Capstone is still going well. I have done my interview (see Capstone #3). Next, I am going on my site visit. For my site visit, I am going the American Museum of Natural History’s exhibit Inside You. At first I wanted to go to a specialized exhibit on vaccines, but my mom and I couldn’t find any that were still open (or that weren’t in California!) So, we went with this instead. I think we are going to go on Saturday, June 1st. I can’t wait!

My site visit went really well! What happened was I went into the exhibit. There were a lot of people there, as it is open to everyone. I was amazed by the different diagrams and pictures. Even though I have been there before, when I was looking at the exhibit through fresh eyes, I was surprised at how much information there actually was. My mom took picture of the diagrams for me to review later. It was really fun!

I learned so much from this! Instead of learning about vaccine, I learned about the immune system and about microbes and that helped me understand the science behind vaccines better. It was really cool to look at this exhibit with fresh eyes and to learn so much from it!

My Capstone is going well. I have gathered lots of research and am looking forward to gathering more. Meanwhile, I am working on setting up my interview. On Thursday, I talked to my mom about my interview and site visit (see Capstone # 4 when published). I am going to interview Dr. Herbert A. Newman, MD. I knew right away that he would be the best person possible (plus, I already know him). I am going to visit him in his office on Tuesday, May 21. My interview questions are:

Why did you become a pediatrician?

What advice would you give to a new parent about their decision to vaccinate their child?

What is your opinion on vaccines? Why?

Why do some people view vaccines as dangerous?

Have there been certain years where more people refuse to vaccinate their children? If so, what were some of those years and reasons?

Are you ever concerned about a certain vaccine? Why or why not?

Where are vaccines made? Are they all made in the same place?

What are the laws surrounding vaccines? Do you support these laws? Why or why not?

Is there anything else I should know, concerning my topic, that I don’t already?

I am so excited to conduct the interview!

I did my interview! What happened was: I went into my interviewee’s office. I asked him if it was okay for me to record the interview. He said yes, and I asked him my interview questions (see above). Everything went pretty smoothly except the phone rang in the middle of the interview, so we had to stop. It was a really good interview!

Overall I learned so much that I don’t already know about my topic and added on to things I do know. I also learned a lot about being an interviewer such as speaking clearly and slowly and to make sure that your interviewee understands the question. Overall I learned a lot from my interview and am now super excited for my site visit! (see Capstone #4 when published)

My grade has started a project called Capstone. First we had to pick our topic. I chose medicine. I chose medicine because I am really passionate about it and really want to become a doctor when I grow up. Medicine is a really big topic and I had to narrow it down to make it a bit more reasonable.

The next step was to come up with a main inquiry question. My teacher told us to do a wheel to narrow our topics down. Then we had to choose one of the different parts of our topic to focus on, based on our questions for each category. For example, I decided to focus on the study of medicine. Then we chose the question that was the best in that category and used it as a base for our main inquiry question.

My first iteration of a main inquiry question was “How has the study of medicine advanced over the years, but then I realized that that question was going to stress me out. So, I narrowed it further.

My 2nd iteration of a main inquiry question was: “How is advancing medicine affecting children’s medical care”. Then I realized that that question would still drive me crazy. So, this time I really narrowed it down. I thought that maybe I could narrow it down to something like vaccines. And I did just that.

My 3rd iteration question was: “Why are vaccines considered dangerous?”. But that sounded too much like I already had an opinion. So, I tweaked my question a bit. In the end, my main inquiry question was this: “Vaccines: Are they safe or dangerous?” See the difference?

Then I had to come up with 5 sub-questions. My sub questions are: “What are the pros of vaccines?”, “What are the cons of vaccines?”, “How is mis-info affecting people’s decisions over vaccines?”, “What are the laws relating to vaccines?” and “What is the process the FDA goes through to say that a certain drug is safe?”

Overall, I am so excited to continue working on my Capstone and am excited to begin the actual research!