BLOG POSTS

Blog Post one

My Process of finding my research topic has been a long and arduous one. I've gone through many multitudes of topics, pertaining to many different personal interests. I began initially with architecture as the core of my research. I looked at the architecture of places of worship, attempting to find gaps in research that I could focus on. Unfortunately I wasn't able to find any consistent gap to research.

I then switched to looking at concrete. Specifically self healing concrete. In this topic I found a gap, a question of weather or not one could feasibly produced biological self healing concrete and how efficient it would be. Unfortunately I ran into an obstacle. I was not permitted to use the school's incubator. The incubator would have been necessary in order to properly introduce the self healing bacteria (bacillus subtilis) into the concrete mixture. Therefore I was unable to engage in any research pertaining to that topic.

I then came across the idea of school lunch nutrition. Colorado had just passed two new free meal bills and I wandered how much this would influence the nutrition of the meals and if the meals would be able to live up to this "healthy" standard put forth by the state of colorado.

My primary source to inform the health content of these meals was the research "School meals, building blocks for healthy children,". This research shows medically the most optimal nutrition for growing children within each age range. In order to narrow it down further I chose just to look at K-5 nutrition, meaning I need only to look at elementary schools.

The schools I will be looking at primarily are those within the denver metro area. There are fifteen districts and many schools within each. But I will use a random number generator and select 2 schools from each district. From these schools I can look online for the nutritional information about each school and each lunch meal. I will number the schools 1 and 2 and each of the districts A-O. I will then take my data and plug each point into graphs (the data being protein content, vegetable/fruit content, and carb content) and compare the data across districts and compare all of that to the recommended data by the previous data that informs my research.

Blog Post two

"We are what we eat,". Scientists and nutrition experts have backed up this idea for years. What we put into our body heavily impacts what our bodies and minds can do or put out. This is especially true for developing children, who require all the nutrients they can get to help spur on their growth. This is exactly why Im looking into school meals. I've taken 2 schools from 10 districts from the biggest metro area in colorado to try and ascertain the quality of their meals. I have used a randomizer to create two meals per day over the course of 10 days in order to get an accurate representation of the level of nutrition at these schools.

As of now Ive only run into a couple issues in my data collection. One was the issue of getting objective data. To solve this issue I found a random number generator called Random Picker where I can choose a number range and generate as many random numbers as I want in order to ensure objectivity.

Through my data collection I now have compiled 1,980 individual data points and I will by the end have 3,600 individual points. With this data, the chance of error goes down significantly, and we will have an accurate representation of the current nutrition content of these public elementary schools.

So far I have observed promising results, with the vast majority of meals appearing to lie within the "nutritious" standard set by the research "School Meals, Building blocks for healthy kids," however, I have witnessed a good number of outliers as of yet. With some possible meals having as little as 250 calories, only half of what is suggested by the research. furthermore, some meals seem not to exhibit strong sources of protien, with one having only 6 grams in all. I am hoping that this does not remain the case for the rest of my data, but these outliers cause concern.

As of now, the vast majority of my data has been logged into a data collection notebook by hand, and once I have all the data collected and added up I will be able to transfer it into graphs and tables in order to display the differences or similarities between the standards and the existing systems.

Blog Post three

Through this research, I have learned a great deal not only about the current state of the Healthy School Meals for all program within the Denver Metro Area, but also about just how much work goes into each and every program passed in both Colorado and America. The meals in the denver metro area currently do not reach the levels they should be reaching for calories, which could cause detriment to the student's academic, physical, social, and emotional development. Despite great success providing adaquate levels of protein, the failure to provide caloric minimums despite going $50 million over budget is distirbing.

Luckily, the new propositions LL and MM will be in affect as of the 2026-2027 school year. If research within this field were to continue I would love to look at two areas in particular. I would want to look at school lunches before the healthy school meals for all program was enacted and look at them for the 2026-2027 school year in order to compare the quality and quantity of these meals. The future is hopeful, and the program has shown progress, however there is still much work to be done.

My work within the actual AP research class has also been greatly impactful. Preparing for the oral defense and presentation has taught me a great deal about practice. Despite how much I knew about my topic, there is much more to presenting an idea or concept than simply knowing what it is about and having a pretty slide show. You must know what to hit on, how to emphasize what your presentation means and most importantly, how to ensure engagment. One thing I wish I had improved upon was diving deeper into and further emphasizing the value of my research. It has shown me how to be more consiensous of everything within my presentations.

The Research paper however, was far more about the details. Making sure I had constant explanations and veritible evidance to back up every claim I made within the paper. From properly citing sources to explaining how I chose which type of chicken I wanted to explore, every detail matters. And all of that detail comes together to form a beautiful painting (conclussion/results). Ive been able to dive even deeper into my idea than would have otherwise been possible thanks to the creating of the academic paper linked here .

As a whole, this research process has taught me a couple hard but valuable lessons. First and foremost, is to always have a plan, most especially in a professional setting. As freeing as the idea of letting what happens happen and going with the flow is in a personal setting, within the context of the professional world it is contradictory to organized and efficient work. I learned this when I was forced to switch projects halfway through, because I was hoping that my concrete project would just magically work out. In real life, it doesn't work that way. Things happen only if you work to make them happen. Everything you put in is what you will get out.

These lessons are ones I've had to learn time and time again, most especially now. Throughout the year my work ethic continued to decline, until the moment it all became serious and it took a lot of work to climb out of that hole. As I carry these lessons with me into college they will propel me forward towards excellence in my field. Not only through work ethic and proactive behavior, but also by leaning on support systems around me. Being able to check my information with the lunch staff at RCHS and discuss the implications of my findings with my personal trainer Taylor Q helped greatly to deepen my understanding and complexity. I cant wait to continue on with these next steps in my journey.

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