Entry 1: Week 5-Initial topic ideas
I’ll be honest, when I heard of the exercise of making a bibliography in week two, I was sure that while researching, I’d find some broad topics of interest. Unfortunately, that wasn’t the case. My first topic came to life when, during week 5, David made us do an exercise about our topics. I was the only one who didn’t have any idea, but somehow the conversations in class led to the idea of a simulation. That’s when I thought, What if we are living in a simulation, and more importantly, what did the experts have to say about it? After doing some research and knowing that having a specific topic was crucial, I narrowed it down to talking about only the simulation hypothesis. This gave way to my first topic, ‘Exploring the Simulation Hypothesis: Are We living in a Digital Reality?’ I even did my initial idea presentation on it, talking about Elon Musk and other scholar’s views, but yet something about the topic felt off; it didn’t sit right with me. Despite finding articles and mathematicians and physicists who had divided views on the topic, I chose to drop it.
Isn’t it funny how a simple brainstorming exercise can flip the script on your entire research path? I started off with the simulation hypothesis, but then we had an exercise where we had to throw out all possible topics, and suddenly I was talking about brain alteration in VR.
It was like I had stumbled into a rabbit hole of possibilities. The more I thought about it, the more I realized there’s something fascinating about the intersection of our brains and virtual reality. So, I veered off from the simulation thing and dove headfirst into this brain-altering in-VR concept. Wouldn’t anyone be intrigued by the idea of tweaking our brains to control emotions while immersed in a virtual world? It seemed like a ghost concept, something that didn’t exist, and that was giving me doubts. After talking to Serra about it, she only confirmed my doubts and suggested I reword it along the lines of ‘changing emotions in VR’, as brain alteration could be a tricky concept to write about.
Entry 2: Week 6-More topic brainstorming
Okay I have a new topic now: Therapy in VR and its ethical implications. I talked to my parents as I was experiencing a mental block. My brain was refusing to sit and research. My mother suggested that I talk about psychology and since that was already my initial thought process, I was curious about what she had to say. She suggested various topics, but the one that made me think could have potential was therapy in virtual reality. After doing some research I came across terms like neuroplasticity and cytotoxic therapy and was intrigued yet imtimidated. However I chose to stick with it and sat with David who helped me plan out my entire format of what could be the potential topics I could talk about and it was going so great, I was starting to feel confident. I already had a better Idea about what I wanted to talk about.
Entry 3: I hate it here
Despite the heading being extremely informal, it perfectly summarizes how I’m feeling. I thought I was done thinking about topics and finally could shift my focus to researching, which I did. I regret it now because I came across a term I have heard my parents use a lot, since they’re both counselors, called NLP or neurolinguistic programming. David had said that this might happen and that the further you researched, the more the topic had the possibility of changing. He might say it was a good thing, but since it was so close to the deadline when I emailed him about it, he didn’t know what to think. It was not even the fact that I combined NLP and therepy and talked about both in my paper, but that I only talked about NLP. All the previous research that I had done ended up being useless. I would like to mention that I did read about NLP’s applications in therapy, but I still had to find studies where NLP was primarily being used and not therapy. Thus, after a long and hard battle, I finally began my journey to write my essay on my topic of ‘risks and effects on neurolinguistic programming in virtual reality’ with less than a month remaining.
Entry 4: The final research begins
The first useful paper I come across, and its not even free to read. Accessing through the institution didnt work; I have requested for full access.
I know that having a format of what I want to talk about is important, but I am horrible at planning.
This is what I managed to come up with. You might notice that mostly everything has a question mark next to it, its quite hilarious. The only thing I was sure about was what my introduction would include. I decided that I’ll introduce NLP as a topic and then VR as a topic and then talk about how they both can be combined to compliment each other. I finished my introduction and showed it to David to ask his views on it and he LOVED IT! Well atleast I think he did. It definitely helped boost my confidence. I was still stuck on the literature review and how to find enough resources that talked about the uses or applications of NLP in VR or any paper that even mentions it.
Update: I got access to the PTSD paper!! I also asked David about my confusion, and it turns out I don’t have to write the entire literature about papers that talk about both topics together, and honestly, I feel so light now. He explained that I can talk about VR and NLP separately and merge them into the discussion through the risks and effects. I had no clue that that was even a thing, and I am so glad I asked. I don’t think I have ever liked David more. I’ll be honest; through all the different exercises and advices he’s given me, David can take credit for 50% of my paper if he wants.
file:///C:/Users/Sohum%20Sharma/Downloads/Publishedversion.pdf (incase anyone wants to read it)
Entry 5
I have been spending a lot of time in the library trying to work on this damn paper. It’s become the bane of my existence. But on the other hand, my literature review has a format now!! Exciting times. I think it’s visible that I have established a love-hate relationship with this paper, and every time I accomplish something, I feel a sense of joy followed by the doom of what’s yet to come. It’s quite unhealthy I’d say, but I’m just trying to do my best here.
Update: I filled in the question marks and now plan to talk about NLP in special education and NLP in reducing claustrophobia and pain, while the VR aspect is going to talk about therapy. Since therapy is a widely researched area, that’s the broad heading under VR I’m going for.
I did end up writing about VR therapy since I was allowed to talk about NLP and VR separately, but I still didn’t use any papers I had originally found. The more I researched, the better papers I ended up finding.
Side note: I never worked in the library last year and didn’t know there were so many study zones, and I am glad I live nearby so I can literally walk in and work whenever I want to. I have realised I am not even half as productive at home as I am in the library, and had I been using it last year, I wouldn’t have submitted such a horrible paper (I admit it).
Entry 6
I finished my literature review and it took a lot out of me. I havent had any human interaction outside of college; even my time on weekends goes into the paper. But I am already feeling so much more confident and better as compared to last year. I’d say my literature review is beautiful and David also said it’s very well written and structured. The reason I pestered David so much this year to get his opinions on everything I was writing was due to my last year paper. I aimed to improve as much as I could this year.
I will not analyse every single paper, website, or article I used for this essay, but I will mention and explain the most relevant ones. Most of my resources are in the review. The reference to Wake and Leighton in the introduction just adds to what I said, so it’s not as important.
-The studies are what stole the show. Since my first topic was about NLP in special education, I found two papers, one talking about how NLP can be used on children with special education needs like ADD by the teacher’s assistants who were educating them, and the other talking about a study done on a 9-year-old boy with ADHD that aimed to reduce his hyperactivity, impulsiveness, and disobedience. Both of these papers perfectly captured the essence of what I wanted to talk about in that first section.
-With the next topic I wanted to talk about reducing claustrophobia and pain through NLP techniques and establishing a link between them as well. A paper I found talked about exactly that. The study revealed that the phobia of experiencing pain is enough to cause pain-related anxiety and that it triggers the body’s neural responses and causes pain. I also used a paper published in 2014 that looked into reducing the usage anesthesia by implementing the fast phobia cure on patients who had a phobia of MRI machines
-After finishing talking about NLP, I moved onto the VR section. Finding papers where VR therapy was used to combat PTSD and anxiety proved to be extremely helpful. A case study involving war veterans was conducted to reduce the trauma they had experienced on the battle field through personalising experiences in VR.
Entry 7
I finished my discussion and have started my conclusion. I have also simultaneously been referencing all the links I found using “cite this for me.” I initially used the website links for everything but after looking at a sample essay, I realised I had to input the doi to get a journal/article format. For some of the links, cite them right wasn’t working, so I found another citing website called grafiati which was supposedly an alternative to citethisforme. After comparing it’s resources to ‘cite this for me’, I chose to drop it and instead use cite them right.
https://www.citethisforme.com/
https://www.citethemrightonline.com/
https://www.grafiati.com/en/blogs/citethisforme-alternative/
FInal Essay
My paper is finally fully finished, and I feel like collapsing. I finished my bibliography, arranging it alphabetically, and also finished my abstract. I uploaded the word document for submission but I converted it into a pdf for the sake of the blog and attached it below.
Overall, I am genuinly EXTREMELY happy with my paper this time. It’s a work of art in my opinion. I could be exaggerating, but if you put my last year and this year’s paper next to each other, you’ll know what I’m saying. I slowly built my format and my paper and went step by step, fixing any problems I faced. I did so much research that I had 3 different google tabs open, with 15 tabs open in each of them. I feel so much more confident in my abilities to write a properly structured dissertation now.
My main takeaway from this paper was the library is your best friend. The way I fall into deep focus still shocks me. When I’m at home and I try to work, somehow my hand automatically guides my mouse to open Youtube (I swear it’s like I get possessed). Another thing I learned was that the references below the papers you find will be ten times more useful than the paper itself. It was like going reverse through a chain reaction till I reached the source. Surprisingly you’d think that I should’ve known this last year, but that fact that I didn’t should prove the kind of effort I put into that paper as compared to this one. I may be overstating the fact that my last year paper wasn’t good, but that’s simply because after writing this one I can’t believe I submitted something so inferior, last year. As long as I keep improving upon my work, it’s fine. It just motivates me to write an even better paper for my final year that beats this one by a significant margin.