NAME CHANGER. Yes, I know, I changed my thesis title. But that’s the value of iteration. Nothing is perfect and everything evolves. I know that I’ve not taken the time to write a proper update and this time around it won’t really be much different. The reason why is because of the ever so dreaded battle of midterms, plus my 45 hour review, and a recent trip to Fisher-Price in New York for a follow up on a previous project.

With all that said, and excuses aside, I have been diligently working away. As another form of thesis evidencing I’ve begun posting my annotated bibliography notes (many more to come!) to give you an idea of the material that I’ve been churning away on. The 45 hour review was a big deal and I passed! The reason it’s a big deal is it acts as the checklist of approval for one to begin really pushing forward with their thesis. I’ve uploaded it to Issuu if you want to check it out, it’s full of little quips for my research plan. Also, at least for my Prospectus class, much of the data in it was adapted to my midterm presentation.

Fisher-Price was a whole different deal. Due to the wonderful world of NDAs I can’t really say much, but what I can say is that they are such nice and wonderful people. Their work environment and culture is really interesting and their history is quite interesting as well. A team of grad students and I worked on a scenario planning project for them not too long ago and they invited a few of us to come up and give a presentation on our process and findings and participate in some workshopping activities. Several neat ideas and concepts arose and it will be interesting to see in the future if they come to fruition in some form. It’s always a nice little present to see the evolution of a project once it is over and handed off.

On a side note, East Aurora (home of F-P) is a beautiful little town. Very quaint and reminds me a lot of small town Alabama and Mississippi where I have lived.