Major Project four reflection

The purpose of this project is to write a report about something that we care about.
The heuristic that we have used for this project is a set of waves that we have
created months before starting the project. We drew concentric waves, more like
radar waves, where we had to write the things that we truly care about around each
wave. The closer the wave to myself, where I was represented as a dot on the page,
then the more I care about the things surrounding it. On the first wave for example, I
have written family (parents, sisters, grandparents, etc), health and education. On
the second wave I wrote identity, culture and politics.
Considering the fact that I had to write a report and we also had to collect data, I
thought that writing about how the politics of my country had affected my cultural
identity would be most interesting given that I am also very passionate about this
subject.

At first, I have felt very lost. How can I talk about identity and culture? I found it very
difficult to start the project given that I am dealing with intangible concepts. I faced
difficulty trying to connect the concepts and express them under a clear manner. As
a result, I have decided to start by interviewing two subject matter experts. One of
the experts is the Archaeologist John D. Littlefield at TAMUQ while the other expert
is Dr. Silvia Pesso who is an Associate Teacher Professor of English at CMUQ. But,
what should my questions be? What am I supposed to ask them? I then realized that
I need to research my topic, but what is my topic? I then decided to approach the
project by brainstorming the different elements that I want to address in my project.
These elements included identity, culture, politics and third culture kids. I know that
I wanted to examine the effects of politics on cultural identity but more importantly
I wanted to see how politics affect identity. After maps of brainstorming, I have
decided that my project should be about How does the political circumstances of a
country affect the cultural identity of its citizens? Ready to begin my research, I
started by trying to define culture, identity, cultural identity and looking at ways to
connect them. Therefore, I have decided to ask the subject matter experts the
questions that I didnt have answers for, or rather could not express the answers in
an academic professional way.
After conducting the interviews, I had a clearer image of how my report will be
structured. Due to time constraints, I had to start on my final presentation on
project four. At first, I thought that we should have ideally finished project 4 report
and then started the presentation. However, I have realized that having a deadline
for the presentation has pushed me to work and partially finish project four
throughout the presentation.
What did I learn from this project? I believe that I have gained some skills regarding
knowing how to start a project. Throughout this project, I have mentally created a
list of steps that I can follow once starting any project and not just necessary an
English project. These steps are: brainstorm your ideas, connect the major concepts,
research your topic, ask for help if necessary, collect data, interpret data and finally
write the project.