Fall Quarter
I forgot to save a picture of my schedule this quarter. Essentially, I had classes from 2:30 to 4:30 Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday. I was taking Biochemistry 450, Physics 115/118, Statistics 311 and Global Disability (DIS ST 430). So I was taking 3 STEM classes and this is the quarter that I found my limit. I certainly did not enjoy this quarter largely because of the amount of work that I constantly had. I had a difficult quarter on top of the pandemic, protests, politics, and personal difficulties. I was glad to see this quarter finished.
Notable Classes
I had one class that actually enjoyed this quarter (the rest not so much).
DIS ST 430: Global Disability was my favorite class this quarter and one of my favorite classes that I have taken at UW. I did ad-hoc honors for this course as well (for my department honors in disability studies). For my ad-hoc project, I did additional research into the history of people with intellectual disabilities and it was really, really fascinating. This class connected me to the book A Disability History of the United States by Kim Nielsen. I absolutely love this book because it gives a succinct, understandable history of disabled people. I always find that history could be taught by jumping between time periods, but Nielsen goes chronologically through history and it is easy to understand. Above is the picture of the Kim Nielsen book and below is my final paper. This book is part of larger series telling the histories of marginalized groups, so you should look in to it! Another great part of this class was how much I could customize my learning to what I wanted to learn apart from my ad-hoc project. For my final paper, I wrote about how disability-related nonprofit organizations have considered their own history in comparison to the history told by disability studies historians (attached below).
My Other Classes
My STEM classes were hard this quarter, but I was only two science classes away from finishing medical school prerequisites! I finish the last two in Winter and Spring of 2021. The big thing that made this quarter bad was that each of these classes needs a significant amount of time devotion and I was spread to thin.
I took Biochemistry 450 (or Honors Biochemistry) when I was still a biochemistry major (before I got into Neuroscience). The material in this course was not bad. The problem with this course was that everyone else had taken honors courses and knew each other. I have not taken any other honors science classes and only knew one other person. Essentially, I did not know how to read the scientific papers required, didn't have enough time to devote to this one class, and the grading was really, really harsh (I don't think I am too bad of a writer, but I regularly got under 70% on the papers). I personally am very proud of my final paper (attached below with comments) and the associated graphic abstract (above). For my final paper, I actually read a journal article with one of the authors as my 239 professors! Despite doing quite poorly, honors classes are curved nicely and I did not fail. Ultimately, winter quarter I did not continue in this series because it caused too much stress and I had a new major to enjoy!
Statistics 311 is my only math class that I need to take for medical school or my major! And it really wasn't that bad of a class, it just wasn't overly exciting. I also didn't learn anything overly applicable because I still had to learn some specific statistics for my research lab. Math classes at UW are also highly competitive, so you need to not miss too many questions. The professor was really nice though (I don't remember who) and let me attempt a couple things twice. I enjoyed my study group (who I met on the discussion board) and have no big complaints about this course. Above, I have a picture from my final project (not a test!) with the coding for a histogram.
Physics 115/116 is your typical weed-out class and had lots of busy work. I would have done better in this class if I had had more time to devote to learning the material. It also didn't help that I hadn't taken Physics 114 since junior year of high school (roughly three years), so I just don't know this material too well. This class was held asynchronously and I was glad to do that. I also didn't have a study group which I think would have been really nice. I don't really have an artifact from physics, so I just posted our equation sheet as the picture.