Eureka Science proved to be quite an ambitious project to have created and maintained over the course of a few months. I reared Eureka Science through its infancy and experienced the joys and uncertainties that are often associated with beginning a completely novel project within an already established institution. It was through great labour and determination I began to see this project undergo a very gradual metamorphosis—into a phenomenon that drew great crowds of starry-eyed children and encouraging adults. In the process I found myself evolving as an individual, maturing into a person equipped to deal with the types of issues surrounding child-education and functioning under the myriad of tiers characteristic of an established bureaucracy. In this final reflection I shall discuss and present evidence of how the challenges linked to Eureka Science have allowed me to gain greater insight and skills—completely transforming me as an individual.
When Bushra and I had first received confirmation from the Hospital for Sick Children to return as performers for the upcoming year we felt a combination of jubilation and uncertainty. The uncertainty stemmed from an unknowingness of the road that lay ahead. Our pilot episode had gone extremely well and the hospital and audience both expressed a great deal of optimism regarding our future episodes at SickKids. The overwhelmingly positive feedback prompted us to write the script for our next episode with a degree of repose which would prove to be a fatal error and would cause us to question our level competency as both scientists and presenters.
Upon presenting our first official episode, Bushra and I found ourselves in a very unpleasant situation that served as a rude awakening, causing us to revamp our skits as well as our approach. The show proved to be a blunder from the opening lines to the very last embarrassment filled moments. Everything seemed to be a skew. The audience, anticipating a show as great as our pilot, arrived early and did not provide us with adequate time to organise and prepare our presentation. We were forced to begin prematurely and this proved to be disastrous as our experiments were conducted in a highly disorganised manner—throwing off the remainder of the skit. Worse yet, the material did not appear to challenge our young audience; this was corroborated by the survey results we gathered from the show.
This shook me and Bushra to our core. We underwent stages very similar to those outlined for grief, as we had felt we had lost our credibility at the hospital and felt Eureka Science would be terminated. We first underwent a period of denial, where we sought refuge by adopting an external locus of control—we displaced fault to external conditions (i.e. premature audience seating, etc). In retrospect, I can understand why we had undergone this initial stage, as we had put a great deal of time and energy into this project we felt that any negative evaluation of Eureka Science would indirectly reflect on us as individuals. We then underwent a period of great anguish and sadness, during this time we second-guessed our competence as scientists and performers. We finally came to terms with the situation and accepted our error. This final stage of acceptance was important as it spurred me and Bushra to look for possible solutions.
This realization sparked a change in attitude, Bushra and I more actively began to seek ways to improve our skit and the impression we would leave at SickKids. We approached some of the audience members, their guardians, and our placement supervisor who all provided us with similar constructive criticism regarding the show. It appears that the experiments we had conducted were commonplace in the school and home setting, and many of the children had conducted these, now mundane, experiments countless times. As a result, they were very familiar with the experiments and the accompanying theory. With this criticism in mind, we began to conduct experiments that were not intuitive to the average individual in order to revive interest in our show (i.e. bubble making, making paper, balloon power car, etc). The theory that was associated with these experiments often incorporated simple concepts the children had witnessed before in novel ways, thus facilitating learning and a deeper understanding of the underlying concepts. Our astuteness with regards to understanding the needs of our young patient audience reaped great benefit as evidenced by a survey carried out during one of our later, improved shows. This positive outcome encouraged us to more vigorously investigate various other avenues to improve our show. It was this zeal and curiosity that drew me and Bushra to stumble upon another major refinement we would learn to incorporate in to our Eureka skits. When practicing our skits with family members we found, quite serendipitously, that when we allowed our young family members to actively participate in the experimental preparation they were able to retain greater information regarding the experiment, and the questions they generated in the process fostered greater learning. This fortuitous realisation compelled us to draw on concepts mentioned in class, more particularly Kolbs’ Experiential Learning paradigm, to accommodate different learning types so as to optimize knowledge acquisition amongst the children. We consolidated this idea of “active learning” into our episodes and observed a significant improvement in understanding and depth of knowledge amongst the children. Finally, we became concerned with the impression we had left at the hospital with the families and staff. Eureka was still in its infancy and could be terminated at any moment. This fear of extinction stimulated us to incorporate a greater degree of professionalism into our behavioural repertoire, in an attempt to maintain strong ties with the hospital and its populace. This involved greater correspondence in order to minimize miscommunication that may detract from our show (i.e. premature audience entry) and shorter, more concise messages that were more conducive to a professional setting (evidenced by sample emails—please view the “Learning Goals” subsection).
Apart from directly affecting the Eureka Science project, this realization also instigated a change in me as an individual. I not only learned to become more proactive in the solution acquisition process (as outlined above), but I learned to become more responsible and drew upon my experiences at Eureka to aid me in choosing a future career path. Managing and creating a project under a very renowned institution (SickKids) that demands nothing short of excellence truly catalyzed a maturation process in me. I began to become more responsible for my actions and, as mentioned above, this aided me in my pursuit for plausible solutions when faced with adversity. I began to look inwards, as opposed to outwards, for answers. This process was facilitated by the regular reflections, which allowed me to critically evaluate and consider the manner in which I approached situations and to take a moment to seek possible alternatives. It was through this self-reflection I found that I was not necessarily managing my time most efficiently. I had been using a strategy that had worked for me over my initial three years of undergraduate studies, where I simply reacted to situations as they presented themselves. This required minimal forethought and organization on my part. However, with the introduction of Eureka Science into my schedule (a very time intensive project) I was forced to critically revaluate my strategy and began to keep an agenda of events and deadlines. This allowed me to gain a level of control over my daily activities that provided me with a sense of control and had a major role in reducing the stress I experienced during the school year. I also found myself to be much more productive and efficient as a student—as was reflected in my grades this term. Finally, it was through this experience I was forced to reconsider a question I often find myself neglecting, as it spurs feelings of anxiety, I was forced to consider possible career options. I have always been drawn to the fields of both veterinary (my father is a practicing vet surgeon) and human medicine. In the process, I have often bounced between the two professions—often favouring veterinary due to a lack of experience in the field in human medicine. However, after coming in contact with the children, the medical residents, and the child psychiatrists my interest in medicine has experienced a rebirth. What I observed at SickKids—the vigour and resolve with which the children battle life-threatening conditions and the impact it has had on the medical personnel and the actualization they experience through their work is simply too much to be expressed in words. This truly affected my outlook and has reoriented me in terms of my future career prospects and priorities (for further discussions of these topics please view the “learning goals” subsection).
Eureka has also impacted me overall in a completely different manner—it was through this experience I gained a greater appreciation for education and its pricelessness to us today and to future generations. All the skits we presented and the various additions we had made along the way were all a product of something Bushra and I had learned in university. Obviously, we had drawn on the basic sciences (physics, chemistry, and biology) in the formulation of many of our experiments; however we relied on many other courses for the less obvious aspects of our presentation. We drew on developmental psychology and the work of Piaget and other great individuals who examined the progression of reasoning and perception from childhood to adulthood to determine what form of presentation of information would be conducive to knowledge acquisition amongst the children. We further developed this understanding by drawing on concepts presented by Professor Persaud during class—the experiential learning paradigm allowed us to reconsider differing learning strategies amongst the children to ensure we would include everybody. Finally, we used our knowledge of research methods, acquired via the Psychology and Research Methods course taught by Professor Nagy to produce a child-friendly, easy to use evaluation form. I learned that we could integrate the knowledge we had acquired from varying courses and apply this knowledge to produce something truly novel and influential.
Eureka Science was a unique experience that allowed me to better myself on various dimensions. It was a completely new venture, which required me to explore new avenues and to take risks and endure the failure that often accompanies such risk. Through hard work and determination I, and my fellow partner, were able to transform our vision into a reality and undergo a metamorphosis as well along the way. This process catalyzed a maturation process that caused me to approach problems differently and to gain a new perspective on various matters that will no doubt influence me in the long run.
