Diving into a senior project!
I have really enjoyed my courseload this winter, as I'm taking classes from the Theatre department, Music department, and Quantitative Social Science (QSS) department. While I could dedicate an entire blog post to each of these classes, I thought I would share about my QSS Major Project. This class is required for all majors (which I am!), and is meant to be a culminating experience for our academic experience. Going into this class, I wasn't sure what to expect. Now that I'm almost done with the term, however, I couldn't have enjoyed this class more!
For the Major Project, every student is expected to produce a research paper on a topic of their choice. I love the freedom given for us to choose our topic, as it allows each student to dive into something their interested in. In my class, I've seen papers about sports, sex, finance, and more! It's really cool to see what everyone is interested in, and to learn about these various areas of study. Personally, I chose the topic of remote work and local economies. As someone who is about to enter the workforce after graduation, I'm really interested in the implications of emerging remote work models! I found some great data from the U.S. Census Bureau on remote work and local economies, and so I decided to run with this topic for the term.
We not only get a lot of freedom in choosing our topic, but the project itself is very student-led. While the professor is there to help solve problems and guide students through the process, we are expected to gather the data, create regression models, and write the paper by ourselves. While I've struggled with some aspects of the paper (mainly coding), it's been refreshing to be given so much independence. Although I don't have results yet, I'm excited to see what I find! For now, enjoy the graph above of how different states measure with remote work. Can you guess which area has the highest measure of remote workers? (It's D.C.!)
While my QSS Major Project class has been wonderful, I'm not even sure if it's my favorite class. In my theatre class, we are learning about how theatre can shape Latin American culture in the context of colonialism. It's a small class, and I've enjoyed intimate discussions with my classmates. In my music class, we are listening to different types of music from across different genres and time periods. I've really enjoyed studying for our listening tests, where the professor plays a song and we answer with the name of the musical piece! Overall, through my courseload this term, I get to explore all the different sides of myself and practice different skills, ranging from artistic, analytical, to theoretical!