Dear Michelle: We did it!

We made it through one class of heaven, and one class of death.

This semester I had two classes, Behavioral Neurobiology (381) and Child Development (320), with Michelle. And to be honest, I don't know what I would have done if she hadn't been in those classes!

The great thing about having Michelle in both of these classes was that we had both our favorite and our least favorite class together. So every Monday and Wednesday in Behavioral Neurobiology, we would be full of smiles and interesting stories from the weekend. And every Tuesday and Thursday, we would practice any ounce of patience we continued to have after weeks and weeks of Child Development with Higley.

We’re both Psychology majors, but I started the semester with a clinical emphasis, and she started the semester with a social emphasis. Anyway, we both ended the semester with a cognitive emphasis.

Michelle was not as outspoken about her hatred for Child Development as I was, so Higley probably liked her a lot better than he liked me. I promise you that she hated it as much as I did though!

Good Times:

I remember one time when we were so fed up with 320 (which really isn’t that unique, as it happened pretty regularly twice a week) we made a list with the people around us why we couldn’t withdraw from the class (would go below scholarship credit hours, can’t risk a W on our transcript etc…)

“This is no classroom…it’s a tomb”

When we were learning about how girls retain more fat, and someone (probably Jeannie) asked if that was part of the reason why babies love softness etc… and Dr. Higley responded, “All I have to say is… thank goodness women are soft.”

The first thing Dr. Larson said in 381 was “This… is the best class at BYU.” We probably didn’t think so then, but it definitely turned out to be!

When Tracey said, “Did Elder Scott give a talk saying that or was that Slife?”

When Dr. Higley was asking how many points extra credit was worth, and you said “one hundred,” and he believed you!

When Dr. Larson was imitating the guy on the slide for autonomic nervous system; “There’s a snake and I’m in my tighty whities!”

When Dr. Higley talked about Prolapse, and no one in the class had ever heard of it. We all freaked out. I went home to figure out if it was true, and was devastated to find out that it was.

When we were talking about the sympathetic nervous system and Dr. Larson said “In Florida they didn’t screw around… That was a poor choice of words.”

When we found out that the American Neurological Association recommends that we eat fish twice a week. I don’t remember if it grossed you out, but I remember groaning.

You never got frustrated at me when I would imitate Neurotransmitters or something by giving them high, squeaky voices, and act out what they were supposed to do.

“And nobody wants an Uncle Herniation!” (I now realize that is a real term, except uncal instead of uncle, but it was funny at the time…)

And my number one memory, when I found out you had catalepsy! I will probably tell stories about that until the day I die. “I have a friend who literally collapses when she gets scared!”

Michelle, thanks for keeping me sane this semester! I’m sad that we don’t have any classes together next semester. We should have taken Higley’s Monkey class!

Good luck on your 320 final today!

Three Days

Until I get to see

      

5 days until I get to see

  

   

And 9 days until I get to see

 

I can’t wait! My family is amazing!

P.S. I didn’t forget Jamie. I see her all the time!  :)

EEG Lab: Giver of Death

This semester I am taking Behavioral Neurobiology, which is one of the coolest classes I’ve ever taken. We had to write three papers, and my second paper was on the same topic that my teacher, Dr. Larson, researches. Thanks to not procrastinating and my amazing TA, Ann, it turned out to be a pretty good paper and I was invited to work in the lab because of it!

I was really excited, and it’s proved to be just as cool as I ever thought it would be. Working on a research team is amazing. I love going to lab meetings. They make me feel like a legitimate researcher, even though right now I’m just a helper.

I work in an EEG lab, which measures the electrical activity in the brain. We study error processing.

Now, you have to understand the title of this post. Last year I did two EEGs for class credit. They. Were. Awful.
I thought it would be really cool, and it kind of was, but it was also miserable.

Here’s a picture of me with the EEG net on. Doesn’t it look great? This was taken the first time I did an EEG. The net is soaked in salt water, to improve the conductivity, and then they squirt salt water under most of the sensors. So when the net was taken off, it looked like I had crimped my hair on the top half, and not the bottom.
(The first time, I had a date right after, and I had to run home as fast as I could to take a shower. Haha.)

Then, I had to do a Stroop task. I’m sure you’ve all seen something like it. Here’s a picture of a regular Stroop task. Usually, you say the color, and not the word out loud.

The task that I took was a little different. It would either say "color" or "word". For example, if it said "word"… BLUE. I would press the button for blue, but if it said "color" before the word popped up, I would say red.
It was hard, it was long, and it didn’t help that I had to look at really weird pictures between every trial.

Anyway, the one that I administer is not that bad. It’s a flanker task, which looks like this:
<<><< or <<<<<

But it’s still not fun for the participants. I can’t wait to see the results though. Here I am, the giver of EEGs. The giver of 90 minutes of flankers, PASATs, and blood pressure tests.

But if you go to BYU and want to make $15, it’s not that bad.  :)

Variety Show

I am done as an Activities Chair! It’s been a lot of fun, but I am excited to try something else out, and it’s definitely nice not to have so much pressure on me anymore. I definitely would have done things differently if I were to start over, but overall I’m please with how the semester went.

The La Casa boys did a hilarious dance where they essentially made a snowman, snow angels, etc… This picture is their interpretive dance of a snow angel.  It was hilarious.

Since I was busy putting the show together and getting my act together, I told Hunter to do the whole bottle-blowing thing that I usually pull at ward parties. He was awesome and did it. We didn’t practice at all, but pulled it off surprisingly well!

This act was the finale. I didn’t mean it to be that way- Beau put the schedule together. I got 14 girls together on Sunday and we made this skit. I’m sure you’ve seen the Youtube video that we copied. Unfortunately, I made all the signs and didn’t have enough time to fill them all in (I had to find fourteen Snuggies!), so you couldn’t see the words all that well. It was a lot of fun, and it turned out pretty good.

 

Once during the show we had some technical difficulties, so I went on stage and did my arm trick. Then, they had a human body trick competition and they wouldn’t let me enter because mine was “just weird.” As opposed to “cool.”

Whatever.  :)