For my Senior Seminar project, I chose to focus on the essential question of “Why are migraines so difficult to prevent and treat, and what strategies can best help people manage their symptoms?” I’ve dealt with migraines throughout my entire life, but in the past 2 years, my migraines have increasingly gotten worse, and now happen more frequently, starting to affect my life a bit. No one really knows the full answer for why that is, it could be stress, or it could be as you get older, you get more migraines, but I’ve learned to live with it. I also have this condition within migraines which are called aura migraines. Aura migraines are when sometimes when I get migraines, I get temporarily blinded or see specific blinding patterns in one eye, causing me to get dizziness and nausea, leading to me not being able to do anything for hours some days. Having migraines in general, then getting a super confusing condition within migraine had made me really frustrated. I didn’t know much about the science behind migraines before either, so I thought it would be a good idea to make my project about migraines, as I was really passionate about finding possible answers to my questions.

Throughout my research, I found many answers, but also new questions about my project. I found that Botox, which can be used cosmetically, but when I’m talking about it, I’m talking about treating migraines, is a very strong treatment for migraines. I decided that I wanted to build a product around that, so I decided with my mentor that I wanted to do Botox, and found a silicone mannequin online meant for testing Botox. I recorded the video, and thought that it came out pretty well. One thing though is that I didn’t talk much about the other treatments that can help with migraines. Because of that, I decided to create an online guidebook teaching about migraines and other treatments, as well as putting my Botox video on it. This took me quite a long time as I used canvas for the first time, and it was a bit tricky at first, but after finishing it, I’m really proud of the outcome of the guidebook. I answered a lot of my questions about migraines, and had gotten some really good knowledge from my research as well as from my mentor, but also felt disappointed in some of the answers I came across, as scientists still don’t know the full answer about what causes migraines.

However, I’m not letting my unanswered questions take away the amazing information I gained throughout this process. Now, I feel more confident with dealing with my own problems with migraines, and can help anyone else who struggles with this same condition as me.