Week 2 - Introduction

Hello and welcome to my blog, Sarah's KI Thesis Journal. While it's not a clever title, I feel it's the best way to encapsulate what I'll be writing about this term. I'm in my fourth year of Honours Knowledge Integration at UW, and the final requirement of this program is a yearlong Senior Thesis Project. The research project can be based in any discipline, or (oftentimes) a combination of more than one. While that may sound daunting, having such an open-ended project -- and it certainly does feel that way, as I describe below -- it allows us, as students in KI with various areas of interest, to each pursue a topic that we are truly passionate about. This blog for ENGL 108D, therefore, will document my process through my research project. It will also provide me with another venue to think through my thoughts related to this thesis and perhaps come up with new ideas as a result. It's really a win-win!

At this point in the game, the second week of classes is wrapping up, and while I do have a general idea of what kind of issue I'd like to investigate, I'm struggling with narrowing down the sort of approach I'd take. My current "topic" (term here used loosely) is tackling the communication of mental health advice to the general undergraduate student population, in order to promote self-help and mental well-being. I've discovered that I am passionate about issues surrounding mental health and the role of the university in preventing its students from struggling. Where I'm stuck, currently, is how I will more specifically look at this issue and solve it. I have considered researching from a health communication view, a social psychological view (specifically attitudes and behaviour), and a design thinking view (a method of complex problem-solving I learned in my first year of KI). I've considered doing a combination of all three. The biggest consequence of being uncertain of my disciplinary approach, however, is that I have very little idea whom to contact to potentially become a supervisor. Thus, my aim for this coming week is to tighten up my approach and send out some more emails to faculty members.