Introduction

     What does it mean to exist? What’s reality and what isn’t? How does our perception of those and understanding of those affect how we live and breathe? Through discussions and research on the ideas of existence, reality, and perception of those for us and for life, I’m hoping to dive deep into the ideas tied with humanity and life itself. That research will entail everything revolving around our existence and reality. For existence, that can include researching what we classify as existence, what we believe is our reason for existing (if there is one), what we do with our existence, and why. For reality, that can dive into everything existence and further. What is reality, are there things beyond reality or that transition between reality and not, how do dreams play a role in all this, are memories real, and how we might react to things being real or not. 

     I’m hoping to center a few of my discussions around popular movies dealing with some of these ideas and thoughts like The Truman Show which centers around a man whose whole life is a lie; nothing is real because he’s unaware that he’s the star of a reality TV show about his life. Additionally, I’d love to focus on the movie Inception that heavily deals with dreams, planting ideas in other people’s heads through dreams, and the comparisons and line between dream and reality. Another cool movie to pick apart would be parts from The Matrix, with it’s concepts on reality and fake existence. I’m sure there are more movies I could tie into this, but this is merely a starting point in my journey of ideas for cinematic research. 

 

Subject Matter Experts

• Internal Subject Matter Experts

  • DW

    • Potentially might be nice to get his sense on this due to his knowledge in world religions and how they might interpret these questions

  • Mr. Clark

    • He might have a more scientific based response/answer to some of these questions and statements

• External Subject Matter Experts

  • Religious experts, Ontologists (the study of being) and Oneirology experts (study of dreams) and Psychologists, to get a better scientific and religious sense of existence, reality, dreams, and life.

​

Timeline

• February 5-7 - Finish Process Reflection 1

  • Work on Process Reflection 1 and have it up on my portfolio website by FEBRUARY 7th.

• February 7-13 - Finish Research

  • Work on my research for my topic, which includes the following:

    • An annotated bibliography

    • Detailed explanations of conversations with internal subject matter experts

    • Detailed explanations of conversations with external subject matter experts (if I want an E)

  • Due FEBRUARY 13th

• February 13-March 12 - Finish Thesis+Outline

  • Finish these by MARCH 12th

• March 12-March 19 - Finish Process Reflection 2

  • Have this finished and in my portfolio website by MARCH 19th

• March 19-April 2 - Complete Rough Draft of Written Component

  • Due APRIL 2

• April 2-9 - Finish Artifact Proposal (written) + Give Pitch (verbal)

  • Due APRIL 9

• April 9-16 - Finish Revisions of Written Component

  • Due APRIL 16

• April 16-23 - Artifact Progress Update Presentation

  • Due APRIL 23

• April 23-May 4 - Finish Capstone Project Portion of Portfolio Website with Written Component

  • Due MAY 4

• May 4-11 - Complete Portfolio Website+Process Reflection 3

  • Due MAY 11

• May 11-15 - Rehearse the Senior Symposium

• May 15-18 - Finish Senior Symposium Process Reflection 4

  • Due MAY 18

 

The Scholarly Conversation

I’d love to be able to include some well renowned scientific or religious figures who are well versed and knowledgeable in their field. It would be really cool to get someone who’s famous as well to dive deep with them into a field they are passionate about as well. Maybe someone in the movie industry if that can relate to my topic, but we’ll see.

 

Initial Thoughts

I think existence is a human construct to quantify/explain us. We are things in a universe, so existence is our explanation as to what makes us here. I think the line between reality and not reality is really interesting and crazy; some things we may think are real may not be. Like, memories might not be real, or feelings, or things like that, it opens up a whole bottle of questions I’m not quite sure on yet, but am excited to dive into through this. Our perception on this shapes how we do everything, including conservation, opinionated protests or fights, and daily routine. It’s a really interesting aspect that I’m excited to research.