T-minus 43 days until I leave the United States for eight months. In approximately a month and a half I will meet the family I have been corresponding with and the 67 other students from across the country who all have set their sights on becoming students of France’s culture. Further drawing attention to this fact is the creation of many platforms begging interaction with those who will eventually become my classmates. Email chains have surfaced polling opinions about the custom shirt that would tell our class’ year and that we are students of School Year Abroad. A Facebook group has materialized harmlessly inviting us all to investigate those we would be sharing a classroom with in the months to come.
Meanwhile, the time I spend here at the University of Connecticut to study memory development and retention feels like a trial run of what is to come. Like as is to be expected in France, my everyday life in Atlanta feels far, far away. I am having to strike a balance between maintaining ties to those I care about back home and loosening my grip to the degree that I am able to partake fully in what happens here and create new relationships that I value just as highly.
Meanwhile, the time I spend here at the University of Connecticut to study memory development and retention feels like a trial run of what is to come. Like as is to be expected in France, my everyday life in Atlanta feels far, far away. I am having to strike a balance between maintaining ties to those I care about back home and loosening my grip to the degree that I am able to partake fully in what happens here and create new relationships that I value just as highly.
Everyday for the past two weeks I have trekked a mile to the bowels of the psychology building from “Buzby suites”, some days a bit grouchily due to waking at 6:30 AM. I’ve found the results to be worth any mild inconveniences. I know much more about the brain than I knew when first entering this program, and through simple observation of the movements of the undergraduate students I have learned what it means to be a part of a team dedicated to extracting a logic from the innumerable unknowns that characterize the mechanisms of the human mind. Research is highly demanding. The integrity of the experiment must be closely maintained. In one experiment we train the rats to find a platform in a water maze in hopes of gleaning insights about the functionality of different areas of the brain in relation to memory. Tending to the controls means that you must ensure you have no external factors that could possibly assist the rats in finding the exit to the maze outside of the visual cues(the colorful posters promoting the role of animal testing in medicine) posted outside of it.
Each rat must be handled delicately to ensure they are calm as they enter the water. Just as importantly, you must be silent as they complete the task to make sure they do not simply swim towards your voice in hopes of being removed from the water by the person who placed them in the uncomfortable liquid that slicks their fur. Though running this experiment everyday can after some time begin to feel monotonous (it is a four hour process), seeing the logic emerge from the massive amount of data gathered is worthwhile.
Each rat must be handled delicately to ensure they are calm as they enter the water. Just as importantly, you must be silent as they complete the task to make sure they do not simply swim towards your voice in hopes of being removed from the water by the person who placed them in the uncomfortable liquid that slicks their fur. Though running this experiment everyday can after some time begin to feel monotonous (it is a four hour process), seeing the logic emerge from the massive amount of data gathered is worthwhile.
And just for kicks here is a picture of my favorite piece from the Ballard Arts Museum, which I had the opportunity to visit one day after class.The beginning of the Vietnam War caused a rift among the people as the question arose of whether international policing should fall under the United States' purview. Young people found themselves subject to propaganda encouraging them to get on the bandwagon. After all, it was them, the youth, who would compose the armed forces and uphold democracy. Art provided a platform for the young to express their opinions. This piece made a particularly daring statement in a manner different than any I have before seen employed. War was not the answer. If you thought it was, you may as well be a eunuch who has no qualms trampling children underfoot because you basically were not a real man. I felt it was worth sharing.
And this place by no means is all work and no play. I am after all in Connecticut, home of the highly acclaimed “Dairy Bar” where the ice cream produced comes from the university’s very own cows. At long last I had the chance to visit these cows today. This ice cream straight from the utter is indeed so fresh that it’s illegal to sell it any place besides on university grounds. I took a picture with one of these cows because why not?