Choosing a Topic – Capstone #1

Way back in 3rd grade, I learned about Capstone, since my brother was in 5th grade at the time. I tried to think about it, but couldn’t come up with a good idea. Somewhere around the middle of 5th grade, I decided I thought I wanted to do my topic on the Bermuda Triangle, but when I learned that each student has to do a site visit, I decided maybe the Bermuda Triangle wasn’t the right topic.

My mom and I discussed it, and pretty quickly, I decided I wanted to do something related to the brain, like how memory works.

But after doing some research, I changed my mind (again). I was searching up something about the brain, and an article showed up. It was something about how drugs affect the brain.

I thought it was very interesting, so I did more research on it, and eventually I liked it better than my other topic on how memory works, so I crossed my other topic off my list.

Soon, however, I realized I needed to narrow my topic down. Did I want to do marijuana’s affects on the brain and compare the affects of different ages? Or did I want to talk about alcohol’s affects of different ages? Or maybe compare both: Does marijuana have worse effects on the brain, or does alcohol?

I was having a really hard time deciding, and while I was, I crashed into yet another topic: How does video games affect the brain? It really didn’t help.

I felt surrounded by different topics, it took me a long time to decide which topic to pick. I picked my topic on marijuana vs. alcohol: which one is worse for the brain? I finally decided this because at the middle school there was going to be an exhibit about how drugs affect the brain, so if I went, it could really help me learn more about my topic.