Project Proposal

My project is to research the connection between music and the brain. My passions in this world are both for film and for the art of music. I have always found that listening to music relaxes me after a stressful day or stressful situation, and with that realization, I began to wonder if there actually was a serious connection between music and stress relief. The final media I envision for this project is a infographic that includes polls from people saying whether or not music relaxes them, which also includes all of the scientific research done on the connection between music and stress relief. I will use design programs to create this such as indesign and photoshop.

This is project is a risk because it will have to involve many other people and it’s also a risk because I am not sure if music has the same effect on other people than myself. I will handle each role on this project because I am doing it alone.

Project Productions

Read my research paper

Project Reflection

The Innovator project was a project that had taught me more than any other project that I had completed at Freestyle Academy during my senior year. It was a project that required me to do hours and hours of research on a topic that I was very interested in, which is the connection between music and stress relief. I chose this topic because music has always been such an important part of my life in a major way because of its relaxing ways it bestows upon when I am in a stressed out state. The major learning curve that I had in the process in creating my innovator project was that I had to learn how to incorporate other people in a creative way when it came to interviews and questions. I never had been good at creating intriguing enough questions and using them in interviews so for this project I used the research that I had conducted on the connection to fuel each and everyone of my questions. The research that I conducted on the connection between music and stress relief was the part of the project that without a doubt the most time consuming. It is such an under researched topic that I had to dig very deep into many different sources in order to come up with a proper report for my infographic. My research and interviews were a pivotal part in my Innovator project because without it I would not have had the proper information to put on the final version of my designed infographic. Designing the infographic in Adobe Illustrator was another very challenging part of my innovator project aside from the research conducting and interviews. The designing of the infographic was so difficult for me because using Adobe programs such as indesign has always not come easy to me. It took me hours to get the color coordination, the layers, and the word placement on the infographic and I am very happy with my end result.

The collaboration that I had with other people on this project was a huge reason for its final success. I interviewed ten people in total on the topic of the connection between listening to music and stress relief. In each interview I asked questions such as, “Do you personally believe there to be a connection between stress and anxiety relief and listening to any specific genre of music,” and “What type of genre of music is stress relieving according to you and why do you think this happens?”. Without the help of other people on this innovator project I would have never have completed it to my best ability. I learned so much from the interviews because it became clear to me that many people have also made the connection between stress relief and listening to music. I believe every bit of collaboration that I had with others on this project to be successful. If I were to make this project over again, I would have conducted more interviews and created another dimension to my infographic which would’ve been a result of over one hundred people surveyed on whether they believed there to be a connection between music and stress relief, and why they thought what they thought on the topic. Getting more people involved in my innovator project would have been something that I would do if I were to redo this project because I want to find out more about the commonality of my topic. When it came to 21st century skills, I feel like I improved mostly on visual literacy, teaming and collaboration, and risk taking. To improve on visual literacy, I made sure the infographic that I made creatively showed my idea and research in a very effective way. To improve on teaming and collaboration, I made sure that each and every one of my interviews were conducted professionally and that each question asked in the interview was articulate and related to my topic. To improve on risk taking, I made sure I spent hours on learning and re learning the tools in design in order to make sure my final infographic product was as good as it could be. This was a risk for me because I have always struggled with design tools and programs. The one skill that I think I improved on the least is the self direction skill because at times within this project I was not good at managing the time and dates that were set for completion. I could have been a little bit more on top of that. There are many experiences that I learned from while creating my innovator project that I will be taking with me in my future. I learned how to collaborate quickly yet effectively with other people to create the best final product that I could have made and most importantly I learned how to follow and make deadlines that I set for myself. I feel like learning how to follow and meet deadlines on a huge project like this is going to help me later in the future because when I am in college and working after college, deadlines will always be present and need to be met on time in order for me to be successful. Learning how to meet the deadlines that you set for yourself is great practice for the real world, and if you do not learn the skill of being able to meet the deadlines that you have for your work, the chance of being successful in that school or job is minimal. I innovated my education this semester because I took it upon myself to research and involve other people in my idea that I wanted to dig deeper on. I set all of my own deadlines, conducted all of my own interviews, and also made sure that my final product, which was the designed infographic, was as good as it possibly could have been. Overall, I value this project more than most projects that I have completed at Freestyle over my Freestyle career. Even though I loved every single project that Freestyle had to offer me in different way, this one trumps them all for one reason. The fact that I created all of my own deadlines, met all of my deadlines, conducted all of the research on my own without a partner, conducted all of the interviews in an effective way, and finally improved my design skills to create my infographic makes me feel like I accomplished something great with my innovator project. The fact that I was able to accomplish something great completely on my own makes me feel like I can complete any huge take if I put my full time and effort into. I loved every bit of this project and it has taught me so much about life and about how to handle work projects in my future.