A* SUMMARY AND REFLECTION- EPQ AQA
This document features: what have I learned from completing this project? What new knowledge or expertise have I enjoyed or found valuable? What are the strengths and weaknesses of my project (including planning and organisation)? What skills have I improved? Wh...
This page records your summary, reflection and evaluation when you have completed your project
product and given your presentation.
Some questions you may wish to answer in this section include, what have I learned from completing
this project? What new knowledge or expertise have I enjoyed or found valuable? What are the
strengths and weaknesses of my project (including planning and organisation)? What skills have I
improved? What changes would I make if I undertook such work again? What advice would I give to
others undertaking such a project?
From doing an EPQ I have learnt so much about the type of worker and learner I am and the ways in which I
like to complete projects to this magnitude. For me I prefer to stay ahead and keep to my
own earlier deadlines rather than those that have been predetermined for me. I believe staying ahead means
that when important events like exams or homework deadlines these can be prioritised as the work due for
the next deadlines would be complete and other work can be prioritised. I have learnt how valuable it is to
trust you gut instincts and don’t compare yourself to other people’s progress as each project is so personal and
very subjective. Therefore, I believe the EPQ is marked holistically as no two products are the same.
I have learnt have to plan for things and stay on top of my work. Being able to complete a project as such
vast length I have realised takes a lot of planning and dedication. I have learnt how to set deadlines and stick to
them and what it takes to do this.
I have learnt how not to research and how to research properly and efficiently. I know now what to look for in
a piece of research that I want to cite and to consider its reliability, content, author, publication date and the
URL of the website. This I believe is very important as it can affect the validity of the conclusion that you are
going to make.
Below I have illustrated strengths and weakness of the skills I have developed from various aspects of my
project. The aspects of development I talk about below I believe that despite the weakness I
have evolved significantly due to the EPQ.
I chose a topic that interested me but was not related to my a-level subject choices. It gave me a wide breath
of choices to delve into and I could have researched on it for weeks or months, but I found that I could narrow
down my topic from the record of initial ideas to the candidate proposal. My choice of topic if found kept
motivated as it was away from studies and was about the environment which I am very passionate about.
I did not research enough about overpopulation in my preliminary research therefore a couple of weeks into
my project I had to make amendments by adding in the idea of overconsumption. I wondered if I should have
picked an EPQ that was more science based and targeted to what I want to do at university as I could talk
about it on my personal statement and in potential interviews.
When I planned my EPQ, I made myself a plan with concise aims, and objectives in my candidate proposals. As
a result, when researching I had a well-rounded idea of what I wanted to research in depth about. I wrote
down from November what I did each week and would set myself aims for the next week to ensure certain
targets were reached the next week. Alternatively, I was able to justify why they had not been completed on
that week or day.
During the autumn term I think I should have implemented more time to researching as I had a lot to do during
the Christmas holidays and the October holidays. I also wish that I would have set myself more aims in the
later autumn term because I had lots to do in this time as I was not aware of deadlines. I felt like it was hard to
see an end goal with my motivation down particularly in the third lockdown and what would be the final
format of my project. In my planning review, I wrote that I wanted all my research finished by Christmas half
term in hindsight this was not the best decision as I was unaware of how the research process was completed,
what I had done so far did not have the greatest reliability or correspondence to my project but that is not to
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