Rethinking How We Do Senior Projects

When the discussion of campus closing became a reality in March, Senior Projects Advisor Dave Parsons was already at work thinking about plan B with this year's Senior Projects.

The capstone assignment is a requirement for all Overlake Seniors, and although the assignment is based on an off-campus experience, the confines of a stay-at-home order make changes necessary to many students. "Some of the students had extremely exciting projects that can no longer be done and this was very disappointing for them. Even if a student had to abandon exciting plans for a project, there is still a wealth of experiential learning that can take place at home," explains Parsons. "New skills, knowledge and experiences will add to growth and future development."

He estimates that about forty percent of the students have had to revise their original ideas because of travel restrictions. In the past, some students have travelled around the world for their Senior Project. Obviously, those who planned to journey far from campus will need to revaluate plans. Kara C. spent weeks preparing for her project which was to explore South Korea. Coronavirus changed that. "I was going to explore my Korean identity, heritage, and culture through visiting cultural sites, trying new food, taking a cooking class, and interacting with the local people," says Kara. "Since much of my project was largely based around being in Korea and experiencing the culture there, I decided to change my project and not try to modify it. My new plan for Senior Projects is to cook dinner for my family every night since my original project was centered around food and cooking."

For Pravir D. his passion for auto racing and working with friends led to the idea of joining the budget car racing series The 24-hours of Lemons. Covid-19 put the brakes on that idea. "For this competition, each team is allocated only $500 to spend on buying a car and making performance related upgrades. The race is held in Thunderhill Raceway in California, so the four of us would drive over there on the last weekend of our projects," explains Pravir. "We made some headway with this project buying a car, a mentor and some parts, but the situation stopped our project." Now he's scrambling to find an alternative project from home with a possible idea being how NASCAR is dealing with the cancellation of races. They went virtual. "I still want to get my hands dirty and build something. Maybe compete in a virtual race, but at this time I'm still figuring things out."

With the deadline to submit ideas extended until April 24th, many Seniors are just trying to figure out how they can execute their projects without leaving home. Aikas B. continues to prepare for his Senior Project on lucid dreaming which is when you’re conscious during a dream. "I'm planning on keeping a dream journal and experimenting with different methods of initiating lucid dreams to ultimately find which one works best. As you can imagine that's not the most involved project because most of it is me in bed asleep." Coronavirus has him trying to figure out logistics as he's got many experts who are also impacted by sheltering-in-place. "I wanted to be able to meet with all these researchers, including this Tibetan Buddhist monk who specialized in this dream yoga, but social distancing has made that all the more difficult to arrange something in person. Rest assured, I can always try to shoot an email or Skype message, so it's not the worst affliction."

Even with their challenges, the students will continue to have three weeks in May to prepare their presentations. The final hurdle will be completing their projects and presenting them to the Overlake community. This year, and hopefully only this year, the projects will go online. Students will each be allotted a fifteen minute window to describe their projects and answer any questions from observers. "In the end, the students must settle on projects that they are still very interested in doing. This remains a good opportunity to stretch their learning further and to spend the time on something of real value to them; something they have long wanted to do but never had the time for," explains Parsons. Going online means that anyone in the world with an internet connection will be able to take part in the presentations. We'll make sure to share a schedule when students make their presentations from June 2nd to June 4th.