NA18EC, Future Horizons, 02.06.2021

Angelika Zacharz [AZ], Josefin Fornehed [JF], Anushka Bhowmik [AB], Jesper Shiapan [JS], Emad Lewis [EL] 

 

AZ: Hello, we are students from NA18EC who chose the specialisation course Future Horizons and today we’re gonna talk about the diploma project, tips and tricks and how to start, how to do it and how to finish on time. Hi, I’m Angelika. 

JF: Hi, I’m Josefin. 

AB: I’m Anushka. 

JS: I’m Jesper.

EL: And I’m Emad.

AZ: Let’s get started! So it was very hard to come up with the idea of the project and everyone has the same problem. Maybe Anushka could start how it was for her. 

AB: It was pretty hard coming up with something specific, I tried to google any topic that came to mind. In the end, approximately 15 minutes before our deadline, I came up with something.

Everyone: *Laughs*

AB: I will say, when I did find the topic, it wasn’t that the topic fit perfectly. It was more something I could make work for the diploma project. That is important to keep in mind. It doesn't matter that initially when you come up with an idea it won't fit perfectly, but if it feels right, and you feel like it could be something you work with I think you should go with it. What do you all think?

JF: Well, mine was a bit different, I also started off scouring the internet. When I didn’t find much interesting, I instead went with a running joke I had with my friends. 

Everyone: *Laughing* 

JF: So it was basically a coincidence. I think those are the only two ways to come up with an idea. A coincidence or something that you could just do if you don't have other ideas. Find some little part of the internet that is interesting. Most important is to find something you will bother working with for a couple months, because it takes time and you don’t want to get bored of it. 

AZ: Yeah exactly, something you like is really important. Do you have any ideas Emad?

EL: At least for when I started, I looked into Reddit, and there were tons of subreddits, that have interesting things, you just search “interesting”, tons of things there.

Everyone: That's a good idea. 

EL: That’s what I did, in the end it wasn’t from there [Reddit]. With the way Future Horizons is constructed, you have 5 cases, and the 5th one is the diploma project. That way you can connect your cases to your diploma, so in my case, the case 2 was the same theme as the Diploma Project, so I started sort of researching and then hypothesizing and experimenting, ever since case 2 was due, and that was November or something. 

JF: That's the good thing with Future Horizons, compared to other specialization courses. They had to come up with an idea a lot earlier, around the first week of school. But we had a lot more time to think and do some other things in the course before we had to come up with a distinct idea. 

AZ: I mean they gave us a lot of assignments surrounding different topics.

JF: A lot around science in general. 

AZ: That was good, that definitely helped with the whole searching. 

AB: I think that's the most important, at least with yours Josefin.

AZ: You can tell what you talked about.

JF: Basically I researched narcissistic tendencies and how prevalent they are in males compared to females. That was just a running joke, about men’s behaviours, and then I looked into it, and found out about narcissistic tendencies. I was wondering about Jespers experience, since he didn't have an idea until the very last minute, a couple months later. 

JS: No, no, I had an idea about bacteria but because of Corona, I couldn't get the bacteria I needed. Instead I came up with an idea with a friend and the teachers, the day before it was due so I just joined her project and I helped her. 

JF: So there's a lot of opportunities. 

AZ: Friends are really good!

Everyone: *Collective laughing* <3

AZ: Working in groups, talking to your friends, talking to your classmates or the fadder klass. 

JS: But we’re gonna be in 3rd year?

AZ & JF: Yeah but like, they still exist. 

AZ: Or like older siblings, parents- everyone can be of help. 

JS: But speaking of relevance and the real life, you have to apply it to your diploma project, right?

Some of us: *giggling*

JS: So, the next step would be to actually do it. For me, at least, I had an idea before but it didn’t work due to the pandemic, so I had to adapt to the situation. By doing that, a friend and I worked on our diploma project together. However, because of Corona, we could not be at school. So I think this year, a lot of people did surveys, for example Josefin and Angelika. I did it at school though. 

AB: How were your experiences with surveys?

AZ: It was actually really good. 

JF: It was pretty simple, we both made them on Google Forms. 

AZ: You just have to come up with questions which are appropriate with the diploma project.

JF: Dinnétz will obviously help you. 

AZ: Freerks too, or whatever teachers you may have in the future.

Everyone: *Laughing*

JF: And I think the hardest thing was coming up with a question. And obviously you have a link so it's easy to spread around. 

AZ: Just post on social media, send to friends, family..

JF: Anybody honestly. 

AZ: The desired age group. 

JF: And Angelika, you sent to the teachers at the school to send [the surevy] to their mentor classes. I thought that was smart.

AZ: That really helped. I looked at highschool students and how the number of languages spoken by the high school student affects their working memory, so sending it to teachers in high schools was...

AB: Perfect! 

AZ: Yeah, exactly. 

AB: It was the perfect age group and the perfect people. 

JF: And in general surveys are an easy choice and it counts as a lab you can do for case 4. 

AZ: And it’s easy to calculate the values later on. 

AB: It seemed like from an outside perspective, the hardest part was probably working with a lot of data. 

JF: Yeah, I had to look through 200 responses with 16 questions for each and I had to look at every single response by itself. But I don’t think most people will have to do that. 

AZ: No, I only had 50.

JF: But then again you can also do like Jesper and his friend did, an actual experiment in school, which is always more fun. 

AZ: But just adjusted to the circumstances. 

JF: Some people also did secondary research so that is also a choice. 

AB: I’ve heard that from other classes, most people did secondary research. I think most people in Future Horizons did primary. 

JF: Its more fun.

AZ: But how did you adjust yours, Anushka?

AB: So our idea was to examine pesticide residue on oranges. And when I initially came up with the idea I didn’t anticipate how difficult it would be to actually calculate how much pesticide residue is actually remaining on the oranges. 

AZ: It sounds pretty hard though. 

AB: So initially because of the pandemic, the plan was to come up with a method that would be easy to do in a school setting. But that ended up not working because the whole process is much more complicated than that. And the school didn’t really have the equipment that we did need to go through with this experiment. Me and another friend decided to contact outside sources, and then from there we were able to find people that would actually help.

AZ: Stockholm University right?

AB: Yeah exactly. That way we were actually able to do the experiment even with the global pandemic. 

Everyone: *Laughing*

AZ: And Emad, you did yours at school, right?

EL: My partner and I, looked at how microplastics, which are very present in lakes and especially in the polar regions, how they affect the albedo of the ice. Albedo is how much light the object absorbs from the sun. I mean at first we thought of using liquid nitrogen, then we thought of contacting universities. Turns out that we didn’t really need to do all of this, so we resorted to an easy method of grating plastics that are very commonly used. We also thought of making it realistic and liquid nitrogen isn't really realistic. That's another aspect, that your diploma project needs to have some connections to real life and it cannot be something solely hypothetical. My results were slightly contradictory, because albedo isn't a subject or area that is very researched; it was therefore mainly reviewing older literature and things like that. 

AZ: For the plastic, you used something really common like bottle caps?

EL: Yea we grated bottle caps using a file, which was kinda hard and it took a while, but we got it done eventually. 

AZ: And did you order that lamp?

EL: We used a UV lamp, to imitate the sunlight. I mean of course you can include many many things in the evaluation. For example, we said one of the sources of error was the lamp and as it wasn’t radiating as much energy as the sun would. 

AZ: But it's important to remember that the teachers will always be there to help you and even buy necessary equipment. So if you have a crazy good idea, but the school doesn't have equipment, just talk to the teachers and they'll always try to find a solution. 

JS: Most times. *whispering*

Everyone: *Laughing*

JF: Not their fault they couldn’t get bacteria from Japan during Corona times.

JS: I know, I understand. You also have to watch out for errors. I think my project had a pretty big error.

JF: That's not a good thing. 

AZ: Oopsie!

JS: But my project is about using different agents of disinfection for your hands and so we used soap, alcohol, chlorine, mouthwash and stuff. And then what we discovered was that alcohol was actually the most efficient, even though according to our previous research, soap should be the most effective. However, in our method we also used paper towels to dry off our hands before taking the sample, and then we saw a correlation between the use of paper towels and bacterial growth.

AZ: Because you didn't use paper towels for the alcohol?

JS: Yeah So we tried to solve that and [thought] "oh, maybe this stuff [paper towels] caused the bacterial growth on hands", so that was pretty cool.

AZ: Don't forget the method doesn't have to be perfect, we’re still in high school the teachers will still understand if the method is a little faulty.

JF: You just have to mention it.

AZ: Yeah, but you just have to evaluate it and describe it.

JS: For the evaluation just go over what went wrong.

JF: Sometimes the entire thing can even go wrong, and you can just write about that.

AB: I think it’s also important to remember not to get discouraged, just because you don't get the results you were anticipating or if you just don't get results in general.

JF: Technically that's the result. Just not the one you were expecting

EL: You can also include future research. It’s always a good thing because it shows that it’s not only limited to your experiment.

JS: I think relevance is something you should take into account, because there has to be relevance to what is going on in society right now. I think Emad [mentioned] the albedo effect, that’s always going to be relevant with climate change and stuff. I think mine was, obviously with the pandemic going on, pretty relevant...

JF: To wash your hands?

JS: Yeah, wash your hands. It’s good all around, not gonna lie. And you know yours is language.

AZ: Yeah language. Globalization, work, education, I mean it’s pretty important and relevant. 

AB: Yeah, I mean mine was about pesticides, a good amount of people are worried about pesticide intake, and in that regard it's pretty relevant in that sense.

AZ: Especially now that the population is becoming even bigger so there is more pesticide use, to grow more food.

JF: Well, everyones seems so relevant about global health and stuff. Mine was more just, I was interested in the topic and it helps in understanding oppression of women, which you know is also a societal thing that we still need to work with.

AZ: It’s also really important.

JF: It's important in a different way.

AB: It highlights another underlying problem that other people don't notice.

JF: It emphasizes how bad the situation is, which means...

AB: So many people, with your topic, just accept female oppression.

JF: ...and male behavior.

AB: And they're like "it exists, but so what?".

JF: I look into how detrimental it can be. So it’s pretty darn relevant.

JF: Now that we’re done with that, and we’ve gone through the process of it, maybe we could do some basic tips and tricks for when you do your diploma project, i guess the first thing is to start as early as you can. Don't wait until the last minute. I was pretty bad with planning. I started early and researched quite a bit but in the end there was so much in school that I kept it to the last minute, which wasn't very good because I stayed up till 4 am on the last day. But you know you don't want to end up like that. Obviously just start early.

AZ: Yeah there's a lot in school in May especially and in April, so… There's a lot of school work and the diploma project is really important, so you should really take your time.

JF: Space out.

AZ: Yeah, space out your work. Manage your time.

JS: Don’t procrastinate. Like don’t.

AZ: With anything in school.

AB: In general, if you hand it in earlier, you get more comments and feedback which really helps. Try to stick to the initial deadlines that the teachers give, because they do try to help you out with different deadlines, so that you're not completely left by yourself to plan your own workload. Try to stick to those drafts and initial deadlines, it’s probably one of the easier methods to go about planning.

AZ: And if you need any help, always ask a teacher.

JF: They will gladly help. Not just the specialization teachers like Dinnétz and Freerks, also other teachers. Like for me mine went out to psychology, so I talked to the psychology teacher as well.

AB: Any other general tips we have?

JF: I guess send your diploma project to SIYSS.
AZ: The unga forskare organization in Stockholm [Sweden].

AB: Because they also give you feedback if you partake in their competition. So again, any feedback you can get is the best in this situation.

Everyone: *Laughter*

JS: It's a bit of effort but if you have time, do it because it's good.

AB: It doesn't hurt.

JF: And if it goes well, then that’s just more fun.

Everyone: *Laughter*

JF: Yes, that was our podcast.

AZ: Thank you for listening to the whole 20 minutes of it.

JS: Thank you.

JF: Hope your diploma project goes well.

JS: Don't fail.

AZ: Good luck!

Everyone: Bye bye!