"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