The Series Finale.

I am currently sitting in the full sized bed in the small room in the wonderful apartment in which I have lived for the past two months. I have to be out of it by tomorrow at 11am, so I'm trying to gather my thoughts and reflect a little bit.

Everything is blank and practically empty in this room; just how I found it. No longer does the Palmetto flag hang to my left, nor is my desk adorned with pictures of friends and loved ones. When I leave Village East tomorrow morning, it will be as if I was never here.

Oh, but I was here. Even though it may seem like a dream to me, and even though I may still not believe that I have had this opportunity, I have indeed completed my first research internship. It has been absolutely amazing; but before I go into my "wrap-up" blog post. Let me tell you about the past two weeks.

Everything was hell. Hell, hell, HELL. These past two weeks have been some of the most "on edge" times I have experienced in a long while. I'm sure that I put much of the pressure on myself, but I also felt like a complete moron when I was trying to put together my research poster to present this past Wednesday.

Here's a little time frame: I would have really liked to get my poster done on the 21st, so that I could email it to the printer and have it done at the Medical Campus (their printer is nicer). I was flying out to Pensacola for a wedding on the 22nd, and would not be back in town until the evening of the 24th. The printer at the Medical Campus needed the Powerpoint slide of my poster by the 23rd. Basically, I needed to have my poster completely done by the 21st.

We had a program meeting on the 21st at the Medical Campus, and I usually don't go back to the Lab (different campus) after the meetings. However, I knew I really needed to get work done, so I headed back. Good thing I did.

I had already submitted a draft to my mentor for her to review. I thought it was pretty good, and that at most, she would have some slight formatting changes to make. And THAT would be no big deal to change, right?

Hell. To. The. NO. As I'm sitting at the desk doing some minor, yet tedious changes to my graphs, I receive a HUGE email from my mentor. As soon as I noticed that it had 9 bullet points, I knew it could not be good. My heart sank to the basement. The first point was the killer though; basically, I had entered the data in the Excel sheet incorrectly, which means that every single one of my graphs was incorrect. As I continued to read on, my heart and my pride were beaten into submission by the way the email was worded. It was just very blunt, and I do not take academic criticism well at all.

I haven't been that close to crying about something academia related since I almost got a B+ in Latin in like 9th grade. Or that time I missed a stupid word in the ACSI Spelling Bee. . . Anyway, I seriously was about to hyperventilate, cry, or go into convulsions. I felt like a complete moron. Then I got angry at my mentor. And then I went to my graduate student with a "b-b-but you don't understand" look on my face.

But he did understand. I was visibly shaken, and I'm sure he could tell. He reassured me that my mentor is just not very "warm," and that it's nothing personal. He asked me if I was ok, and I said "uh-huh." It was sad. I felt like I was five. I think I was even more upset because I knew there was no way out. I had to sit there and do those damn graphs over again.

Three hours later, I left Head Lab and with it my intellectual dignity, for the day. The graphs were done, and even though they still needed to be formatted (my graduate student said he would do that for me), I could at least take a good step back and work on the changes my mentor suggested one at a time.

^^ THIS is what research is like. If you are thinking about doing research, please be aware that it is frustrating. It will make you want to stick your foot through the computer screen. I was incredibly angry, sad, upset. . . basically rampant with every negative emotion in the book. Why? Because I take great pride in academic work that I do and this was a glitch in my plan. However, looking back (and hindsight is 20/20), I am so happy that this happened because it gave me a taste of the reality of conducting research and doing good science. Am I willing to make mistakes and correct them? Or will I just sit there and anxiously whine? Perseverence is the key in any field of research.

8 painstaking revisions and countless back-and-forth emails/conversations with my mentor later, I finally printed my poster in the bottom of the Psychology building (on regular paper). Feelings attached to a "job well done" doesn't even cut it. I was grinning ear to ear as that 42x70" poster finally was done printing.

The poster session the next day went exceedingly well. I know much more about spatial navigation than I would ever think to give myself credit for. In fact, I found out the next day that my mentor went back to the lab (I wasn't there) and was bragging on how good of a job I did at my first poster session ever! :) And I thought she hated me. . . She even brought in cheesecake the next day, congratulated me, told me to keep in touch and to contact her if I ever need a positive letter of recommendation. CLUTCH.

Then today I went in to say my final goodbyes to the Head Lab crew. They bought me a pound of coffee from a local coffee shop as a going away gift :)

I will miss Head Lab.

The Truman Show, 6 North, & Research Musings (Part 2)

Ok, so I'll be honest. I don't remember the week of July 12-16 very well. Actually this makes sense, because I can barely remember how to I got to this airport. Maybe I'm dreaming. . . (Inception reference).

Anyway, I think that the beginning of the week found me very spiritually needy. Oh! And financially needy too. I started taking the Metro more. Hmm. . . oh and I found my favorite coffee spot in St. Louis (Kayak's). Here are some research related activities that I think I did:

1. This whole week was me getting my poster ready. I learned how to plot data in Excel and then copy & transpose it to SigmaPlot to make graphs w/ error bars. The whole process was a little frustrating, as I was struggling to find any significance in my data.

2. I started figuring out the format and the things I wanted to add to the poster. A Master's student already did a poster on a previous pilot run, so that also made things much easier and much more difficult. Easier because I had a really good template of what my poster should/could look like and more difficult because I knew that whatever I said on my poster would be painstakingly compared to the work of this Master's student. It's slightly intimidating, considering that I'm wicked new to research.

3. Wednesday was our program meeting. Emily Somerville came in and described what occupational therapists do in regard to aging. I really enjoyed this presentation because it encouraged INTERACTION between the audience and the speaker. Also, Emily is a Covenant-graduate! How ironic! It was such a blessing to know that we're coming from similar educational backgrounds. I've felt fairly isolated in regard to that in this internship.
After the presentation, we went to 6 North, which is an apartment complex that was constructed using 100% universal design principles. If you aren't familiar with universal design, you should Google it or something because it's pretty cool. Basically, universal design in building construction refers to living space that is usable for everyone, not only people with disabilities. For example, there are things like ground level entrances without stairs, wider doorways and hallways, lever handles instead of knobs, etc. It was extremely nice, and I really appreciated there are federal programs that assist people with getting this living space. I would LOVE to live there! The apartment we saw was ballin'.

4. I stepped outside of my box on Friday and went to a Bible study that I had heard about. I didn't know anyone there, which is scary to me because I hate meeting new people. It turned out to be a huge blessing to me though, because I was able to talk to a guy who recently became a Christian. I need insights into life like that to remind me that God is omnipresent, and does not dwell in the temple of Covenant College.

Hmm. . . now that I've typed all that out, I am reminded that the week before last was really good in comparison with that past week. Pessimists like myself would do well to look back on good times more often, haha.

Stay tuned for Part 3, because it's one for the ages.

Ciao.

The Truman Show, 6 North, & Research Musings (Part 1)

For all of you Covenant folk: No, the administration did not add a sixth floor to the already dilapidated building we call Carter Hall. Read on.

Every time I think to update this blog, I say to myself, "is there anything worth blogging about?" or "how often should I blog?" Then I sit there for a couple of days. Then something really cool happens that I want to blog about. Then I take a nap. Then I repeat this cycle, forgetting that I had already gone through it once, twice, maybe thrice before. All that to say, it's 4AM (right around my peak writing time), I have about a week left in my internship, and I finally have some thoughts gathered (I tend to jot down ideas and drafts in random places then make HUGE blog posts like this one).


July 5-July 9. . .

was full of mistakes, halts, frustrations, and getting stuff done. I was extremely worried at the beginning of the week I would not have enough data for my poster before it was due to the printer. Also, I didn't think that much of the data would be of any real significance. Of course, to make matters even worse, the graduate student that I work most closely with was having car issues. He didn't come in that day, which means it was just me and Jake in the office running ICCs for the manuscript that the Head Lab is working on (the manuscript is concerned with genetic links in aging, by the way). I went in early on Monday to finish things up. You know, make a good impression for that recommendation letter I'm sure I will need at some point? Well, fail. Come to find out, there was a little problem and the gray matter volumes on the ICCs were alllll wrong. It took two days to figure that out.

Meanwhile, I scheduled two more older adult participants that I didn't really need. Another fail.

Wednesdays are program meeting days when all of the Center for Aging interns come together and learn more about aging. I will hold my tongue on my opinion of some of the teaching we are exposed to, but I thought that this Wednesday was particularly interesting. We visited Parc Provence, which is a care facilitiy specifically for dementia patients. It costs quite a bit per year (around $100,000 on average), and that's not including the costs of medication. Let me just say, I did NOT like this place. It felt like I was on the Truman Show the entire time. The "tour guide" was very fake and was trying to "sell" Parc Provence to us in a weird way. This place was even equipped with trap doors... Don't get me wrong, this is an extremely nice facility. However, something about the atmosphere just did not sit well with me.

The whole experience got me thinking about nursing facilities. I couldn't picture placing my parents in a home at all. I would do everything in my power to prevent that (I mean, no one wants to go to a nursing/assisted-living home.) But (granted one/both of them was afflicted with dementia and I had the financial resources) would I send them to a place like Parc Provence? I'm still unsure. On one hand, the facility is extremely nice and is very well-suited for dementia patients (universal design). However, there's something "fishy" about the institution. I wouldn't feel comfortable leaving my loved ones in a place where I wasn't 100% certain that the ins and outs were legit. Also, I wouldn't feel comfortable with the fact that, if there was something going on, my parents would be unable to explain their dismay, simply because of their illness. It just seems like a trap. BUT, on the other hand, most assisted living facilities I have been to smell like stale urine and despair. Parc Provence have people going to group classes and community events, and what's more, they have residents organized by a dementia rating so that like-minded people are placed in the same "house." It seems like it would be a very comfortable choice. Ahhh, I don't know. I'm just rambling now.

Overall, this week was rough. But it got substantially better. I believe that this was when God began to really push me out of my comfort zone, which is something that really needed to be happened.

To Be Continued...

"Yeah, you haven't posted in a while."

The title of this post comes from my good friend, Beth Tinsley, who I got to see randomly this past Sunday night. She brought to my attention that though all of this life has happened... I haven't told all of my loyal followers (HA!) about my life here at WUSTL. I am dreadfully sorry.

I believe that one of the reasons that I haven't posted in a while is because I've been telling so many people about what I have been doing lately. At first when people asked me the question, "what are you researching?," I said "spatial navigation throughout the lifespan, which is basically route-finding." The recipient of this message always looked dreadfully confused, so I stupidly decided that the best thing to do was to elaborate on what exactly I do every day. Each time I finished describing what I do everyday with intense enthusiasm, I realized, "Rashad, you are a HUGE dork and no one finds this even remotely interesting except you and your psychology cronies." Therefore, I've stopped elaborating to people about what I am specifically doing, unless they ignorantly decide to dig. Then it's on them.

Another reason that I haven't posted in a while is because I have not been in St. Louis for the past five days. My best friend (I have two best friends) got married to the love of his life on Saturday and he asked me to be a groomsman. So, I have not only gone to Carolina in my mind, but also physically, as I was Bachelor-partying it up, rehearsal dinnering, and standing in a baller tux about to die of heat stroke. I would do it again in a heartbeat.

Anyway, needless to say, my mind has not been even thinking about this internship for the past couple of days, which is good because I was in need of a break from everything here. I needed to regroup with close friends and recenter my thoughts on Jesus.

I will try to recap on things the best way I know how, in a LIST! :)

1. I have been running older adult subjects for the past two weeks so that I can have some data come July 29th (poster session). I also ran two young adult subjects just so I could get a feel for the level of differentiation between the way young adults and older adults navigation through the maze. I won't disclose any of the probable findings just yet (you will have to read my poster, muahaha), but let's just say that Rashad Gober will not be going into geriatric care. Sitting in a room with a 75 year old who can't get around a virtual maze he/she has done literally 6 times before gets a litle irritating. God is using this to test my patience.

2. Well, now that I know that I am not going in to geriatric care or any kind of geriatric psychology, and also since learning more about Alzheimer's Disease has made me not want to get old (I am determined to reach 21 and stay there quite contently), I have decided that I want someone to just take me out to the pasture and shoot me if/when I hit 81.

3. Speaking of death, I got to see the dissection of a human brain last week. It was pretty awesome. The brain's owner was 74 years old and had a CDR of 3 (CDR is the scale to measure degree of Alzheimer's onset and dementia; 0 is baller status, and 3 is wicked bad). We only looked at the left hemisphere, but the posterior half was noticably shrunken and polluted with plaques and tangles. Looking at another diseased brain, the hippocampus was noticeably shrunken from its original size. When I say noticeable, I mean like less than a centimeter, but when it's your brain we're talking about, ANY movement is noticeable in more ways than one.

4. As I was staring at the brain of this man who lived a life filled with 74 years of experiences, memories, trials, struggles, etc., I couldn't help but feel a little overwhelmed by how much cannot be explained by science. We can't physically SEE the memories and images that are lodged in the brain of this man, but they were there. Life is just incredible. AND, it's incredible to think how intricately it is all put together so that we can function! If ANYTHING in the brain is a little 'off-kilter,' you get sub-par functioning and possibly lower quality of life. This leads me to my next point...

5. MACROEVOLUTION IS STUPID. I could rant on for days about how macroevolution does not provide sufficient evidence for the creation of human beings. If I wasn't 100% sold (and I'm thinking big picture here) on the idea that there is a Creator-God who has intricately knit together the universe, looking at the brain definitely convinced me. I honestly think it takes more faith to believe in the theory of evolution than it does to believe in God or the supernatural. I mean... the odds are slim that a positive mutation (most mutations are harmful) caused monkeys to evolve into human beings. Really? Blah. Anyway, the theory of evolution has been on my mind a good bit since everyone in science seems to accept it as fact. Since I don't, I've been trying to figure out what the hoopla is about.

6. I think it's exciting that I get to keep my poster from this internship! Hopefully I'll be able to put it up somewhere in the Psychology department :)

7. I really think that all Psychology majors at Covenant should be required to take an introductory computer science course. I may talk to someone about that. I just know that my basic understanding of Excel is not enough to survive in higher academia outside of Covenant. Praise God that the graduate student I work with is helpful!

8. Today I worked in SPSS and some other program that I don't understand. I did a bunch of stuff, but I still have no idea what I'm doing. Hopefully, that will get worked out.

9. OH. I was able to talk to my professor-mentor in my program last week also. As of right now, I think I'm going to take a year off after Covenant and backpack around Europe (who is with me?) then go to graduate school and work on my PhD in Clinical Psychology. In between summers, and during graduate school, I hope to get jobs as a research assistant in different labs, just so I can get breadth of experience. I LOVE RESEARCH! From graduate school, and if I stay interested in neuropsychology, I can specialize in that. I want to see patients and spend a good bit of time with them (psychiatrists don't get to do that often, just because of the case load) and I'd like to do research. I'll probably end up teaching on the university-level at some point as well. I have a strong feeling that I will never leave academia. And I'm ok with that.

Well. I think that is everything important I have to say at this point. Life is good. God is greater. And coming from an extreme pessimist, please believe my words.

Prayer Requests:
- Patience and brainpower in trying to figure out statistical analyses for my poster! Ahhhh!!!
- Staying consistent in prayer and in the Word
- Persevering through times of frustrations and the setbacks that often occur with research
- Finding comfort in Christ in times of loneliness

Research, research, ethics, & research.

I am learning so much about research here at WashU. However, much of it isn't dirctly about the reseach I am conducting. Now don't get me wrong here, I am learning loads about the redious, frustrating, painstaking process that is research. But, what I believe is more important is that I have been constantly asking, "why?" Why go through this process (as described above) and spend all of this time, (someone's) money, and mental effort participating in a process that carries (sometimes larger than others) a risk of failure?

But, at the same time, and from a more bibilical perspective, I know that we are to seek knowledge. I am just confused as how to discern when seeking knowledge is pushed aside for the academic glamour, career advancement, and/or money. If I am going to conduct research in the future, I must remember the larger picture: love God and love my neighbor as myself (Luke 10:27). I am slowly beginning to realize how incredibly easy it is to miss this.

On to ethics. Yesterday all of the interns in my program attended an ethics seminar all day. While thee are some really difficult ethical dilemmas that arise, I just really believe that, in its most simple form, the decisions we make boil down to honestly seeking truth. Yes, this is really simplifying the study of ethics, but this is how I am able to make sense of ethics in light of Jesus and the Gospel.

Prayer Requests:
- Doing good science for Christ in a secular environment
- Finding my comfort in the Father during frequent times of loneliness
- Giving people the benefit of the doubt

Crisis.

Currently listening to: Elliot Smith, which is probably the worst possible music I could listen to right now, given my mood.

I'm sure that the title "Crisis" caught your attention, which was the main purpose. But, I also want you to remember that I'm a bit dramatic and nothing that I call a "crisis" actually turns out to be one in reality.

Slight recap of the major events of the past couple of days:

Monday - worked in the lab all day and became an official taste tester at Solae, which is a company that makes soy based products (I will receive compensation for my time, which is why I signed up); I'll be honest, Monday was a little boring because I basically just read research articles all day. Don't get me wrong, self-esteem and its effects on the hippocampus are quite interesting, but there's only so much scientific jargon I can stomach in a 24 hour period.

Tuesday - kinda figured out a little bit more of how the spatial navigation project will work; The other undergraduate research assistant and I worked on coding for the typical errors that the older adults made when going through the maze. SLIGHT PROBLEM: the stupid program didn't save the majority of the files we needed to code, so this pretty much fell apart in 30 minutes. However, Jake informed me that this kind of disarray is a common part of the research process, especially at the beginning. I'm just easily frustrated because I'm a very headstrong, "go getter," and I don't like to be patient, I guess.

And that brings us today, where my crises that have slowly been building up, all came to a head. They are:
1. "Yes, I'm going to get my PhD in Clinical Psychology. That is definitely my career choice." Oh wait... but I'm really interested in neuropsychology... but I want to work with people... ok, so I'll specialize in Clinical Neuropsychology! (I found out yesterday that this is an option) Wait, maybe I should consider medical school? I could then specialize in Psychiatry. No, I should stick with Clinical Psychology. But, I really want to prescribe medicine; there's a big push for psychologists to be able to do that with special training right? HOLD UP. What about this whole MD-PhD thing ("mud-phud")!? Then I could do both! AND, the NIH would basically pay for me to go to school. But I don't think I'm smart enough to get in... or am I? But am I too late? No, I can do post-bacc. studies in pre-med. But do I really want to do that? Do I want to take the MCAT? What if I don't get in? Is this actually God's plan for my life? What is God's plan for my life? DAJSKDJALKSDAKSLDJA.

^^ Yes, above you can see my thought processes all day. Actually, I shortened much of it for your viewing pleasure. I don't think enlightening you to my vast neuroticisms will make anythings more clear to you or me. Summary: I don't know if I want to go to medical school, graduate school, or do the MD-PhD program. I don't even know if the latter is possible, given my limited research experience (The "MD" part means that I would be a clinical practitioner, and the "PhD" says that I will conduct research. The NIH sees the importance of research in an academic hospital setting, which is why they will fund individuals to go down this path).

2. I'm quite fearful that I won't have enough data collected by July 29th to present a poster on my research.


Prayer Requests:

- Submission to Christ (I think much of this worry/anxiety is me trying to do everything on my own).
- That I would become increasingly more comfortable in this novel setting; it still stresses me out at times
- Loneliness; I'm just by myself for the vast part of the day

The Rest of the Week.

Currently: Basking in the Sabbath :)

Whew. This past week was QUITE exhausting, but also very good. I'm loving St. Louis, and I'm loving WashU even more.

With the week wrapping up, I was getting into more of the "meat" of my internship this summer. I got to go over consent forms, administering the WAIS assessments, introducing subjects to the maze, etc. Also, I was able to begin research for one of the side-projects I will be working on, which Nate (graduate student) is currently trying to iron out. Basically, he's attempting to propose a study on personality, stress, aging, and regions of the brain. Yes, it's very vague at this point, which is why it's a SIDE-project. Anyway, I've been reading articles on self-esteem, the hippocampus, and personality. It's all quite fascinating. I'll probably have a little more to say about the articles once I finish the summaries (probably tomorrow).

Also, I've been learning how to use the Freesurfer software (you should Wikipedia it or something), which is basically quality control for the MRI scans we do at the Medical School. My Friday consisted of looking at the brain of a 35 year old woman for about an hour.

This week we should finally be getting some subjects in! I don't think we will be administering every aspect of our current research, just because right now the primary concern is getting the older adults through the maze (they couldn't do it effectively before, so we tweeked it a little bit). We had a few young adults come in on Friday with no trouble, so hopefully things will go well for the old folk as well :)

Everything has been kind of a whirlwind (moving, orientation, getting my bearings in a new city), but it's been really good. I'm starting to feel much more situated and I'm getting the hang of this. Though I hate adapting, I must say that I do it fairly quickly. It's crazy that we're almost halfway through June!

Prayer Requests:
- Doing good science for God's glory even while in a secular environment and figuring out exactly what that means in the first place

- Consistency in all areas of life