Two Extended Project journeys
Reflections on EPQ
By Mohan and Thomas

Thomas:
As a 6.2 student looking at the EPQ posters of my fellow peers, I feel happy – having seen some of my closest friends panic about this exact day- that they could finally see their efforts pay off. However, I can’t help but feel a sense of regret. Regret that I couldn’t be a part of those showcasing their posters today.
Perhaps I was too naive and ambitious, having my EPQ topic set in stone from day one to make and build a crochet machine (which is deemed to not be possible by some experts due to the complex movements involved). From that point, I have essentially road blocked myself from ever completing the project. Weeks of research into biomechanics and fiddling around with crochet hooks went by without any progress, this should have been the warning sign to change my topic. But no, I began making excuses to get by deadlines, convincing myself that giving the project more time, the problems would all solve themselves. The school was even supportive of my project, offering me to change to an EPQ class that was more relevant to engineering so I could be inspired. It was as if for a brief moment, I was given a chance for a clean slate for the project.
However, deep inside I knew what I was aiming for was not possible. So in the coming months, although I have gained proficiency in 3D modelling, waiting for just any design for a machine to even just theoretically work, that day would never come. I have already given up, and with University applications and a swap in A levels subject choice looming at the back of my head, I finally decided to discontinue my EPQ project over the summer. A long overdue decision.
Now looking at many of my peers’ wonderful posters, I can’t help but wonder: what if I never gave up, had some flexibility to change my topic, and…
Mohan:
There it was, standing in a corner in Science Block, its glossy surface gleaming under the lights–my EPQ poster. I still remember how, one year ago, I stood at the exact same place and stared admiringly into the posters made by the previous 6.2s. My EPQ journey through this year was one down a rocky road.
My first EPQ topic was ambitious: I wanted to extract pure catechin (a type of antioxidant) from tea and use my extractions to investigate their neuroprotective properties. It was only when I got my hands on preliminary investigation that I realized there was still a long way to go before I could turn my ideas into a reality. During my first attempt at extraction, the mass of catechins obtained rounded to zero. There was no way for me to upscale the experiment in a school lab; but at the same time I didn’t want to simplify my project to an extent where its purpose would be defeated. Before the start of summer break, my project came to a dead end.
Giving up sounded like a sweet option. But maybe it was the urge to prove my abilities to myself, I finally decided that this task is worth continuing and began looking for ways to revive it. After reading about an interesting compound called CLP290, I decided to change my topic to that and finish my experiments in a university lab over the summer. The future of this project seemed more promising, but even after I overcame the barrier of looking for a lab which would accept me, there were still more challenges to come.
The experiments I decided to do involved some advanced and complicated procedures, meaning that I need to familiarize myself with them before starting the investigation. My preliminary work stage was chaotic: not knowing how to plan my experiment, I even ended up skipping a meal to monitor some procedures; on top of that, my fluorescent antibodies wouldn’t glow; proteins wouldn’t linearize; western blot bands wouldn’t take a distinct shape……In the end, my first set of results was the exact opposite of what has been obtained in previous experiments. It was a depressing week. Before the actual experiments, I stopped and thought. Turns out, it was a lot easier with some careful planning and attention to details. Finally I was able to obtain a set of relatively reliable data.
After that, it was a lot of statistics and writing. I felt like quitting countless times when I stared at the flashing cursor on my screen; and countless times I told myself to push on and see how it goes.
…And finally I am here, at this point in the journey where I can proudly tell the story of how I learned about perseverance and gained scientific insight through this project.
By Thomas and Mohan