It’s been awhile since my last journal entry from July, and I still don’t have a solid idea on what my topic will be for EMC 2018-19. Since our August roundtable kicks off tomorrow, I won’t have an SDA done in time but I guess that should be fine. Instead, I plan on bringing more than one topic to discuss.
In my last journal entry, I briefly touched upon the idea of a topic that would lie in the realm of Biology. To narrow it down slightly — albeit, relatively little — I decided that I would like to research something along the lines of “Biology that helps mankind.” What I mean by this categorization is indeed very broad. If I had to attach a label, I guess it would be closest to Biotechnology/engineering or Biochemistry. Examples of what I originally envisioned under this topic includes growing organs, creating new drugs/medicines, or even studying in-depth various pathogens that may or may not have a cure and how they specifically affect us humans. Maybe this would even branch off in Virology, who knows. As you can see, I’m still very unsure.
Although more unlikely, another topic that I brainstormed might be along the lines of Journalism and possibly its effects on influencing the population? I thought about this idea because I’ve noticed my slowly growing interest in Journalism during the past year or so. I would really like to find out if this interest is more in the “hobby” sense or something that I would like to do as a career. I believe it would be beneficial to distinguish between the two. I’m currently part of the GHS Journal club (school newspaper) but maybe I could take it even further and get some more exposure in EMC. On top of that, I’ve recently found the New York Times to be quite a cool establishment so I guess it would be nice to find more about their operations also.
Lastly, one final potential topic— and just as unlikely as the previous one — would involve something along the lines of Philosophy, specific schools of thought, or maybe why human thinking on certain subjects leans towards a certain way. The reason why I have this idea was because of a conversation I had with my father the other day. The specifics slip my mind, but it definitely involved a relationship between human thinking and biology. I think the main topic of this conversation was whether the way a human thinks about various things is ingrained or learned at a young age. The reason why it could be ingrained is because if ancient neanderthals didn’t follow certain unwritten “social laws,” they would die in the savage wilderness — hence, the occurrence of Natural Selection. At the time, this idea was quite intriguing so maybe I could follow it up in EMC. Even while writing this section, this idea is becoming more and more appealing to me so who knows, it might very well end up being my topic.
I guess that wraps up everything I wanted to discuss from my inner thoughts this past month. On a separate and completely unrelated note, I cannot believe school starts in less than two weeks. Time really does fly, I guess.