Barrett, The Honors College Thesis/Creative Project Collection

500 Days of Summer, released in 2009 and written by Scott Neustadter and Michael H. Weber, is an American film told through the perspective of Tom Hansen, the male lead. It is a story that begins with a third-person narrator, explaining that “This is a story of boy meets girl.” The narration then finishes with a warning that “you should know up front, this is not a love story” (Neustadter & Weber, 2009). As the movie continues, however, it becomes increasingly challenging to believe this warning. Tom sees Summer Finn, falls in love, and their relationship ends with him broken-hearted. It is only natural for the audience to view it as a story of Tom’s failed love, and without a deeper analysis, to perceive Summer as the antagonist. <br/> This tendency to view the movie as a love story motivated me to question why the discrepancy between the beginning narration and the common audience perception occurs. My thesis addresses this discrepancy by focusing on the idea that the natural gravitation towards the belief that 500 Days of Summer is a love story exists due to the unreliable narration given by Tom Hansen throughout the movie. I wrote three songs, an interlude, a duet, and a solo, based on the themes and lead characters of the movie to help validate the warning provided in the beginning and provide a deeper insight into Summer’s version of the story.

People have known about mass biodiversity loss and the human actions that drive it for decades now, and yet we have largely failed levels to change our behavior to protect the environment. What’s failing to motivate people to change? Some conservation psychologists have partially blamed the negative way we communicate about environmental issues for paralyzing audiences into doing nothing because they feel helpless to change such a big problem. Instead, many psychologists have called for using positive emotions in communication to motivate an audience, but there’s still little research showing whether that’s a more effective approach or not. To study whether positive or negative emotions are really more motivational for inspiring change, I looked at how different emotions were used in the discourse about an emerging conservation technology called de-extinction as a case study. De-extinction claims to be both a tool for fighting biodiversity loss and for inspiring more positive and inspiring narratives in conservation. In this thesis, I examine those claims by exploring five emotions that the discourse around de-extinction elicits: fear, guilt, grief, awe and hope. I examined the motivating power of those emotions and what kind of actions de-extinction discourse motivates or fails to motivate through the way it uses those emotions. I found that de-extinction discourse erases negative emotions and boosts positive ones as many conservation psychologists recommend. However, de-extinction discourse accomplishes this in misleading ways: it minimizes the sense of importance of ongoing extinctions by framing extinction as a reversible phenomenon, and it overstates the ability of technology alone to combat the extinction crisis without requiring societal change. As a result, de-extinction discourse could risk making the public less motivated to take personal action to forward conservation goals. I conclude that positivity or negativity should not be the central concerns for motivating action, but rather efficacy and honesty.

For my project, I delve into the relationships of Victor and the Monster as well as the relationships Victor shares with other characters that were underdeveloped within the original novel by Mary Shelley in the novel Franeknstein. I examine their relationships in two components. The first through my own interpretation of Victor and the Monster’s relationship within a creative writing piece that extends the novel as if Victor had lived rather than died in the arctic in order to explore the possibilities of a more complex set of relationships between Victor and the Monster than simply creator-creation. My writing focuses on the development of their relationship once all they have left is each other. The second part of my project focuses on an analytical component. I analyze and cite the reasoning for my creative take on Victor and the Monster as well as their relationship within the novel and Mary Shelley’s intentions.

Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, pre-health individuals around the world encountered a range of challenges. Research and internship opportunities were cancelled, clinical experience was unreachable, and prerequisites became more demanding in a remote setting. I myself was working in a research lab in Switzerland when the pandemic was declared, resulting in my career-altering internship to be cut short six months. My life-long friend, Alejandra, had the same experience and reached out to me with an extraordinary idea to unite and empower pre-health individuals on a national level. With my skills in event planning combined with her vision, we built the National Pre-Health Conference (NPHC): a 3-day virtual event for pre-health individuals to explore medical careers and learn how to pursue their professional goals, particularly during these uncertain times. We held our inaugural conference with the theme A Future in Medicine in 2020 with over 1000 attendees from around the country. In 2021, we held our second-annual conference with the theme Unity in Healthcare with over 1000 attendees as well. In addition to planning the second-annual NPHC, I employed pre-event and post-event surveys to assess the confidence level of attendees before and after the conference in healthcare experience, research experience, standardized testing, community service, academics, essay writing, and completing graduate/professionals school applications. We found that NPHC improved the confidence level of attendees in all categories. Overall, understanding how NPHC benefits pre-health students will help our team improve for future conferences.

This creative project is a short story in the Gothic genre followed by an explanation of certain literary elements and decisions. The Gothic genre often explores supernatural and uncomfortable topics that can challenge the reader’s perception and understanding of the world. Through this means of storytelling, authors are given the opportunity to connect the supernatural with complex and sensitive topics that may be difficult or even taboo to speak about in certain locations and time periods. In this thesis, I embrace the traditions of the Gothic-genre with a story that focuses on the issues prevalent today. The years 2020 and 2021 have been unprecedented times for humanity. Technology continues to grow at an alarming rate, suicide rates of young people have been on the rise for years, and a global pandemic has people adapting to all new ways of living. During these ever changing times, it is the Gothic that may provide guidance through these uncertainties by shedding light on the problems that will plague humanity both today and tomorrow. The story follows an outcast from society who aids in the creation of a divine monster, and the consequences that follow.