Junior Workshop Highlights

What was the inspiration behind your project?

During the pandemic I was in middle school, and as I was thinking about how my peers and I were doing, I started thinking about my friends in India. I got the idea to do a study and research paper looking at how teachers and students in India were impacted by the Covid-19 pandemic. 

Could you tell me more about the process of creating your project? How did you bring your idea to life?

I started my research after freshman year and did two years of interviews with 40 students, and around 20 teachers. I traveled to South India, where I traveled over the summer to do research. I looked at private and public schools in a city and a small town, and within that group analyzed schools with different levels of funding. The research paper became the focus of my Junior Workshop project, and I worked with my Calhoun teachers to write and publish it. A lot of academic writing I learned from my classes at Calhoun.

What did you learn from Junior Workshop? What was valuable about the experience?

I found Junior Workshop very helpful. A lot of the findings I got came during Junior Workshop in talking through the data with [my teachers and Junior Workshop advisor]. My dialogues with my advisor also inspired me to create a lecture based on my research.

What did you learn about the process of research and academic writing?

The writing process was difficult—it was easy for me to analyze the data, but generating the insight from the data was very hard. I learned you have to analyze trends and go beyond your preconceived notions to see the data in its raw shape. I had an initial conclusion, but as I was thinking about it I realized that all of the data didn’t fit into that conclusion, and so I had to rework it to see what actually encompassed what the data represented.

I wasn't expecting how much work it would take to generate the insights and paper. In the future, I want to prepare my mind to go into that intense process of insight generation. I also realized how much I enjoy interviewing people and learning about their stories.

How did you share your work more broadly?

When my advisor asked me what I wanted to get out of this project, I said I wanted to educate people who didn’t know about other contexts other than their own during Covid. We talked about how I could present my paper, and I created lecture slides and presented to the Upper School in the theater. I initially wasn’t expecting to do a lecture, but it went really well and I learned from that experience.

My paper was also published in Tropics of Meta.

What's next? Do you plan on continuing to pursue this idea/interest further?

I want to do research in the future and become a research professor in history and sociology.

What are some takeaways that you think you might apply to future endeavors?

I learned that writing a paper and bringing new knowledge into the world is not just an individual process, it’s a collective process. There are always many people around you aiding you and helping you sharpen your argument and thesis. 

Read Nishant’s paper, "Setbacks to School Education in India During Covid-19: A Perspective from the Field," here.