Week 9: Creating My Final Product

Welcome back to my blog. We are officially in the final stretch of the Senior Project. Before I update you on my progress this week, I would like to briefly recap what I accomplished last week. In week 8, I closed my survey and memory recall assessments, receiving 62 and 40 responses, respectively. I want to thank everyone who participated in my studies. I then began analyzing my results and drew preliminary conclusions. This week, I finalized my results and completed a full draft of my final research paper. 

To start, I revisited my introduction and literature review. Upon further inspection, I realized a lot of the content was either unnecessary, repetitive, or didn’t relate to my senior project. So, I began revising and trimming down these sections. Specifically, I removed content surrounding brain regions and stages of sleep, as my project focuses more on the real-world implications rather than the biological implications. I also refined my research to focus on 1) how sleep deprivation affects memory consolidation and academic recall, 2) whether STEM recall is more vulnerable to sleep deprivation than humanities recall, and 3) whether weekend recovery sleep influences academic memory performance.

Next, I rewrote my combined methods and findings section. For both the survey and memory recall assessment, I explained in detail every step I took. I will list some of my key findings below:

-Sleep deprivation was associated with increased fatigue and lower overall academic performance. 

-Respondents more frequently identified STEM subjects as being more affected by sleep deprivation than humanities subjects. 

-Motivation and subject preference were identified as important confounding variables influencing academic recall.

-Weekend recovery sleep showed a slight positive relationship with higher grades. 

-The relationship between sleep duration and humanities test performance was significantly weaker than for STEM performance. 

Finally, I will briefly summarize the implications and significance of my results. Most significantly, educational systems should reconsider how school schedules align with adolescent circadian rhythms. Specifically, schools should consider scheduling cognitively demanding STEM courses, exams, and assessments later in the day. Furthermore, weekend recovery sleep may partially improve cognitive functioning and academic performance. 

In the final week of this senior project, I will design my final presentation and complete the final version of my research paper, following faculty advisor review. I hope to present my project soon. See you next week!