business and pleasure

For almost a year we have been working exhaustively on our Research project. This is one of the greatest loads a UP High student could carry when he or she would reach his or her final year in this high school, I suppose, based on what we have experienced in the whole duration of our senior year.

Summer 2006, we were told of our topics to research on. I was somehow excited about this but rather nervous too because I did not know what to expect in this major science project. This project is for two units. A great deal, it is. I have thought of these things because when I was still a freshman, senior students at that time made us answer a pile of questionnaires that often say, “Please answer objectively”. We answered it non-subjectively, that’s good but we never answered objectively too, since their theses were the least of our concerns. Their theses were about social or psychological issues, not as scientific as ours. Science research is a big thing, we have to conduct it ourselves and not let other subjects just answer questionnaires and stuff. I could just think of how much paper is wasted for scratch work we would deal with when we would reach this far. Even hearing the word “defense” just gives me some butterflies in my stomach and some shivering sensation to my knees.

And so, we went to the corridors and took a look at the list of who would be with me on this battlefield. Whew… What a relief. The first thing that entered my mind is that our research is going to be fun not because of the topic but because my group mates are fun to be with. During the hot summer time, we often meet for our initial plans for the project. Our subjects were quite challenging for Daisy. She has to conquer her fear factor, wriggly, ugly worms. For me and Aiko, they were cute, slimy pets. Arvin would rather deal with the muddy soil than deal with those earthworms. Summer was fun because sometimes, we stay at our house and play Rival Schools, our favorite PS game. We would never forget Hinata’s “i-spinning attack”! We went to the grazing lands to gather some cows’ dung for our compost, which was unfortunately of no use to our study. We had some challenging games of gathering dung with our hands covered with plastic and that you can still feel the actual texture of the filthy waste. We really had a hard time on the process in the conduct of our study and the technical writing part. Many times we had to edit hard copies which were too costly for us. Fortunately, Arvin had the resources for printing. Many criticisms we humbly accepted from our advisers and panelists for the improvement of our study.

Stress, time pressure, trials and, most of the time, errors are what you would surely get with this endeavor. But, apart from all that, careless mistakes corrected; lessons learned; fun enjoyed. Those were what we got.