DONE!

I completed my final submission today in thesis and shared the link with my teacher. This means I'm officially done with senior thesis!

It's crazy to think that it's finally all over. It's been a great experience, though - it's been a long, sometimes tough journey, but I made it and I learned from it. I'm honestly kind of glad I had to do a thesis because it's definitely taught me things. Besides, I already know I'll have to do a senior thesis capstone project-type thing in my third year in the PACT program, so this has already in essence prepared me for that. On that note, today is May 1st, aka Commitment Day! Congratulations to everyone who's finally made their decision today. I had already committed a few weeks ago, but it's still exciting to me; every time I think about it, I get excited all over again. I can't wait for AP exams to be over so that I can really start thinking about college and getting excited about the next stage of my life.

Final submission almost complete

Today in class I got a lot done on my final submission - specifically, I was able to go through all 100+ of my emails between my mentor and I and copy them into a Word document and upload that to my Process Record folder. It was incredibly frustrating because the copy and paste function made the formatting really weird, so it took absolutely FOREVER to edit all of it and improve it somewhat. (It only took the entire period.) By the end, though, I had 70 something pages of text, so that's good. That was really the majority of what I had left to do for final submission; now all that's left is getting my mentor to send me back her profile form and then make sure the rest of my paper forms are where they should be. Then I'll be done!!

Still working...

I'm still in the process of my final submission. In thesis today I was able to read over my abstract and upload it to my Final Submission folder on Google Docs. Now all that's left is uploading the rest of my Process Record - that includes, mainly, the emails I sent and the rest of the communication between me and my mentor, my judges, and the director of the DCT whom I was in contact with when I was trying to organize the joint event between Pratham and the DCT. The deadline for final submission is this coming Friday, and I'm sure I'll be able to have it done by then. It's just tedious to have to go through all of my emails and copy and paste all of them into a Word document (I couldn't find any other way of doing it). I plan to have my final submission done by Thursday at the latest.

Working on final submission~

Today I started working on my final submission. I spent some more time this morning reviewing all the final submission guidelines, especially the list of all the things I need to submit. I created my Final Submission folder on Google Docs and already uploaded some of the things I had - my previous presentation, my mid-term paper, my annotated bibliography, and a few drafts of my final paper. As of now, I have yet to upload all my email communication (I'm still trying to figure out how exactly to go about doing that; if all else fails, I'll just go through them and manually copy/paste them into a Word document). I'm also holding off on uploading my final paper until I read it over at least once more. There are a few other minor things that I'll need to upload as well - I just need to make sure my name is on them before I do so.

I also started and completed my abstract today in class, so after I read that over a few times and maybe make some minor changes, I will upload that as well.

DONE!

I had my final thesis presentation today; I think it went well! The responses I got from my judges were great, and it made me feel as though I did better than I'd expected. I'm pretty happy with how it went, to be honest. It was also the perfect length, so that's good too. One of my judges told me he really liked my paper before I began my presentation; he told me it was well-written and I had done an excellent job, so that made me pretty happy too. :)

Now that the presentation is out of the way (and thank goodness for that), I can work on final submission. I hope that by Wednesday I'll be ready to upload all my documents and actually be done with senior thesis (gosh, I can't believe it's come to an end already!).

Next class...

Today I worked on practicing my speech for my final presentation. It was nearly 45 minutes the first time I rehearsed, which came as a bit of a shock, but I think that's just because it was my first time. I was rambling and stuttering a bit, so that took up more time.

Today in class I also finished my speech (well, sort of: I gave up about two-thirds of the way because I realized I wasn't going to follow it word-for-word anyway) and completed a typed outline of my presentation. That, I think, will give me a good idea of what to talk about, since it's less detail-oriented and instead has just the main topics of each slide that I want to hit. That way, it'll be more useful to me in making sure I don't leave anything out.

I want my presentation to be around 30 minutes, and considering the amount of stuff I have, I think it'll be that long. I just need to rehearse it a few more times over the weekend and then I'll be set. I can't believe my presentation is this Monday! (Ahh!)

Presentation complete!

In thesis today, I completed my presentation. It's got about 20 slides, so I think it'll be a pretty good length. I guess you could say one minute per slide, but obviously it won't happen that way. But it's fine because I'm not too worried about the 20 minute minimum. I also started typing my speech and got a little less than halfway through before class ended. I plan to work on it out of class and rehearse it every day now leading up to my final presentation on Monday.

On another note: it hit me this week that this is real and it's coming to an end. All of it - school, thesis, everything. It's kind of scary, but also exhilarating at the same time. Seeing my classmates dressed up every day now because almost every day there's someone presenting their thesis to their judges is what really caused this whole realization. And in terms of college, I guess it's the fact that I've already committed that has now also made that a reality to me. These final weeks are the most stressful for me, but in the end it's going to be so so worth it. And I can't wait.

Preparing for final presentations

Today in thesis I worked on my final presentation. It looks like it's going to be pretty long, especially judging from the length of my outline. It's pretty extensive, so I feel like the 20 minute requirement won't really be a problem for me. It's a lot of information, though, so I have to type it all out to make sure I'm not forgetting anything - that's what's going to take me so long. I'll have to get it done by the end of this week, though, at the latest, since my final presentation is next Monday.

On that note, I also emailed all my judges to remind them about my final presentation being next week. So far, I've received confirmations from two of them. I'm still waiting on the third, and if she doesn't reply by Tuesday evening, I plan to call her Wednesday during thesis period to get a confirmation. I also plan on emailing them my final 30-page paper either tonight or tomorrow.

Absent! 4/10/14

I was absent yesterday because I was visiting Rice University.

Making up work in advance!

Since I'm going to be absent the rest of this week on a college visit, I decided to spend today's thesis period taking a physics test in advance (since I would've missed it tomorrow otherwise). I plan to work on my thesis tonight, though, to make up for the time I missed today in class.

Started the final steps~

Today in thesis I finally finished my paper! It's a grand total of 30 pages; today I put the finishing touches on it. I spent some time today reading through all the documents in the final thesis submission folder - I noticed some stuff in the given guidelines that required me to make changes to my paper, so I did that as well.

I also started the outline process for my final PowerPoint; I'm fairly sure that I'm going to follow the basic format of my thesis paper, since it's a chronological account of my experience with the Readathon. I may also, however, include some of the sources that I didn't include in my final thesis paper because I had already met and exceeded the minimum length requirement of 25 pages. Considering that it's information that was in my mid-term paper, I think it would be better if I did, but at the same time, my judges are all part of Pratham already, so I feel like some of that information would be redundant. When I take my audience into account, I realize that some of the information (especially all the stuff that was in my mid-term paper) will become irrelevant and unnecessary, so I will probably just leave it out and focus more on talking about my personal experience working with Pratham as opposed to explaining the organization itself and its goals.

Paper (almost) done!

Today I spent the majority of thesis working on changing my thesis paper from Chicago formatting to MLA formatting. There were quite a few differences, so it took longer than I anticipated, especially with adding/removing spaces and blank lines and such.

I spent the majority of my time on my Works Cited page because I realized I had never cited an email in MLA before, so I had to look it up and then copy that format and fit it to my specific sources. I had to do that with quite a few other types of sources, so in all it was that final page that took the most amount of time.

I'm happy with my progress, though - I'm not adding anything more to this paper, because as of now it's exactly 30 pages long. I hope that on Friday I will finally be able to start outlining my final presentation and creating my PowerPoint.

Changing it up

After struggling with Microsoft Word for hours, I decided today halfway through the thesis period to just give up on using Chicago formatting and instead revert back to MLA. I have no idea how to make the citations-in-footnotes work, and without that my paper won't be a real paper anyhow. To avoid wasting any more time, I decided to move on and just use MLA format, so that I can spend the next few weeks working on my actual presentation. If it needs to be at least 25 minutes, it'll require quite a bit of planning and rehearsing before I present the actual thing in front of my judges.

I plan to email my judges a reminder about the upcoming presentation by the end of next week, and then send them my paper the week after. Meanwhile, I'd like to have this paper done by the end of this week or beginning of next week (I won't be in town next Wednesday to Friday), so that afterwards I can start creating my PowerPoint and assembling whatever other sources I think I'll need (websites, maybe even a few videos here and there) for my final presentation.

More formatting~

I'm still working on figuring out exactly how to make the Chicago formatting work in my paper... To help me with my bibliography, I googled the Chicago formatting style, and I found a few links that have been pretty helpful for me:

https://owl.english.purdue.edu/media/pdf/1300991022_717.pdf

http://www.chicagomanualofstyle.org/tools_citationguide.html

The sample paper is especially useful - I'm attempting to model my thesis paper on that one. It's not the same, since my paper isn't really a research paper, and I have more web/electronic sources than the sample paper, but it's still really helpful in figuring out the finer points of the formatting, like the line spacing and such.

I chose to include the sources that I referenced, but did not cite directly, on my bibliography. I may remove them later but I think for the most part I'll just leave them in. My bibliography seems more complete with them.

I've been having serious issues with the citations in footnotes, though - and that's mainly because I don't know how to use footnotes. If I enter a citation in a footnote on one page, it shows up on every other page in my paper! I have no idea how to stop Word from doing that, either. This is something I wasn't anticipating, so I'll have to spend some more time figuring out how exactly to get around this problem.

Still working on formatting

Adding in the Chicago formatting to my paper is taking longer than I anticipated, because there are actually a lot of things that I need to make sure I keep track of, besides the in-line citations with works in the footnotes. I'm still working out the finer details of the formatting, including line spacing, italicizing, etc.

I realized today that my paper was only 24 pages (because of the spacing that somehow was awkwardly messed up when I opened the file today), so I added a bit more to the child education section. I also added another section to the paper wherein I talked about the stories of the children I'd received as the Readathon progressed, and how it made me feel proud and excited that my volunteer work was, in fact, making a difference and motivated me to continue fundraising.

I think I may need to somehow find a way to incorporate more sources into my paper - since I intended this paper to be a personal account and not a research paper, I'm not sure if there's a minimum number of sources we're required to reference or cite. If I can list sources I referenced (but did not cite directly in the paper itself), then I can add a few more to my list. If not, I'll probably have to add even more stuff to the paper. We'll see; for now, I'm just working on adding the in-text citations and full citations in the footnotes.

Absent~

I was not in class today because the choir went to compete at American Classic Choir Festival. We did really well, too! :)

Decided on a format

Today in thesis, I worked some more on my paper. But first, I went around to my A day teachers and told them I wouldn't be in class on Friday because of choir again and talked with a couple of my classmates about SNHS things.

After looking through the last email and reading through the OWL website, I decided to try Chicago formatting in my paper. I think it'll work out pretty nicely; it's just going to take some work. I've never used a format that's not MLA before, so figuring out the whole footnotes thing and in-text superscripts will probably take a while. But I'm up for the challenge! Having my paper done already is a huge plus, because I still have about 3-4 weeks before my presentation. I'm hoping to have my paper completely done by the end of next week or so, though, so that I can spend some time creating the PowerPoint for my final presentation.

In class today, I also completed the child education section of my paper. It's shorter than I was initially anticipating, but that's not necessarily a bad thing - I might add more stuff to it later, but my paper is still 26 pages. It was 28 pages after I added the child education section, but then I went through the entire paper and started adding in the Chicago formatting - one of the things I had to do was single-space all the quoted text. That shortened the length of my paper by two pages.

In the next few classes, I hope to finish adding the Chicago formatting into my paper and then get started on my presentation preparation.

Hooray for productivity over break!

Spring break was really great for me thesis-wise because I finished my paper! I have my first draft complete, and it's 26 pages double spaced. Today in thesis I spent time reading through it again (I hadn't looked at it since I finished, because I wanted to give myself some time away from it to be able to look at it again with a fresh pair of eyes) and editing the paper. I have to cut down on some of it, probably, to meet the length requirement, but otherwise I think I'm good. I found out today that the minimum length was 25 pages, not the maximum - I can go up to 35 or even 40 pages, if I want! I doubt I'll do that, but still, it's nice to know I won't have to worry about going overboard.

I also started working on the child education part of my paper; I had left that for last because that was the section that would require actual research and looking up sources and using citations and all that. Since the rest of my paper is just a personal account, it doesn't really have the look of a research paper (because it's not) and so I decided to leave the actual research-y stuff for last.

In the coming class periods, I intend to complete the child education section of my paper (shouldn't take more than 2-3 class periods, I hope) and then go into revising/editing the entire paper. I'm going to have to work out how I'm going to use a citation format though - I realize that I can't just use it in that one section of my paper; it'll have to be throughout. I'll see what I can do.

Absent today~

I was not in thesis today because the choir was at UIL competition all day. (We did pretty well, too, which was exciting!)

Writing and misc stuff

Though I spent a good amount of the period continuing to work on my paper, I had a few other things to do first. I went to pick up my transcript that I had requested the week prior for a scholarship application; I also went and talked to all my A day teachers to let them know I wouldn't be in class next Tuesday because of the choir UIL competition, where we'll be performing. I also picked up one of the Masonic Lodge scholarship applications and spent a couple of minutes looking through it to see if it said anything about the required recommendations.

For the rest of the period, though, I did work on my paper. Right now, I'm at almost 8 pages, and I've reached the point where I've started talking about the majority of my fundraising. Of course, I skipped the section where I'll be talking about child illiteracy as a significant problem in India, so I imagine that part will add at least one, if not two or more, pages to the total count. I'm also going to be incorporating my updates more as they become more relevant later on (I won't be including the ones where I just review books, but instead ones where I thank donors and copy/paste some stories of the kids I helped).

I'm hoping I'll get to work on my paper more over the weekend to make up for my upcoming absence on Tuesday. My goal of having the first draft of it done over spring break still stands. After that, revising and editing won't really be that bad.

Making good progress...

I spent much of today's class period working on my thesis paper. I wasn't sure if it was supposed to be double-spaced or not, but I asked and found out that it is typically double-spaced, but doesn't have to be. So what I'll do is decide at the end whether or not to double-space mine, depending on how much stuff I have in my paper and how many pages that ends up being.

I've made some good progress so far! I checked my page count with double-spacing and it's at 6 pages right now. I've still only begun, really. I've finished my introduction, but I skipped over the "research paper" section where I talk about child illiteracy and why it's such a big problem in India; I'll come back and probably do that section last. Right now I'm in the mid-early stages of the Readathon itself; I still have to get to the heart of the paper, which is where the majority of my fundraising occurred. And on top of that, I still need to write a bit on my Readathon Coordinator experience and what my role was and the final outcomes of both my individual and my team fundraising. The very end of the paper is also going to be pretty sizeable, since I'll need to talk about the Readathon wrap-up and reflect on how my experience volunteering with Pratham as a whole has influenced me. With all of this, I'm pretty sure I'll make it to 25 pages without too much difficulty. I might leave my paper double-spaced after all, but we'll see.

I think, if possible, I'd like to include updates every now and then in my paper - they'll be indented extra, as well as italicized to differentiate them from the rest of the paper - to add more "authenticity" to the narrative. Besides, those updates include a lot of what I'll be talking about anyway, except they'll be more realistic because they were written "in the moment," whereas this paper is being written in retrospect, in a way. So we'll see. I'd also like to include a couple of the stories of the children I helped with my fundraising, but I don't know if I'll have enough room. That would be nice, though - to add in a few anecdotes of the children and how the money I've raised has gone to fund their education.

Thesis paper fun times

So today in thesis I got to actually start my paper. Today was actually a relatively productive day; I just got to sit there and type away for a good chunk of the period, which was really nice. I'm determined to make sure that the next few weeks of thesis turn out to be the same because it would be awesome if I could get this paper done in class just by working on it for 1.5 hours non-stop every A day.

Today I typed up most of my introduction, starting with the anecdote and slowly making my way to the part where I really introduce Pratham for the first time into the narrative. I have just about two full pages so far (not double spaced), which is not bad at all! Considering I haven't even gotten to the most important parts of my paper, though, I'm thinking I'll have to spend a lot of time after I finish this paper cutting stuff out to meet the 25 page limit! I also really hope this paper doesn't have to be double spaced (I need to check on that), because if it does, there's no way I can fit everything I want into the paper and still keep it to 25 pages. We'll see how it goes over the next few class periods; as I go, I'll probably have a better idea of how exactly I'll make the whole thing work.

Starting my research paper

Now that I've had the conversation with Vineeta Aunty about changing my thesis product, I've been able to finally start my paper! I had to email everyone in Pratham, of course, to tell them about the cancellation of the DCT event, as well as the director of the DCT with whom we were attempting to negotiate things. But now that that's done, I can finally move on and get started on my thesis product on my own. I really should have thought of this paper idea a while ago - if I had, I probably would have it almost (if not completely) done already. Ah well.

Today I created my outline for the paper. So far, I have 8 distinct sections: I'm going to start out with an anecdote about visiting India and seeing the poor children on the streets, and how that was my primary motivating factor to volunteer with Pratham in the first place. Then I'm going to transition into more of a research paper-type deal by discussing the problem of child illiteracy in India. After that, I'll be able to start my true personal account of what happened during the months of the Readathon, from June to October. I've decided that I'm probably going to incorporate my actual updates from my webpage into the paper as well, since that will help me tell my story better. Based on this outline, it seems like I have a lot to write about - hopefully this means I'll be able to write 25 pages without too much difficulty!

And... yet another product change!

This past weekend, I spent time reflecting on my thesis project and the DCT Pratham fundraiser. I realized that I was overextending myself and it was too big to be successfully organized in time for my thesis deadlines. When I thought back to all our earlier conversations, I realized that I had essentially been letting my mentor make the major decisions of how many tickets to sell and that she was the one suggesting that I do all these other things like the door prizes/raffle, finding a business to sponsor the reception, etc. I really hadn't thought about how much of a time commitment this was going to be, and once I did, I realized that it simply wasn't feasible. And I stopped to think about how many other things I had going on this and next month - UIL competitions, scholarship/financial aid applications, etc. - and I realized that thinking I'd be able to organize an entire fundraiser on top of all of that was rather ridiculous on my part.

The other main problem was with ticket selling - we had 125 tickets to sell, and I didn't hear back from the Pratham Kids Club at all (or anyone else on the Pratham mailing list, for that matter), so I was really nervous about whether we would be able to sell all of them in time. This fundraiser could really only come together with a group effort and I simply didn't feel comfortable continuing with this project without the support. Add that to the fact that there was minimal interest in the event itself - not many of the people I heard from said that they would be available on that date, so I really would have a hard time selling all those tickets. And the other thing is, if we decreased the number of tickets to make the event smaller and more manageable - to say, 50 tickets - we would be giving up a lot of opportunity to raise more money. I calculated that with 50 tickets, we'd only be raising a net total of $500, which in all honesty is next to nothing. The expenses of organizing this event (paying for tickets, room rental, food/drinks at the reception) would far outweigh the amount of money we could possibly raise.

Moreover, the actual buying the tickets from the DCT ended up being another obstacle to the whole event; when my parents found out that we would have to pay in advance to get the tickets, they did not feel comfortable allowing me to continue with the project. The paying-in-advance thing is pretty sketchy, to be honest, because what if I don't sell all the tickets? I'll be paying money out of my own pocket to support this fundraising event, and that is not what a fundraiser is about. That's not what it's meant to be.
So as a whole, this DCT event just wasn't working out. I spent much of today's thesis period writing these reasons out in a document and calling my mentor to explain all of this and discuss our next steps.

Like I told her during our phone conversation today, I came up with an alternative idea almost immediately, something that would be far more convenient for my thesis project - a 25 page paper explaining the problem of child illiteracy in India and the need for child education initiatives, and relating a more personal account of my own experiences working with Pratham through the summer and into the school year as part of the Readathon effort. This works way better for me, because I can write this paper on my own time; the responsibility is all on me, and there are no extraneous factors that I have to worry about to ensure they don't get in the way of me completing my thesis in time. In fact, I already have a few ideas in mind for what I want to include in the paper and how I want to go about structuring it, so over the next few class periods I'm going to sketch out the entire outline and make sure that I have everything I need - that way, writing the actual paper will be much easier.

Continuing the conversation

I'm still in touch with Trish Long, the director of the DCT, to figure out the final logistics of the whole ticketing and payment deal before I can actually get any tickets to sell. Since we weren't able to negotiate the pricing at all, Trish did suggest that we try some door prizes or a raffle to help raise the rest of the money. After talking to Vineeta Aunty, I also decided that looking for a business to sponsor the event for around $500-700 to provide the money for the room rental, snacks, drinks, etc. would be a good idea. I know that the last time something like this was done, there was an adult in Pratham (she's actually one of my judges) whose business sponsored it, so if we could get someone like that this time too, that would be perfect.

I also sent out an email to the circle of Pratham leaders/administrators to let them know about my thesis and that this event will be happening in the near future. I'm hoping to hear back about possible sponsors and agreement from the Pratham Kids Club that they'll be willing to help spread the word about and sell tickets.

Vineeta Aunty and I have been having a conversation for the last day or two about how exactly to go about paying for these tickets. The DCT wants us to pay up front, but that won't really work because it's a total of almost $2000, and that's too much to put on any one credit card all at once. What she's suggesting is that I ask for a payment plan where I can pay for them in installments - once every week or two. But what I'm not sure about is why I should be the one paying - if Pratham is the one going to benefit, they should also be the ones paying. It's not fair that I shell out almost $2000 and don't ever get it back (and that makes no sense because Pratham is the one that should deal with all the financial matters in the first place). We're still discussing it because we have to sort this out before I can email Trish back with the official payment idea. Hopefully we'll have that done by this weekend.

A few minor-ish setbacks

So Vineeta Aunty and I had a conversation, and basically what she told me is that the DCT only has 135 tickets remaining; they've already sold all the rest (the Section A tickets are completely gone). I was not anticipating this at all, to be honest; I knew Charlotte's Web would be a really popular play, but I didn't know it was so popular that people would be willing to reserve tickets two months in advance. This essentially means we won't get to raise as much money as we had initially anticipated because we will have fewer tickets to sell.

The other problem is that the DCT is giving us the $15 group rate per ticket, which is also not much of a discount. The typical rate ranges from $17-19, so they're essentially only giving us $2-4 dollars off. In addition, they're requiring that we pay $100 for a room rental, which makes it all worse because that's an additional expenditure that will take away from the total amount of money I raise. Based on my calculations, at this point, it seems like I'll only be able to raise between $1000-1500 (which isn't a small sum, but it's less than I was hoping).

What we've decided to do is buy whatever tickets are remaining (essentially making the play completely sold out, which I guess works in our favor) and sell them at the same rate we were expecting to sell them at, which is $25 (because $25 is how much is required to educate one child through Pratham for one year in India). I've been in an email exchange with Trish Long, the director of the DCT, to negotiate the pricing and ask if she can give us a better discount by explaining the reasons; she just emailed me back and said that she can't do anything else about the pricing because Charlotte's Web is such a popular play, which means there's very little flexibility. She suggested Mariachi Girl and another play, but again, neither of those will work because of the age demographic of our potential buyers/audience members and the coordination of times/dates with my final thesis presentation. She also said that $100 is already a discount from the typical $200 rate for the room rental, so there's no negotiating on that front either. She is being extremely kind and willing to help do whatever she can for this event, though, and I appreciate that.

I really hope we can work all this out in time, because we have to pay for and receive these tickets by the end of February in order to have enough time to sell them and get the word out. My mentor keeps reassuring me that we won't have any problem selling all 125 tickets and that the event will be a success no matter what, but I don't know at this point. We'll just see how it all goes.

Miscellaneous stuff taken care of

I'm still waiting for the DCT to get back to me and my mentor about my fundraising event idea, so I'm attempting to get as much done as possible in the interim. I emailed my judges about my final presentation date (as of now) and the information they would need to better understand their role in my thesis project. I'm going to probably contact my mentor tonight to ask about the possibility of me giving my presentation at the event itself. I'm not sure exactly how - or even if - that would work, just because of time/space constraints and the audience who will be attending, but if I can, I think I probably will. That way, I can do it all on one day and just get it done without having to miss class to do it.

I also went back to search for that one Pratham flier I found, because I'm going to use that one as the template for our fliers for this event. I created a rough draft of it in Word, and I'm going to keep that until we get more details and actually buy the tickets themselves.

Also, I just remembered: during our conversation two days ago, my mentor and I also discussed the possibility of having some small businesses come and sponsor this event, possibly by supplying snacks for the post-play reception, and in turn we could help advertise their business on fliers that we hand out to help spread the word about the event and about Pratham. My mentor suggested two people involved with Pratham (both of whom I personally met during some Readathon get-togethers over the summer) who could probably sponsor the event; one runs a law firm and the other owns his own medical clinic (private practice, I believe). Both of these are great possibilities, and my mentor told me that we could easily get one of them to sponsor our event. It's really great having this entire Pratham network, because it's making a lot of things in my thesis much easier! I'm really very thankful for it.

Progress has been made with the DCT idea

I had a 45 minute conversation with my mentor today to figure out exactly how to go about this idea. She suggested that instead of Mariachi Girl, we go with Charlotte's Web for the DCT play itself because our audience is mostly younger kids who would probably appreciate Charlotte's Web more than Mariachi Girl. I agreed with her, but said that we would have to make sure there were still final presentation slots available after that event date (which is April 27th). According to the rough schedule Mr. Correa emailed us two weeks ago, the last slot available is on May 2nd, so it seems like Charlotte's Web should work just fine. I didn't really like the idea of pushing the event till the last minute like that, but it seems like there's not really any other go. Mariachi Girl is recommended for children ages 8 and up, and we have a lot of kids that are younger than that; Charlotte's Web would be better, since it's for children ages 5 and up.

My mentor also told me that she knows the director of the DCT personally, and that they had worked with her in the past to coordinate events like this, so that is a big plus for me! At least that way, this idea I'm pitching to her will have some credibility and it'll have a much higher likelihood of being approved with my mentor backing it up.

We also discussed in brief the matter of selling tickets - we plan to buy in bulk 200 tickets and sell them each for $25, giving the DCT $10 of the proceeds for each ticket sold. Therefore, our estimated fundraising total from this event is $3000. We'll see if that actually happens, though; at this point, the idea is still in its early stages, and I'm just a teensy bit anxious about it, even though the Pratham network is really quite big and my mentor assured me that selling 200 tickets would be no problem.

We'll see how it goes. My mentor asked me to type her an email explaining all of the stuff we discussed so that she could forward it to the DCT's director to get it approved. We think that we'll hear back from DCT by the end of this weekend, and if we do, I'm hoping we can order our tickets by the end of next week. Then, once we get them, we'll have almost 2 months to get the word out and sell them all. 

Sketching out the Dallas Children's Theater idea~

I've made progress on my thesis! Since I've effectively decided to abandon the Spring Carnival idea, I've been trying to find out more about the Dallas Children's Theater to see exactly what a Pratham event would entail there. At first, I was considering the Beauty and the Beast show, but as it turns out, when I called them, they told me that it was a puppet show, which meant it would be in their Studio Theater, which seats just 150 people. That won't work for our Pratham event, because it's not big enough. So instead, we're probably going to go with Mariachi Girl, which is a regular show held in the Baker Theater, which seats 400 people.

The other thing that's nice about this idea is that the DCT has plenty of open spaces available to rent for the post-show reception. One of the rooms, the Gables Room, has enough room for 150 people. It seems like the best fit for the reception, considering that all the rest of the rooms are either small classrooms or the theater spaces themselves, and obviously neither of those types would really work.

The event itself is meant to be a just a short reception for Pratham ticket buyers, probably with snacks and a short presentation about the organization. Since I'm doing this as part of my thesis project, I might also make a short presentation to talk about my experience with the Readathon and how that culminated in this, but we'll see if that happens. Overall, the reception should only be about an hour or so. The show itself is between 1 hour to 1 hour and 45 minutes (I'm not sure the exact length yet, but I can call and find out; this is just the range given in their FAQ for all their shows), so the event as a whole shouldn't be that long. The showtimes that are on Saturdays (this show runs for about a week or two in mid-March) are either at 1:30 pm or 4:30 pm, which I think are pretty ideal times. Hopefully in the coming weeks we'll decide on an actual showtime so that we can buy the tickets soon and start selling them to raise money.

Working out new thesis product idea

So like I said before, I'm having to come up with a new thesis product because of the Kids Club not getting their act together for me to organize and host the Spring Carnival in time... The idea we have at this point is that Dallas Children's Theater production/Pratham reception. I've been emailing back and forth with my mentor and one of my judges to coordinate a time where we can discuss this further on a conference call. She says that since they've done an event similar to this in the past, it shouldn't be too hard to put together... But we'll see what happens.

In other news, I got a response from the last of the people I emailed to be my judges! Both agreed to do it, but I only need one of them... So I'm going to email them both again and ask which of them wants to do it. I mean, I guess both of them could technically attend, and I could let one of them be a judge and the other just be there to watch the presentation, but I think I'll email them at the same time and see what they want to do.

I also requested a transcript today for a scholarship app and worked on getting a few of my other materials ready for that.

Judge Confirmations

Today, I filled out the thesis judges scheduling report. I have the two confirmed judges already, and I've emailed two more people in hopes that at least one of them will be available that day in April to come to TAG and view my presentation. Neither of them has gotten back to me yet, though, and I made that note on the report.

Afterwards, I went through all my interview emails again and prepared for the three upcoming interviews I have this weekend. I'm still waiting on a response from two of them, though, so I don't know exactly at what time those interviews will be held. If they don't respond by tonight, I'll send each of them a short reminder email. They should get back to me, considering that the date in question is in two days...

I've also scheduled a conference call with my mentor and one of my judges for Sunday evening; on that call, we're going to talk about my thesis product and brainstorm alternate ideas. My mentor emailed me another suggestion that I really like - in fact, I like it better than the Spring Carnival idea. She suggested that we have a small-scale fundraiser by selling tickets to one of the Dallas Children's Theater's shows, and hosting a short Pratham reception afterwards. Apparently the DCT has worked with Pratham in the past with these and other types of events (her daughter actually had her arangetram there), so like with the Carnival, the infrastructure to help me organize the event would already be in place. And this DCT event can be organized independently of the Kids Club, which would really help me get started with it already instead of having to wait until they get their stuff together and hold their first meeting (which honestly may not even happen until March). Hopefully our discussion this weekend will give me a better idea of exactly how we could go about organizing this event.

Presentations, Day 4 (sort of)

Today, I listened to one of my classmates give his mid-term thesis presentation. Afterwards, I checked my email for college interview updates and emailed my mentor and the people who I have confirmed as judges. So far, I have two people who have said they would be glad to serve as judge for my final thesis presentation. I'll email the last one in the next day or two, and hopefully I'll hear back from that person soon so that I can schedule my final presentation date and get back to all three of them regarding that.

I also just found out today that the Pratham Kids Club may not organize a meeting in time for the Spring Carnival to be held (because apparently I can't organize it independently, it has to be done in conjunction with the Kids Club) this year. So, we're on a search for a new product idea! Vineeta has suggested we have a conference call this weekend to discuss possible ideas. I know it's going to still be an event, whatever we come up with, and she actually suggested something in an email to me today. It seems like a pretty good idea, and it will probably work better since it can be done independently of the Kids Club. Hopefully it'll work out, but this weekend we'll hear from some other Pratham administrators to get their input and suggestions.

Presentations, Day 3

Today, I watched my classmates give their thesis presentations. With the little time we had left afterwards, I checked my email for updates on the alumni interview invitations I received. I plan to email my prospective Pratham judges tonight.

Presentations, Day 2

Today was the second day of thesis presentations. I watched four of my classmates present on the work they did over the past few months.

I also received emails for several alumni interviews, so I responded to those as well. I also drafted the email that I plan to send to the people I have in mind to be my judges.

Presentations!

Today in thesis, I gave my presentation. I rehearsed my speech last night several times to check my time limit and I was at 9.5 minutes every time, so hopefully that meant I didn't go over 10 minutes today. Personally, I think my presentation went pretty well; I definitely wasn't as nervous as I was last time, and I kept the stuttering and interruptions to a minimum (well, I tried to anyway. My mouth was incredibly dry the whole time, though, and that forced me to stop a few times). My PowerPoint ended up being 13 slides, so I decided not to display my webpage again. I thought that would be cutting it too close, anyway.

After today's presentations, we also discussed the judge search. I think I'm pretty lucky on that front: because I have so many contacts within the Pratham organization, I essentially already have my prospective judges. I just need to contact them soon and hopefully at least one will get back to me by next Friday.

I also updated my college sheet.

Happy New Year!

I'm going to miss winter break. It was really nice having time off from school to work on college apps (seriously, why don't they have something where seniors can just take 3 months off from school to get college app stuff out of the way? Like "apps leave" or something?).

It's also pretty nice to be back though. Now that college app stuff is done, I can concentrate on school stuff.

In thesis today, I reviewed the materials I had for my presentation on the 9th. My PowerPoint presentation has 12 slides right now; I'm still adding stuff here and there, but for the most part it's fleshed out. I also spent the class period typing out my entire speech - it helped me start memorizing what I'm going to actually say when I'm up there.

I think I have enough material for an 8 minute presentation, but I'm not sure. I'm going to time myself tonight to check again and if it's not, I'll find some more information. I might spend a bit more time elaborating on the problem that is child illiteracy.