So, to put it bluntly, this project did not go as smoothly as anticipated. In fact, it was a very rocky road.

 

In January, when we were tasked with coming up with a capstone project idea, I was immediately drawn to the idea of cults. I knew with cults that a ton of them existed and I had always been curious about what would drive someone to join a cult — so that was the root of my original project idea.

 

So bright-eyed and bushy tailed, I submitted my 1500-word project proposal with the intention of doing a multi-faceted research project around cults. Here was my idea:

 

The central question I am aiming to answer with my project is what qualifies something as a cult, what do cult leaders do to convince people to join them and on a personal level, are there any elements of my own life that are cult-like. I plan to examine cults from both ends, by studying what methods are implemented by cult leaders to grow their following as well as what the characteristics are of people who join cults. I also will look into things that have cult-like tendencies and deduce how much overlap there truly is between these two groupings.

 

How naive I was.

 

Over the last three months, I’ve encountered numerous difficulties putting together this project into its eventual final form. When I began writing content for the project, I was looking into the most famous cults such as Jonestown and the Manson family and essentially writing case studies about them. But as I wrote these, I felt like I was doing nothing more than regurgitating information from other sources.

 

It quickly became apparent to me that the idea of doing all this research on existing cults just to be able to compare them to cult-like aspects of the modern world was going to be a long, grueling process that may not lead to many groundbreaking revelations. Afterall, there were already lots of documentaries and research papers about cults. I determined that I didn’t have as much to add to that space as I originally thought.

 

So, I pivoted.

 

I chose to scrap the part of my project that dove into existing cults and focus solely on the concept of “Cult-like.” Just as much as I was interested in cults of the past, I was equally fascinated with the form cults had taken in the present. I knew there were so many different brands, celebrities, political ideologies, and other constructs of the modern world that people followed with a religious-like devotion. I had a lot of ideas in mind. People like Donald Trump or Marjorie Taylor Green had overtly cult-like followings who they spread dangerous rhetoric to. Exercise companies like SoulCycle or CrossFit have some secretive, pyramid scheme vibes around them, but also have large followings and people who swear by the benefits of participating. Other things with cult-like followings, such as Taylor Swift, seem innocent on the surface but the lengths to which people go to see Taylor or deduce when her next song is coming out can be extreme. That’s what made me excited about this redesign for the project. With all those ideas I listed, I couldn’t just point at each one and say, “that’s a cult.” They had “cult-like” characteristics, but none were overtly a cult. There wasn’t a lot of exploration into defining things that were “cult-like,” so this seemed to be an undefined space I could explore.

 

Thus, the Cult-Like project was born, and I was ready to dive in.

 

But throughout the next couple weeks of working on the project, something was still missing. In the same vein as when I researched famous cults, when I looked into modern day companies that had some cult-like elements, I still felt removed from it. I felt like an outsider. I was falling into the same practice of researching a brand, discussing the origins and suspicious practices they implement, and then more or less regurgitating the information and giving a take. It wasn’t coming to fruition in the way I had hoped. I started to doubt the vision I had and wondered if I should switch lanes again.

 

With each attempt to morph this project into something I really felt passionate about, it felt increasingly fleeting that I could actually find that spark. As the calendar turned to March and many of my peers’ projects seemed to be taking shape, I felt lost and frustrated. Instead of building this project piece by piece from the ground up, I had come with a vision of how to build the entire thing from Day 1 — and now I was ripping it apart and hoping to find something salvageable.

 

Feeling burnt out and fed up with my inability to create a feasible idea, I took a step back. I needed to get out of the bubble I was in with my own project and think about what Capstone was really about. With every project we had analyzed from previous semesters, each author had a personal connection to their topic. Similarly in my talks with my discussion group, all three of them had a topic they had personally interacted with and wanted to explore further. That’s when it finally clicked, and I figured out what was missing from my project:

 

The why?

 

Why was this a topic I wanted to write about? Why was I qualified to write about it?

 

To get the most of this project, I had to become more introspective. I had to evaluate my own life and determine what were the most cult-like parts of it — and explore those. By doing this, I was no longer just looking at cult-like companies from afar and taking a stance. I would now be writing about things that I had directly interacted with in my day-to-day life. I could give an honest assessment of the cult-like nature of these things because I could say how well they had worked on me. This project didn’t need to be an exploration of every single modern-day cult. It needed to explore the cults that have impacted my life.

 

So that’s what I did.

 

The three cults I’ve selected each have taken a hold of my life in some way. I am exploring the cult-like aspects of skiing, shopping at Trader Joe’s, and being an avid sports fan. All three of these concepts have been relevant in my life for a long time — and I’ve fully experienced the cult-like nature of them in college. I am excited to share my findings.

 

***

 

So, after a whirlwind of a semester, that’s how this Capstone project came to be.

 

It wasn’t an easy process to get to this point. But I can confidently say that I’m proud of the final product I’ve put forward — which I often doubted would be the case.