Research Reflection

Molly Engels Research Paper Mr. Rudebusch 2/27/19 Reflection Paper Big oof. This was a very stressful experience. For my project, the first thing I did was I shadowed for 20 hours over the period of three days at Department of Corrections in Watertown, South Dakota. The second thing I did was write my research paper. My research paper was titled “Is the money the tax payers are spending on sending juveniles to specialized programs worth it?” Working on the research paper was a very long process, it took me about 2 weeks to complete. The next thing I did for my senior project was start my senior project portfolio. Doing this, was a long process because as I continued to work on things for this project, I added it onto that site. After that, I made my product. My product was a website called “Juvenile Placement Info.” Making this website was a very long process. I finished it all once, it all deleted. I did it all once, realized I wasn’t on Wi-Fi, so it all deleted. Then I finally finished it again, and it all saved. I would say this process took about 2 weeks to do. The last thing I had to make for my senior project was the PowerPoint for my presentation. This was fairly easy because I had all of the information I needed for it. Took me about 1-3 hours at most. The overall last thing I did was present my project. This wasn’t a long process, it took around 11 minutes. This experience was overall a very long process. This project had many challenges to it. A challenge that came from shadowing, is finding a time that would work best for Kim and I. She wanted me to shadow when I would see the most

interesting things, so finding those days and fitting them into my schedule of school was sometimes difficult. To overcome this, I got all my homework done before time so that I could shadow really any time I wanted because I wouldn’t have to catch up. One of the most stressful challenges was that my website kept deleting and not saving anything. To overcome that, I kept working on it and making sure that it does save. These weren’t too bad of challenges, but it was still very annoying. Time management is something I do struggle with sometimes. For my senior project, my time management was bad. I started out well, getting my shadowing time on time, and getting all of my portfolio done on time. The deadlines really snuck up on me for a lot of things. Because my website kept deleting, I had to quickly cram it in a few days before the due date to finish it on time. I seemed to manage my time pretty well, but I do wish I would have managed my time slightly better than I did so that I would have had time to run through my presentation a few times and see what I could improve on. I learned a lot from this experience. One of the most important things I learned is that I found this is what I want to do for the rest of my life. I learned that this is a very rewarding job, because of all of the support you put into the juveniles. This job is one of those jobs that you will see none of the same things in. Every day will be a different one and it will rarely be uneventful. After presenting to the juniors, I think my presentation will go very well. I had really no trouble presenting to the juniors, minus the fact I talked too quickly, which is very normal for me. Another thing I need to do is read over my presentation many times so I don’t have to rely on my notes to get through the presentation. When presenting to my panel, I hope they learn that dealing with juvenile delinquents is a very beneficial but hard job to do. The one thing I was trying to get across in my presentation was that the tax money you spend on sending juveniles to

specialized care is worth it. I hope they learned that the tax money will help the juveniles get the help they need, and that the money spent on doing so is worth it. Honestly, if I were able to rate/grade myself on this project I would give a pretty good grade. I would give myself an A- or so. I did well, but I don’t think I did well enough to receive a 100%. I had everything I needed on this project and it was done pretty well. I also had all of the information needed to make the listeners understand exactly what I was trying to get across and the information I was trying to have them learn.