Process Log (9/28 - 10/2)

Goals From Last Week: I completed all of my goals for this week except finishing my poison control research. I found so much information that I need to take some more time next week to organize it and determine if I need to find any more information.

Mentor: This week I recieved an email from Mrs. Crockom stating that she is interested in mentoring me, but has to check with the executive director first. Last week I also contacted Dr. Snodgrass but have, as of yet, received no reply. Mrs. Crockom promised to email back this next week with a definitive answer and hopefully

Research/Product: I continued to research statistics from the Poison Center and found the National Report for all poison cases in the U.S in 2013 (the most recent published year). This has been increidibly helpful as it contains information such as exposure cases in relation to age groups, modes of exposure, types of poisons, fatalities by age groups, and causes by age groups. The last (causes by age groups) is especially important because I discovered that the reason there are so many adult fatalities is because, sadly, most fatalities are suicides. Children (up to 10 years) have fewer fatalities because there were no reported cases of child suicides. This means I will have to change my focus either to suicide prevention programs if I want to continue to research for ages 20 and older, or change my focus to children who have the greatest number of exposures, but no fatalities. I think I will change it to focus on children as it is easier to create an educational program for children than try to convice adults against suicide which would entail a whole other subject to research.

Goals for Next Week: My goals for next week are to use my free research week to gather and analyze my collected data, fill out a mentor information sheet if Mrs. Crockom or Dr. Snodgrass agree, and edit my plans to make them more acceptable with my new research focus.