Since my last blog entry, quite alot of progressive things have happened to contribute to my EPQ project. To begin with, I attended a presentation evening where past EPQ students presented their topics and explained the things they had to go through to achieve their final result. This was very useful to me because I was able to ask any queeries I had and recieve feedback which wasn't from a teacher but from a student with first hand experience. It also gave me an insight as to how to present my project once it had been completed and that it is vital to present the project with as many resources as possible to grab the audiences' attention. In addition I have filled out parts of my production log which keeps records of my initial planning and also plans for my project proposal. Its a basic outline of the progress I have made and a small presentation of my idea to head of EPQ to see if my idea is feasible or not. It is an electronic log which makes it more simple to fill in and refer back to. Finally, I have also contacted Matt Hampson. My reasoning for this is that, despite the fact his debut was after 1995 when rugby union turned proffessional, I have decided to stop trying to recieve my primary information so directly, I should take steps up to acquiring that information. Matt Hampson is well known for being active to his audience's enquiries and because he is in the same field (no pun intended) as the people I wish to interview, he is a good starting point. I feel I have enough resources to educate myself now in this transition (for secondary information) and so I will now put my focus solely on researching ways in which to approach creating a documentary because at the moment I am unsure how to even begin.  

Recently in class i took a self assessed skills audit in order to show myself and my advisor what I feel my strengths are and what I feel I could improve on. They were split in to seperate categories such as planning, communication skills and creativity etc. Within these categories were statements in which I was to put a number in relation to my experience of the statement from 1-5 (wide experience to no experience). From this is is clear to see that my strengths lie in the communication area when it comes to proposing my ideas to others in a way that makes them see it from my point of view. Also, when it comes to developing a good relationship with fellow workers/spectators so that if I ever require a favour off of them, (such as advice or information) they would be obliged to collabrorate. In addition, motivation is a skill which I pride myself in. If I have a set goal in my head then I will stop at nothing until I have succeeded, in my life I have never left anything unfinished or stopped before I have reached the end. This will be a useful skill to apply to my project because if things ever get difficult I can get past it and complete it. That brings me to my weakness, it has been clear to me for sometime and confirmed though the self assessed skills audit, that my organisational skills are poor. I have never been good at planning my time effectively, I simply sit down and work until I'm physically unable to do anymore. I can never set out specific sub-tasks to be completed to achieve an overall goal and I can especially not set my own deadlines because I can barely work to ones set for me. However, this is not a problem that cannot be overcome. Through advice from fellow students and a small bit of research I have found that a chart, mapping out all the tasks that must be completed on a weekly basis, would be useful as I can tick it off when each small task has been completed in the allocated time period. So my future plans would be to create one of these to become more organised and map my progress towards finishing the project. In additin, there is a workshop after school tomorrow which will show presentations from previous post 16 students about their EPQ project and hopefully I will be able to find one which relates to my topic.