02 Research
Research is where I learned that the first answer is almost never the real answer — and that saying "I don't know yet" precisely is a skill.
My project began with a question I couldn't find a satisfying answer to in the literature I could access. Framing it took longer than I expected: the first version was too broad to test, and narrowing it down to something measurable — with a variable I could actually control and an outcome I could actually observe — was most of the intellectual work.
I chose it because it sat at the intersection of something scientific and something human — a result that, if it held, would change a decision someone makes. I didn't want a project that only produced a poster. I wanted one where being wrong would matter, because that's the only way the answer is worth having.
I read the background literature until I could summarize the disagreements in it, then designed a method with a clear control and a plan for what would count as a null result. I collected and cleaned my own data, ran the analysis, and repeated the parts that surprised me. I wrote it up so that a stranger could reproduce it — including the steps that didn't work.
The project was selected as a finalist in the 2026 JYEM / NY-CSEF Research Competition, from a field of 1,425 domestic and international participants. Presenting it to judges was the best part: defending a method out loud is a much stricter test than writing about it.