BY ANILA LIJO
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Contrary to most students’ reaction after hearing the recent death of the Junior Research Project, I was pretty upset. As much as most juniors despised the JRP, some of us did like working on it. By no means am I an overly excited student who enjoys regular work at school, but I did appreciate the process and what we got out of its completion.

I understand it was time consuming, taking away three weeks of class time to work on the project was a large commitment. I also understand other’s frustration with it carrying half your grade, and that value may well have needed some adjustment.

But I believe that the JRP had value – it was a refreshingly different sort of assignment compared to my expectations.

With just confirmation from your teacher, the choice to whether you wanted to pursue a topic or not was your own. That freedom was something I think is lacking in most other assignments.

Getting to truly understand and research your topic was a valuable experience that I’m disappointed most students won’t have the opportunity to undertake. This focused study opened up perspectives that you may have not considered of.

For instance, my topic of beauty pageants, was one that I originally started to regret after hearing early feedback. Several people came up, applauding me for my decision to pick an “easy topic” to work on, whose assumed argument for my project was the typical and widely documented view that beauty pageants hinders child development. And I honestly did believe them for a while until I dedicated time and researched more in depth on how beauty pageants got their bad reputation.

A first glance brought up stories backing up the stereotypes and reinforced my early regret. While these stories aren’t fabricated and there is some merit behind the stereotype there was more to the story. I found the other side, and read about girls who found new confidence from participating and how it has formed confident young individuals.

Though my views at the end may not have changed, I have a deeper understanding and appreciation for the goals of pageants and the presentation that followed the research phase allowed other students and I to share findings and gain some experience with public speaking.

Listening and getting to understand the topics other students spoke about was a reward in its own. We got to see different angles and each student’s view unlike the stereotypical perspective of that particular topic.

With the JRP gone, a lot of to-be juniors are missing out on an opportunity to appreciate a new topic that they likely would have not known about otherwise.