I chose my country before I even considered what my question would be. My best friend, Jess, lives in Liverpool, England and we constantly talk about politics and current events in both of our countries. We also frequently use each other as talking points in our school projects. When I told her about this project, I asked her what issues were facing her specifically. She brought up things such as the transit strikes and the new prime minister, Theresa May. In August she actually attended a rally to oppose brexit. I figured Brexit was recent and big enough to easily produce an essay about it.
However it took me awhile to decide on the economic approach to the issue. I knew I wanted to take a socio-economic approach because I sincerely care about how socio-economic status affects people in their daily lives. The decreasing value of the british pound had been on my news radar for a while, so I decided to take a purely economic approach to the issue because it’s simpler. I knew from the start that Brexit had not been good to the english economy, so I intentionally chose the word “benefit” instead of “damage” or “effect” for my research question to make the answer more straight forward. Eventually, the deadline for the question came up and I hadn’t done a lot of prior research, so i just gunned it; “How will Brexit and Theresa May’s economic policy benefit the UK economy?” The answer was simple; it wouldn’t benefit many people. What I didn’t anticipate was the “how”.
Then the autumn budget was dropped on November 22nd and i said “that’s how.” But it was not easy to find what I needed. The two biggest issues that came up in my articles were tax changes and the housing crisis. I was already familiar with the housing issue because I watched a show about it over the summer. The tax issue was more complicated than it seemed. I had to get Jess to help me figure out what a VAT tax is, for example.
I also found it frustrating trying to use government websites to view economic outlooks. They seemed biased and therefore unreliable. In one of my articles I came across an organization called the OECD and then cross referenced their data with the PwC. The government websites were vague and hard to navigate when compared to the OECD and PwC, which further added to my suspicion that my assertions held some validity.
Writing the essay was far easier than all of the research combined. My hypothesis stayed the same throughout the course of the research, the only difference was the specificity of my thesis when compared to my hypothesis. When i showed Jess the final project she said “You know more about this then me and the whole of britain combined.”
However it took me awhile to decide on the economic approach to the issue. I knew I wanted to take a socio-economic approach because I sincerely care about how socio-economic status affects people in their daily lives. The decreasing value of the british pound had been on my news radar for a while, so I decided to take a purely economic approach to the issue because it’s simpler. I knew from the start that Brexit had not been good to the english economy, so I intentionally chose the word “benefit” instead of “damage” or “effect” for my research question to make the answer more straight forward. Eventually, the deadline for the question came up and I hadn’t done a lot of prior research, so i just gunned it; “How will Brexit and Theresa May’s economic policy benefit the UK economy?” The answer was simple; it wouldn’t benefit many people. What I didn’t anticipate was the “how”.
Then the autumn budget was dropped on November 22nd and i said “that’s how.” But it was not easy to find what I needed. The two biggest issues that came up in my articles were tax changes and the housing crisis. I was already familiar with the housing issue because I watched a show about it over the summer. The tax issue was more complicated than it seemed. I had to get Jess to help me figure out what a VAT tax is, for example.
I also found it frustrating trying to use government websites to view economic outlooks. They seemed biased and therefore unreliable. In one of my articles I came across an organization called the OECD and then cross referenced their data with the PwC. The government websites were vague and hard to navigate when compared to the OECD and PwC, which further added to my suspicion that my assertions held some validity.
Writing the essay was far easier than all of the research combined. My hypothesis stayed the same throughout the course of the research, the only difference was the specificity of my thesis when compared to my hypothesis. When i showed Jess the final project she said “You know more about this then me and the whole of britain combined.”