on re-coding 5 random episodes of both Dragon Ball Z and Cowboy Bebop as well as all of Spirited Away. I am thinking that I will follow the exact same steps for the re-coding and compare the resulting themes from the second coding to the original themes. Right now, I don’t know how I will reevaluate my themes based on my validity check, so only once I get all of my themes from the validity check will I be able to actually able to determine that.

Word Count: 432

Almost There

This past week I finished noting down the changes in the first 26 episodes of Dragon Ball Z and the first 16 episodes of Cowboy Bebop. Now all that remains are ten more episodes of Cowboy Bebop  and Spirited Away. However, I have to admit that I have not given my Literature Review and my Methods section much attention, so I really need to step that up.

But, my meeting with Mrs. Haag last time really helped me. Originally, I had planned on writing down all the changes before going back to individually code the changes for their themes. However, Mrs. Haag recommended that I should be coding while I am identifying the changes. I think that has been the best move I have made so far, as the research has become much more efficient and I feel a lot more confident about my research. As I have been identifying the thematic changes that happen, I have been noticing a few recurring patterns, so I think it would be most appropriate if I devote this blogpost to discussing these patterns.

The largest—and perhaps the most obvious—change that happens is that Japanese collectivist characteristics are individualized in the American anime. There are different facets that contribute to this overall pattern, from how a character interacts with his family to how a character responds to a certain event. I know that all of this sounds vague, but they will be much more clear and specific once I have gone around to actually naming the themes. Besides individualism and culturalism, I have found a pattern where time is seen as a much more precious commodity in the American version than the Japanese version. Another interesting theme is the perception of the environment. In the American versions, the environment is appreciated more for how it can be used by humans, whereas in the Japanese version, the environment is appreciated for itself.

But, the most interesting pattern I have found is around specificity and ambiguity. I have noticed that the American version is much more ambiguous than the Japanese version when talking about the future. For example:

The titles to the Dragon Ball Z episodes in Japanese reveal a lot of information about the plot of the upcoming episode... 

...while the American title is much more vague. 

However, on the other hand, when talking about the present or past, the Japanese version is more ambiguous than the American version. For example:

In the very first scene of Dragon Ball Z, the English narrator speaks in great detail on the events leading up to the story, while the Japanese narrator talks only broadly about the same events.

We are rapidly approaching our Feb. 19th deadline. I am feeling much more confident about my research, and my methods have become a lot clearer. Hopefully I will be able to find more interesting results!

Word Count: 478