The Second Step: Moving Forward

For the past three weeks we have been making a lot of progress on our project. We researched our topic and created a table with all the information we found. We talked about the do’s and don’t’s when it comes to dealing with stress and chose a few techniques that we thought would be interesting to test. We then made a survey with the options that we chose and asked people which methods they thought would help the most. They chose five out of the eleven methods that we listed. When we checked the results, we saw that the top five responses were exercising, not procrastinating, being organized, writing everything down, and communicating. Because these were the most popular responses, we are going to test these methods on the individuals participating in the experiment. 

While working on this project, we have not only learned how to organize our data so that it is easier for others to analyze, but also gained a better understanding of the techniques we want to use in our experiment. Right now, we are testing out the method of exercising for thirty minutes daily to see if it actually helps manage stress better. Kaitlyn is doing gymnastics, Veda is attending badminton, Esha is playing squash, Akshat is playing soccer, and last but not least, Rachel is playing volleyball. 

Although we did not have any setbacks, a minor issue we encountered was finding people with both busy and laid back schedules. To handle this, we asked a couple of our friends to tell us what activities they participate in and how many hours of free time on average they have during the day. With this, we can find out how busy a person's day is. Throughout the past week, we have gotten a deeper understanding on the methods we are planning to use. 

Looking forward, we are going to give our experimenters new ways to deal with stress every other week and record their results. Everyday they will use that specific technique and answer a survey to rate how well the method they used actually worked. We can apply what we have learned by using it when we see stressed kids or adults. We could simply walk up to them, tell them a helpful method about dealing with stress, and give them advice that we learned from our research.

The First Step: Researching Ideas

Our topic for 20 time surrounds the idea of coping with stress. Over the past two weeks we have been researching some methods that could be possible candidates for our experiment. From our research, we have gained knowledge on the do’s and don’t’s when it comes to dealing with stress and some common signs/symptoms of people that are stressed out. We created a chart listing common techniques that are said to work  The definition of stress is the tension added into your life by demanding circumstances. Throughout the two weeks we have learned some of the smallest changes can create a huge difference in our lifestyles. A couple of setbacks were finding people to try out the methods we had researched on. Most of them have busy schedules, therefore they were not willing to participate in this experiment. We fixed this problem by asking people with a less intense schedule to take the time to try and become less stressed. For the next two weeks we will start to apply these techniques and analyze how the group of students felt throughout the process. What we have learned can impact our community by relieving stress caused by anything from a busy week to an intense work day. Many high school students these days have a lot on their plates and the information gathered from this project could really be helpful in many ways. These research methods can help change the way adults and students so that they can lead their life in a happier direction.

Methods for Dealing with Stress

20 Time is a project made for students to take 20% of their class time to expand their knowledge on a subject that interests them. Students have a chance to be passionate about what they are learning about. This allows them to enjoy class more and therefore learn more. The essential question that we asked was which techniques can help cope with stress the most and which tips help the least or maybe not at all. We, as students in Mr.Orre’s Biology Class, have decided to conduct an experiment to show which ideas help deal with stress the most. We would have a group of students use a method to help deal with stress that we have given them. One week they would try one technique, and the week following that they would not use any methods and just go on with their week as they normally would. They would then rate on a scale of one to ten how well the technique worked. The next week they would try a new method, and the cycle continues. At the very end, they would make a list ordering all the techniques from what they thought worked best to the ones that worked least. We chose this topic because we know high school students can be extremely stressed due to the pressure of getting good grades, balancing extracurricular activities, and maintaining a social life. This result of this project would show which tips help deal with stress the most and which tips help deal with stress the least. One of our goals is for us to use some of these tips all throughout life when we feel that we are extremely stressed or just feeling anxious in general. Another goal for this project is to encourage others to use these tips in their everyday life and share them with other people so that everyone will be better educated when it comes to stress and how to cope with it. We will measure our progress by checking in every week with our experimental group and taking polls of which tip helped them the most and least. Our plan moving forward is to create an experimental group of about five people, research techniques to share with our group, and record/analyze our data that we gather.