The Tragic Case of Gabby Petito

To me, the MYP Personal Project is about personal growth. It is about learning something new that I'm interested in and it's about trying to make the world a better place, even if it's just making one person's day better or teaching a couple of people something. Our goal with the project was to do something that we cared about and share it with others and I think that this website is a good example of what I have become more interested in over the past few months, true crime and investigation.

Since elementary school, I've been interested in murder mystery. I have kept reading logs since January, 2018 and the first murder mystery entry that I could find was on Tuesday, February 20th, 2018. The book was called Murder Most Unladylike and it was by Robin Stevens. It's the first book in an eleven book murder mystery series, the Murder Most Unladylike series. Some of my other favorite mystery series/books are any of Agatha Christie's Hercule Poirot books, the Stalking Jack the Ripper series by Kerri Maniscalco, The Agency series by Y.S Lee, and A Royal Affair by Allison Montclair.

After reading so many mysteries, I eventually came across the True Crime genre in both books and TV shows. In middle school, I became more interested in true crime through Buzzfeed Unsolved. Buzzfeed Unsolved started in February 2016 and I began watching in late 2018/early 2019. It is about unsolved true crime cases and supernatural events. I like both parts of the show, but I prefer the true crime aspect. I believe that the first episode I watched was their episode about the Axeman of New Orleans. On a side note, I recently got my Mom to watch Buzzfeed Unsolved and she really enjoys it.

By the summer of 2020 I found out about true crime podcasts. The first true crime podcast I listened to was the Crime Junkie podcast by Ashley Flowers and Brit Prawat. I enjoyed it, they did a really good job researching and covering cases, but after a while I stopped listening when I found a podcast that I enjoyed more. That podcast is Morbid: A True Crime Podcast which was started in 2018 by Alaina Urquhart and Ashleigh "Ash" Kelley. It's my favorite podcast because of Alaina's expertise in forensics and because of how they discuss cases. Alaina is an autopsy technician, so I like how she explains something related to autopsies and crime scenes; she does it in a very detailed and intricate manner. They are also relatively lighthearted during the podcast which helps when they are covering rougher topics. Their banter is very fast-paced and witty which I also enjoy. It's not for everyone, but they, especially Alaina, have gotten me interested in forensics and that leads to how I've grown since I've started learning more about true crime.

With all of that being said, the point of this project was personal growth and I have grown as a person since the beginning of this project. The project has helped me figure out what I want to do in the future. For the past few years, I thought that I was going to end up going to college for programming or engineering, but through this project I've realized that I would like to go to college for forensic science instead. While learning about forensics, I've realized that multiple things that I am interested in would allow me to have a job in forensics. For example, I really like chemistry and psychology and both of those fields play a big part in investigations.