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As I'm sure most other people in the class experienced in grade school, I too was taught the procedure of "scientific research," which all began with a definitive hypothesis which could not be changed in any way, shape or form during an experiment and subsequent conclusion.  However, my junior year of high school I participated in a new half-day school program sponsored by my neighboring technical school and the Columbus Zoo and Aquarium.  At the zoo, I wrote a thesis on the behavior of the dominance hierarhcy of the female drill monkey -- but I constantly found myself stuck in ruts.

I would observe on a daily basis, but I found that every time I observed, I wanted to tweak my hypothesis just a bit in order to encompass what I had just observed.  As I continually approached my advisor about this, I was turned down; there was no way to change a hypothesis until you proved or disproved it.  Not only did it impede my learning about the drill monkey, but I was also frustrated that I could not do more. 

The "loopy" way of looking at science is what I was striving to do, but I didn't have the labeling for it.  I had been striving to conceive an observation, then to continuously add observations and make a new observation.  The passive and aggressive behaviors of the monkeys constantly changed when enveloped in new circumstances, but because of my original hypothesis (which I had had to have formed after only two weeks of observing these monkeys), I could not incorporate this into my 'true' hypothesis.

So, learning about this new way of thinking about science basically put into words what I had been striving to do that whole year but was held back from. 

I now have more of a palette with which to construct ideas, and to build off of.