Navya Krishna

IR pd. 2/English 11 AP
June 13, 2019
Product Summary
Turn-in #9.5

My topic is maternal mortality from cardiovascular disease and the goal of my product is
to disseminate the information in my research paper to a few people. Because my second product
is getting my paper published and that is a very long process, I made my first product one of the
steps to getting my paper published. My first product is that I am currently receiving advice and
guidance on my data collection and research paper from a family friend who works for a medical
journal (some evidence included below). Even though I still needed to do some polishing before
I could even send her my work, especially because data collection was tricky with my topic, she
has been helping me elevate my paper even further. She has been and will continue to be
especially very helpful because she knows exactly what I need to include to improve my chances
of getting my paper published. I have also emailed my advisor about her help, but she has been
pretty slow to respond, probably because she works at a university and is on summer vacation. I
will continue to work on my second product this summer and probably also in IR II next year.
My first product will likely continue until I complete my second product. My product helps the
community of both women and physicians because it advocates for more prenatal cardiovascular
care, which my research shows will save, or at least improve, lives. I developed the idea for my
first product because my second product has always been my goal for my research, and as I
started creating timelines for my second product, I realized that I wouldn’t be able to achieve
everything that I had hoped within this school year. Therefore, I decided to make my life easier
and find a way to further strengthen my research paper by enacting my first product. I am proud
of my product, especially of how I arrived at my first product, because I learned a lot about my
strengths and weaknesses, as well as how to adapt when I find myself in tough situations.
Through this process, I particularly learned how little awareness there is surrounding my topic
because while there was a lot of background information that I found, there was very little data,
so things were a bit slow. Because of this, I also learned how crucial my research is because I
hope that it will at least prompt others to do more research and to take more action. Some
unexpected information that I discovered was that even though I am in high school and this has
been the hardest academic year for me so far, I am still capable of conducting quality research
that has the potential to have a significant impact on the medical community. This was especially
unexpected because high schoolers have very limited opportunities to contribute to medicine.
Many people believe that only doctors are qualified to have valid medical opinions, but
especially because of my advisor, I have been proving, mostly to myself, that that assumption is
false. I will expand on my topic next year by achieving my second product and looking for other
ways to share my research with others, like possibly reaching out to women’s clinics.
A couple of months ago, as I started feeling the pressure of the impending end of the
school year, I was disappointed that I hadn’t achieved as much as I had hoped to. However, as I
look back now, I have chosen to focus on all that I have done instead of all that I haven’t, and I
am very proud of myself. Especially as I put all of this in context and realize that my research is
very important to many people, and I would rather know that it is the best quality possible rather
than just having checked the most number of things off of my agenda. I am excited about my
research from this year and about how it will further grow next year. I believe that there is a lot
that can be done with my research next year.