Week #2

This week we worked to find our own specific question regarding the quite broad topic of student life. On Tuesday we brainstormed many different ideas that covered a variety of different aspects; night life, drugs and alcohol, academics, and relationships on the internet. We finally settled on the topic of stress and realized that it encompassed many of the questions we had brought up before; students deal with stress in a variety of ways and their different coping mechanisms often involve going out, turning to drugs and alcohol, relying on friends, or seeking solace through the internet. So we have concluded that our overarching topic for this research question will be how do students at Richmond deal with stress? As stress can mean different things to different people and there are as many ways to cope with it as there are people we decided that an interview approach would be best for this particular question. A survey would not include the many quirks and unique aspects of the students here. On Thursday we decided on some questions that we need students to answer in order for us to formulate our conclusion.  These include asking students to define stress for themselves and then giving them broad questions to allow them to explain their individual coping mechanisms.