Senior year of high school was the transitional year that prepared me for the struggles and environment of college. Throughout the four years, I have made many friendships with people from different backgrounds and parts of the world, where I imagine setting a foot in and have introduced me to many hobbies and food that I have enjoyed over the years. Friends do come and go, but the cozy classrooms, organized poster boards, and dusty library have created an experience which has served my needs to understand the world around. On the first day of my last year of high school, I made my way through the noisy hallways energetic sophermores, I received a schedule with a list of classes that I was aware of, except this Advanced Placement Research course or AP Research. I had taken an AP course the year before and resented the load of assignments, presentation anxiety, and groupworks. The first few weeks of AP Research consisted of slides preaching about plagiarism, how to research, constructive criticism, peer review, and some basic editing skills. After that we were left with picking our research topics, but the class really turned into a busy market square with my classmates talking about what they did during the summer and how they just wanted to graduate to leave this school. Most of my 45 minutes in class was spent blasting heavy beat drill rappers or eerie electronic psychedelic rock and making jokes with friends. It had been a month, I was feeling restless of lacking any research topics and I would avoid any meetings with teachers regarding my progress of research. One evening with plates and spoons clattering I was having dinner with my family and we were watching the evening news, the anchor starting discussing the 2020 Democrats Presidential Candidates and he talked about an unfamiliar man with a presidential goal that some may say may be absurd, his name was Andrew Yang. Andrew Yang was proposing a universal basic income of providing every American citizen over 18 years with 1200 dollars every month, he believed this will boost the economy and local business around America. His ambitious proposal was my first introduction to universal basic income and other complex economic standards around the world. I was eager to share my research topic with my teachers and classmates and my friends had disorganized debate and jokes around about how much debt will incur in the economy. To begin my research I created a playlist with new artists ranging from Pink Floyd to Chet Baker to create a mood of approaching something new. Using sites such as EbscoHost and Google Scholar, I read articulate articles that provided interesting statistical data regarding the impact of universal basic income among people who were unemployed or were in a lower socio-economic class. Andrew Yang was not the first person to propose universal basic income, civil rights leader Martin Luther King preached for the future for granted income for poor Americas who were to pay for essentials. As I surfed webpages and got distracted by colourful advertisements, I came across a universal basic income experiment performed in Finland. I was intrigued in the beginning about the results of the experiment, and even asked my chattering classmates about their hypothesis of the research. She was fascinated by the question and keen in replying that some people might not use their money efficiently, however most results showed otherwise. Most participants, after receiving their money, were able to organize their time to search for other job opportunities available, purchase better valued food, and showed interest in attending school again. I was amazed that Finland is able to help residents with this program and the results do show the Andrew Yang future of America could be possible. To further my understanding of the economy and the universal basic income experiment in Finland, I contacted a professor or economics at a university in Finland and waited for his response. It had been about two weeks and did not recieved a response, and started to daydream about the last of school and graduating. I spent those two weeks researching and peer reviewing my classmates research topics, as the falling autumn leaves blew against the window. My teacher was concerned about the progress of my research and asked to explore some social science topics or other topics. After class ended I made way to my elective course, and I observed a large gathering of freshmen around the hallway confused and nervous about where their next class might be. My high school has a large Latino community, with about 80 percent of the students being from countries that speak the Spanish language, these groups of freshmen were African American students. This prompted me to reminisce about my year as a freshman and the lack of Black teachers in the school. With these ideas I secretly spent some time in Art, drawing my ideas on my scrapbook to avoid losing participation points. I spent the evening researching student and teacher populations statistics in New York City and which applied research will support the thesis of my research. The purpose of my research was to truly understand how students of colour feel about the impact their white or black teachers have on their education. I then determined that transcendental phenomenology research method was the best approach in relating the students’ experience to my research. A transcendental phenomenology research is qualitative study, whereby I attempt to use the experience of my participants to understand the impact of the topic.
My teacher and I myself was surprised I was able to create new research questions through the observation of the environment, where some students would blindly ignore as a desperate attempt to present a topic that above their expectations of research. The transitions of research topics so abruptly brought some anxiety surrounding the process of my new research topic, I would peek unto my classmates’ documents to see their progression of research and some were exceeding or was just staring at their computer screen acting like they were researching. I dispease being the “stare at computer guy” and then argue with my conscious about how idle the hand of the clock when boredom strikes. Scrambling through my heavy science textbooks and messy folders, I piece of looseleaf and jotted down my plans for how new research will advance. I spent a week reading research papers, watching interviews, and studying statistics revolving around the environment of black students in environments that lack diversity in the teaching position. Some of these research papers offered insightful information regarding the impact black teachers have on the future of black teachers through their proficiency in mathematical and science courses. The days approaching were unforgivably chilly as christmas and spring break vacations became the new talk of the class, chatter of expensive presents for nieces and uncles made it difficult to grasp attention towards my research, forcing me leave the room and sit outside just to think in silence. Outside of the class I rested on some couches and looked through stuffy college ruled notebook, I wrote down interview questions for my participants and which participants would show more interest in being present for the research. The winter break was unpleasant with piles of projects and time spent editing my thesis and presenting themes such as role model effect, implicit bias, and cultural competence in my research. These themes include bases of presenting the consequences lack of black teachers roles has affected how black students retain in schools, interest in STEM fields, and performance on proficiency tests. Using higher graded AP Research projects, I would compare my paper and learn a new APA format style to enhance my writing and grammar structures in research. Winter break ended with me feeling prepared to breeze through my research with ease; quickly diving back into plans I searched the school for participants which were teachers and students. The first few students I asked rejected my offer and told me to bug off, some of the students in the school were preparing for SAT and others just wanted to avoid the overheated school and blissful cold just to go home. My success came from the juniors and seniors in academic clubs who were eager to research and questioned my stress. These interviews had peculiar answers and exposed how these students of colour felt among classes that had white teachers. Grasping to understand their responses, I jotted their most unique quotes detailing their experience within the relationships they have created their teachers.
