Journal

October 14th, 2010 Today, I met with Doctor Valenza and we discussed the focus of my project. As interesting as learning about the cause and effect of Fairytales would be it is truly impossible to correlate any morals with the morals we have today. There are too many external factors that could affect one's morals and there is no way to truly connect the two even if there is an unconscious connection. So she and i formulated a similar question, however, it now goes in a more approachable path. The new question regards whether or not as adults we can //recognize// the morals unconsciously implanted in our brains during childhood. I will now discover the morals within three children stories, as I had planned to do before, but instead of trying to see the cause and effect I will instead try to understand if it is possible for adults to recognize these morals. I feel this is a better way to approach my project because this way I still get to study the morals and their interactions with people, however, it is much easier to execute and understand this way.

October 27th, 2010 Today, Doctor Valenza and I began to create a survey on Google Forms. We decided that instead of doing a poll we would instead create a open ended content analysis survey. This way the survey wouldn't be leading or bias regarding what I have researched the moral already is. Together we decided that the first question would ask the participant their gender so that I can see a difference in recognition based on their gender. The second question shall ask if they area teacher are student to see if there is a difference in recognition based on age. The third question will ask if they are familiar with the stories: Little Red Riding Hood, Jack and the Beanstalk, and Cinderella. We considered asking the participant who read each story to them (i.e. parent, teacher, themselves), however the placement of this question either needs to be after the third or before each open ended. Then we discussed having the person describe the plot of the story or I provide a brief **unbiased** description of the story. The key term is unbiased because I in no way can lead them to find the morals, they need to find them in order for this to work. Finally the person would write what they believe the moral in the story is. I am very impressed with the survey so far and I feel that it will add a bit of my own research to the project and to the understanding of the "stickiness of fairytales."

November 8th, 2010 Today, I came to the conclusion that my own story will revolve around death and the child. I will use Elisabeth Kübler -Ross' 7 stages of grief as a basis and representation of death in my fairytale. The stages are: grief and denial, pain and guilt, anger and bargaining, depression reflection and loneliness, the upward turn, reconstruction, and lastly acceptance and hope. Each stage will be represented as a monster or task that the protagonist must defeat in order to gain the hope and acceptance.