Yay, finals.

Not going to lie, I kind of like having a two-hour thesis class. Then again, I'd hate for school to be any longer than it already is.

Today in thesis, I emailed my mentor again and updated her on my current status with thesis presentations. I have yet to hear back from Pallavi or Roonu Aunties after the last email that Vineeta sent out to everyone informing them of my interest in spearheading the Spring Carnival effort; I'm assuming that means they haven't planned any Kids Club meetings yet. If they don't email me by New Year's, I plan on emailing them and telling them about my thesis presentation, just to let them know that I'm actively researching and doing whatever preparation I can on my own.

I also spent some time re-reading the guidelines from the initial presentations as well as the new ones. I'm still trying to figure out how I want to start my presentation, since the guidelines recommend that we start off with a "hook" of some sort. I think what I was going to do was start off by briefly summarizing my initial presentation - mentioning the need for child education (explaining why it's important) and then discussing again my involvement with the Readathon. At that point, I'll talk about the Readathon wrapup, display my webpage and talk about the awards I won.

After that, I'll probably transition into the "next step," which is talking about the Spring Carnival and discussing how Pratham has other general fundraising events throughout the year (the Readathon is a summer-exclusive event). I have a few slides on the Carnival from 2012, so I'll probably display those and talk about the success of the event (though that was the one and only time it happened). I know when Vineeta and I were talking about this as my possible thesis product that she mentioned the amount of money Pratham was able to raise from it, but I didn't remember the exact amount; I've emailed her to ask about that as well.

After that, I plan to talk about my plan for the Spring Carnival this year, which is to bring it back and hopefully establish it as an annual event (for real this time).

Last regular school day of the year!

Wow, I can't believe finals start tomorrow. That means winter break is next week! Yay!

That also means college apps are due in two weeks. Not yay.

Well, anywho, in thesis today, I started preparing for my presentation. I created a PowerPoint presentation that I plan to use; it has about 7-8 slides right now. I also created a (very rough) outline of my actual presentation and planned out the basic structure of what I wanted to say.

Tomorrow I plan to figure out how I want to say, and then over winter break I plan on practicing/rehearsing my presentation several times. Hopefully I can get it to be 8 minutes; I don't know if I have enough to talk about, so I might do more research on the Spring Carnival (though, to be fair, I did find some information and a lot of pictures from the 2012 Spring Carnival) and maybe mention a few other fundraising events of the like. On the other hand, though, I think transitioning between my different visuals and other technology things will help make it longer. I'm fairly confident I'll be able to meet that 8 minute minimum requirement.

In other (read: college) news, I got my Yale decision today. I was deferred, which honestly I expected. I'm not upset at all, though, because I know I tried my best and I still do have a chance in the regular round. And even then, if they reject me in April, I'll be fine with it because I have quite a few other schools that I love just as much and would be just as happy to attend. So no disappointment on my part! Especially since I have UT in the bag already, I'm not too worried. Now it's just time to get the rest of my RD apps done and submitted in time. After that, I'll have time to concentrate on schoolwork a lot more (which I'm actually looking forward to).

Typing, typing away...

In thesis today, I worked on my research paper! I found a new source (a book that talks about child labor in India) and I was able to incorporate that source into my first few paragraphs. So far, I have one and a half pages of the paper done. I plan to continue working on it tonight as well as over the weekend (I probably won't have time tomorrow night because the choir concert goes till 9, which means I'll get home at 10, and then because I'll be so exhausted all I'll have time for is eating dinner and going to bed).

Vineeta Aunty also sent out an email to the rest of the DFW Pratham executives (including the chapter president and the Kids/Teen Club leaders) to let them know of my interest in helping spearhead the Spring Carnival effort. I got a reply from Pallavi Aunty, one of the Kids/Teen Club leaders, so I spent a little bit of time getting back to her and emailing the group at large as well.

Over the break, I plan to prepare for my presentation. I'm probably going to start off by updating everyone on my ultimate Readathon achievements, then move into explaining what I've done for my project thus far.

Started on my research paper!

In thesis, the guidelines for the midterm paper were finally posted on Edmodo, so I spent the entire class period going over them, reading the sample papers, and deciding how to best approach the assignment. I looked over my annotated bibliography - since I knew I'd be using those same sources for this paper - and I thought about how to use those sources in my paper. So far, I think what I'm going to do is focus on the need for child education; for this paper, I'm going to use my sources (many of which are from Pratham USA directly) to explain why child illiteracy in India is such a big problem; to support this argument, I'll incorporate some statistics straight from the Pratham website. I might also discuss the ways in which Pratham's work in India is addressing this issue and helping to promote child literacy and education instead. Now that the brainstorming/thinking stuff is done, next class, I'm going to actually start typing the paper.

Also, side note: I found out this evening that I got into the Plan II honors program at UT Austin! I'm super excited and incredibly relieved, now that I know I have a (very good) fallback in the event that none of my other college apps work out the way I'd like them to.

Working on thesis... Lots of communication.

I spent much of my time today in thesis emailing various people; first, I emailed my mentor to follow up on the discussion we had last night about the possibility of me helping to organize a large-scale fundraising and awareness event in the DFW community as the final product for my thesis. What we decided on was having me help organize a Spring Carnival, wherein people from all over Dallas could come to the event to learn more about Pratham and its cause. Apparently, the Pratham Kids Club had organized this in years past, but for some reason they didn't do it last year. Vineeta Aunty told me I could help lead the effort to bring it back for this year.

When we discussed yesterday, she asked me to confirm with Mr. Correa before we went ahead with this idea, so I also spent a good chunk of my time typing up a long email to him asking if this would be an acceptable product for my thesis project. If he says yes, Vineeta said she'll put me in touch with the Kids Club board members, who are the ones who manage all the non-Readathon events throughout the year. I met them in early June at the Walkathon (which was before I signed up for the Readathon), so it'll be a nice chance to catch up with them again (I haven't talked to them since then).

I also spent some time looking around on the Pratham website to see if they had records of any Spring Carnivals from past years that I could look at. An event of this size takes a whole lot of planning and effort; I was just curious to see whether they had any articles or reports on it from before like they do for the Pratham Galas. So far, I've found nothing, but I'm going to keep looking.

Transition back to thesis

I got to class after the 9:15 bell because my bus was late, which was annoying.

My classmates informed me that we were supposed to work primarily on our thesis projects and that college apps were only secondary in importance, so I contacted my mentor. Our last Pratham get-together was in mid-November, and she told me she was leaving to India right afterwards and returning at the beginning of December, so I wasn't sure if she was back yet. Either way, I emailed her today asking her if we could discuss the potential ideas I had for my thesis and figure out a time we could either meet in person and work on organizing it or keep in touch through email for now and maybe meet over Christmas break.

As of now, I have a lot of material to use as the foundation for my thesis project. What I hope to do is organize an event in the Dallas/Fort Worth community that acts as both a fundraising as well as entertainment event. Below is an excerpt from my email to my mentor:

"What I basically hope to do is organize an event of some sort in the Dallas-Fort Worth area where anyone could come to learn more about Pratham and its cause. I’d like for it to be a one-time fundraising event, but also an event where people can come out with their families. I’m still not sure exactly what this event will be, but I’m thinking of something like a large outdoor get-together where there will be exhibits and maybe even a slideshow running..."

Shortly after that, my mentor texted me saying I should call her this evening to discuss things further. Hopefully we can get something sketched out in the coming weeks, in time for the mid-term presentations in January.

After that, I made a short visit to Ms. Marberry and spent the remaining time looking through the resources posted on Edmodo. I also spent a few minutes emailing myself all the college essay files I had saved on my network drive.

Also, SCEA decisions in 15 days! (Not that I'm keeping track or anything... Okay, maybe I am.)