First Colonial High School

1272 Mill Dam Road

Virginia Beach, VA 23454

Dear Judges:

Since middle school, I knew I wanted to protect people. I started out wanting to be a police
officer and from there become a FBI agent. Last year, in AP Biology, my teacher taught us about
how fast dangerous diseases can spread and how vaccines protect people against those diseases.
As we learned more about how vaccines work, I became more interested in the topic. I
understood that the risk of an immunization causing harm is much less than its benefits, and I
wanted to know more about why people refused to vaccinate their children.

However, I never planned for this to be my senior paper/project topic. Originally, I was going to
continue researching the systematic abuse of Tennessee Walking Horses, as that was the topic on
which I wrote my Ethics paper junior year. On the first day of Legal Research and Writing, my
teacher talked about how our topic should be one that we were excited and passionate about
exploring more deeply. Although I was unquestionably passionate about the topic, I felt that I
had hit the bottom of the well when I finished my Ethics paper; there was simply nothing else for
me to research when it came to the systematic abuse of Tennessee Walking Horses. I decided to
revisit the subject of which I still carried an interest, and see if I might be able to write a paper
and do some sort of community outreach project on the myths and misconceptions surrounding
vaccines.

Fast forward about eight months. As it turns out, I am capable of writing a fifteen page paper and
do a project focusing on vaccines. Not only that, I can host a project that consists of finding three
different venues and talking to strangers about what might be considered a controversial subject,
among many other tasks. I am glad I took on a topic that was outside my comfort zone; I learned
something new instead of just expanding my Ethics paper. Plus, the U.S. Department of
Agriculture passed new, stricter regulations that essentially banned soring (a type of abuse) in the
Tennessee Walking Horse industry. As thrilled as I am about this occurrence, it would have been
tough to do a project on something that had been resolved halfway through the year.

Im not going to say that my project convinced someone to get vaccinated, or changed their
entire view of vaccines. One conversation simply cant do that. However, one conversation can
get someone thinking about vaccinations, and spark an interest that leads to a longer, more in-
depth conversation with a doctor. My goal was get the ball rolling.

Thank you for taking the time to read this.

Allison Stewart