Personal Project Supervisors must be careful to ensure that a student’s proposal or ideas are safe. Here is a delightful example of a proposal that we had to disallow, for obvious reasons!
Personal Project Outline
What am I going to do?
- Putting my self as a bait for pick pockets around Jakarta
- Making a video about the places that are most likely for ordinary people to be scammed by pick pockets
Why am I doing this?
- To see if Jakarta is a safe place for tourist or the people living inside it.
- To raise awareness to people living around Jakarta and to tourist about pick pockets in Jakarta
How am I Going To do this?
- First, I am going to buy some cameras obviously. There is a place in Fatmawati that sells hidden cameras.
- Second, I need some empty wallets for a “bait” to attract pick pockets
- Ask my friends or other people to help me filming from different angles.
- After I get all of my equipment, I will go to markets, parks etc. and hope to get scammed.
- After the filming is all finish, I am going to put it all together and make the actual product which is the video
How am I going to do this?
- Ask/ interview people about the places in Jakarta which are packed with pick pockets.
Teaching and Learning in Indonesia 
That is hilarious, but dangerous. Do not say it is for real ?
It was a real proposal Inef, but we had to explain to the student that it was not possible. 🙂
Advise for him/her: I see that you are kind of interested in criminology. I respect your unique idea, but…Rather than putting yourself as a bait, why do not you just gather evidence by collecting articles about pickpockets incidents? I am sure there are a lot of them available in local newspaper or official TV broadcast as everyday occurrence. As for the product, you can make brochures, posters, booklets etc about the tips to avoid pickpockets….or any crime in general.
Good thinking, and that’s *exactly* how a good PP supervisor should think and act, the idea is not to discourage our students’ creativity and ideas, but to harness and direct them into a meaningful direction.
Not always easy, but powerful when done well. I seem to recall somebody assisting you (encouraging) with just a simple question… 😉