(1) Positive Statement

What are you most proud of in your block presentation and/or your senior project? Why?
    My activity was pretty great as it achieved my objective of demonstrating tangible goals, encouraged cooperation and attention from my fellow students, illustrated principles discussed in my lecture, and exemplified a type of lesson plan that I had discussed in my project as part of my best answer.

(2) Questions to Consider

a.     What assessment would you give yourself on your block presentation (self-assessment)?

AE  

b.     What assessment would you give yourself on your overall senior project (self-assessment)?

AE  

(3) What worked for you in your senior project?
        In my senior project, I had a great deal of successful innovations in my senior project that worked rather well for me. Ultimately, what worked for me the most in this project is the sheer amount of research and strength of the sources that I selected for use in my Senior Project. Sources such as Wendel Stephens, "Dynamics of Political Participation", greatly aided my overall project by providing a solid core of research to bolster my conclusions and ensure I had the utmost credibility when it came to reporting and presenting my research.

(4) (What didn't work) If you had a time machine, what would you have done differently to improve your senior project if you could go back in time?
        If I had a time machine (in addition to gaming the stock market and creating time paradoxes), I would probably work on my graphic design skills. While my research and fundamental understanding of my project was solid, I was always left with the impression that the visual presentation was left wanting for a certain level of panache. In addition, I also would have definitely contacted more individuals to acquire their perspective on the subject matter as well.

(5) Finding Value

How has the senior project been helpful to you in your future endeavors?   Be specific and use examples

     Senior Project has been helpful to me particularly in my future endeavors in multiple ways. It has shown me an interesting subject matter that I intend to pursue at UC Davis. In addition, the act of combining mentorship with academics means that I have 40 credits overall to carry with me to my future college which helps me reduce cost, and I have experience in my chosen major. Furthermore, I have gained a lot of experience in networking by utilizing my old contacts in friends and  family which is how I originally met my first mentor. These are all useful skills and assets to have and will serve me well in the future. Overall, I feel that I-Poly and the Mentorship experience have left me prepared for the future.

Blog 22: Mentorship

Content:

LIA Response to blog:

    Literal

·     Log of specific hours with a total and a description of your duties updated on the right hand side of your blog

·     Contact Name and Mentorship Place
 Contact Name: Murniz Coson
 Email. Murniz_Coson@chaffey.edu

-Hours Updated

    Interpretive

     What is the most important thing you gained from this experience? Why?

-The single most important thing that I've gained from my experience is an academic understanding of the root causes behind democratic principles in action and direct peer to peer experience in seeing those academic systems in action.Given that a bulk of my hours came from attending classes and correspondence with my professors, I find this assessment of the overall impression of my mentorship to be a valid analysis of my time. in the course of my mentorship, I devoted a great deal of time to analyzing the structural systems underlying individual participation and the modifications to that end. I also engaged in a of of individual surveying to directly access data as seen in my independent component hour log, and I went above and beyond in my interviews by interviewing four different individuals to ensure that I got a diverse perspective on the issue.F information that I recieved. Furthermore, my essential question was derived from my mentorship as well.

   Applied

     How has what you’ve done helped you to answer your EQ?  Please explain.

As the bulk of my hours have come from classes, supplemented by attending city council meetings, I think it's fair to say that the primary benefit in addressing my EQ is understanding the mechanisms behind proposed solutions to the problem of low voter turnout rates and the reasoning behind that. My initial mentor taught me about the positive influence that a mentor can have upon a burgeoning politically oriented mind and  the specific requirement of an academic environment of fostering these views. My correspondence with my mentor as part of my mentorship also reinforced the role of the academic environment in addressing declining student turnout rates, and was a significant factor in my decision to include that as my best answer. In addition, attending city council meetings also helped me informally interview  people as to their beliefs regarding this, and I saw firsthand the techniques they use to try to encourage attendance such as use of technology to broadcast their meeting and other ideas.

Blog 21: Exit Interview

Content:

(1) What is your essential question, and what are your answers?  What is your best answer and why?

EQ: What is the best way to encourage youth voter involvement in local government systems?

My Best Answer was my first as increasing the role of education in encouraging youth involvement in politics is vital to addressing low voting turnout rates among youth voters as a societal issue. In this regard, the nearly universal levels of high school education among youth stands the best chance of reaching and influencing the larger population. In particular, youth voting receiving an increased emphasis in high school means that development of the youth voting behaviors can occur in a peer to peer environment which has proved crucial to the reinforcing of those behaviors.  This principle of peer to peer influence has been repeatedly codified by multiple sources and should not be overlooked. Sources supporting this idea include Megnan Condon's work on th voting behaviors of young adults, but this principle is ubiquitous in most readings of political science works. For these reasons, my best answer of increasing an educational emphasis on positive voting behaviors is rooted nt eh creation of a nurturing environment for the development of those behaviors that is not currently provided. 

(2) What process did you take to arrive at this answer?

The process to this answer was an arduous development predicated on an evolving definition of what the essential question was. To begin with, my original problem was the question of what it to,k to scceed in politics, an answer I thought would be addressed through outlining the solutions. The true issue that I would work on for my senior project would not arrive until later. This meant that I had a lot of foundation that was largely irrelevant in the face of my later research. Nonetheless, there was a great deal of research available on this subject given the matter at hand. This answer was decided as the best answer given the research available on why exactly individuals decide not to participate, and my own research also conducted on the subject. 

(3) What problems did you face?  How did you resolve them?

As stated previously, a great deal of the foundational work done on my subject was irrelevant given my later topic switch, yet this was counteracted by the great deal of research done to resolve this issue. 

(4) What are the two most significant sources you used to answer your essential question and why?

Wendel, Stephen. "The Dynamics of Political Participation: An Analysis
of the Dynamic Interaction between Individuals and their Political
Micro-Environment." Order No. 3517713 University of Maryland, College
Park, 2012. Ann Arbor: ProQuest. Web. 26 Sep. 2014.

This source was absolutely vital to my response as it outlined the basic principlebehind most major voting behaviors. It outlined significant trends among various demographics, but most importantly it outlined the specific effect of minor influencers among this demographic. It was one of the few sources to particularly place an emphasis on the peer to peer influence angle which was found to have a measurable impact in encouraging others. This article was a phenomenal source to have and provided a great deal of information on my subject throughout the entire year.

Condon, Meghan, and Matthew Holleque. "Entering Politics: General Self‐Efficacy and Voting Behavior Among Young People." Political Psychology, 34.2 (2013): 167-181

Similar to the last article, this article provided a great deal of resources on answering this topic in a significant capacity. To differentiate it from the above, this article focused specifically upon analyzing the specific attitudes of the young.

Be prepared with evidence and specific examples to support any response.  It is also significant to cite sources as you explain.

April Extra Post

Last City Council Meeting For a While

-Submitted SIR to UC Davis
-Economics Class Midterm is on Tuesday
-Had Discussion with Mentor on Economic Influence on Elections
-Finished all Research Articles
-Created a rough Draft of the
-Finished Independent Component two


To Do
-Finish Final Lesson Plan
-Finish Up my Mentorship Hours Records as I've been rather sloppy with those. Luckily, I kept pretty meticulous notes on the handouts they delivered so that will be easy an easy objective to complete

Blog 19: Independent Component 2

LITERAL
(a) Include this statement: “I, student name, affirm that I completed my independent component which represents ___ hours of work.”
“I, student name, affirm that I completed my independent component which represents ___ hours of work.”
(b) Cite your source regarding who or what article or book helped you complete the independent component.
I would like to thank Mr. Rivas and my mentor Professor Coson for their help in regards to this subject matter as their insight to current education practices really helped out with this project by providing a basis for my hypothesis. The arguments and attitdes they cited about the youth demographic experience greatly contributed to providing a solid underpinning to the whole of the work.


(c) Update your Independent Component 2 Log (which should be under your Senior Project Hours link)
 It's Updated
 
(d) Explain what you completed.    
 This project is a 25 Page research essay designed to understand the fundamental reasons behind why youth voters (defined as being between 17-24 years old) participate or disengage as well as getting a better handle on the types of behaviors and contexts where they express themselves outside of just voting. This goal was facilitated by a two week long research period wherein I distributed surveys on both the Cal Poly and I-Poly campuses to better target this age range, and ultimately 201 unique surveys were collected in this demographic. This project is designed to easily showcase the data gathered and
 
INTERPRETIVE 
Defend your work and explain the component's significance and how it demonstrates 30 hours of work.   Provide evidence (photos, transcript, art work, videos, etc) of the 30 hours of work.  

My work is the culmintion of a long period of work and time as detailed in my component hours. I really did spend a great deal of time surveying, and in addition to the described hours I also surveyed random people the entire length of time that I had my surveys as can be attested to by multiple students. To demonstrate my hours, I took multiple pictures of the survey stations where I distributed my survey along with other proofs of my work.

Here's a Picture of me about to survey some people. From my phone date, this was apparently on the day that I surveyed at the library. So it was before I walked there.

Here's a PIcture of the survey station described on April 21st. I moved a bit around the food court, but here's the base of my survey station design. I tried to get tables with a lot of room around them so that I could survey people on all sides as can be seen in the surveys all around the sign.

Here's a Picture of my sign. I was carrying this thing around for two weeks.

Here's a Picture of my Independent Component on Sunday Morning Pre-editing. A lot of work to do to be frank.

Here's a picture of my old spot with me in the background. I surveyed here twice.

Here's what my work looked like on Saturday Morning before i worked on it. Notably, Only the intro is actually done, and aside from the raw data there is practically nothing.

Here's a Picture of the 200 surveys I collected as physical evidence of the work, and proof that I didn't just make up numbers.

Here's the same set of surveys, but organized in five stacks of 40.

Demonstration of Work
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1MkPaMn9JLbFRRWTLgHvjx6Jm92UAlvgFOhghIiYOhHA/edit#gid=1498712964
Here's the actual raw data of the surveys collected, compiled into an easily read google doc sheet.

Here is that same Data of those surveys collected into easily read graphs in the event that you don't want to read through 200 unique survey results.

APPLIED
How did the component help you answer your EQ? Please include specific examples to illustrate how it helped. 
 This component specifically addressed my EQ in that it set out to find the direct reasons behind why youth voters (defined as the 17-24 demographic and the sole subject of this research study) fail to vote or otherwise engage with regularity the modern political system. This data would prove extremely useful as it would corroborate the interviews that I conducted n why educators believe that this demographic has such low voting rates with actual tangible data that is broken into easily digestible charts. In addition, it might simulate the type of research I might perform in college for my degree of political science.

Monthly Extra Blog Post

Accomplished:
-Attended another city council meeting as part of my senior project
-Did some work on my senior project independent component
-Quite a lot of college stuff
-An excessively large amount of college stuff
-Tried to arrange interview with second mentor Professor Murniz Coson. I am still waiting for his reply
-Expanded work on research for topic

Will Do
-Hopefully arrange that interview. It's due pretty soon after all.
-Continue attending city council meetings
-Finish my college stuff
-Hopefully get into an economics course
-Finish Independent component 2
-Work on Senior Project activity

Summary:

Blog 18: Interview Questions

Due to my choice of interview subject being different from my last I'll incorporate my last 10 questions from my last interview into this one in addition to ten new ones as they still warrant answering and seeing the diversity of response would provide insight. They will also be reworded to better work with a college professor. The ten new ones will be listed below.

1.  Do you believe that the current generation is politically uninvolved?
2.  Do you think that there is a higher perception of disillusionment in the government amongst voters today? 
3. What factors do you fell are inhibiting youth voter participation (youth defined as being between the ages of 18-
4. Do you feel that education has a place in encouraging voter participation?
5. What public Policies are effective for encouraging voter participation
6. If elected, what would be your primary goal to better help the community?  
7. As a political Science Professor, what is your evaluation on the future of political involvement?
8. Aside from active voter involvement, what else do you feel is important to an active democracy?
9. If you had any advice for a person looking to get involved in politics, what would it be?
10. In your experience as an educator, what encourages people to participate in voting or other political activities?
11. What do you think are effective activities that a person can do to engage with the system aside from voting?
12. Do you feel there are any aspects or politicians about politics that are overlooked despite their impact?
13. Are there any political phrases or attitudes that you personally find frustrating or counterintuitive?
14. What is your evaluation on the rise of super pacs as significant players in politics? Does their increasing participation warrant concern?
15. Would you consider attempting at running for the same or potentially a higher office in the future? 
16. As a Political Science Professor, what would you like to see in a potential political leader?
17. What Political Theories are essential to understanding the machinations of the modern political process?
18. Are there any major misconceptions about the political process among your students that are common? If so, please provide an example and state if you believe that they might have influence on their understanding.
19. What readings or authors would you recommend to better continue my understanding of the subject?
20. Who would you recommend I talk to further about this?