This was such a fun quarter. If you read about Fall, then that is saying something. Although I was on zoom a lot, I thoroughly enjoyed my classes and learned a lot. Everything except Biochemistry was synchronous and a few of my honors classes. As I will write below, I just loved my classes and found a nice balance between all of my classes. I also met a lot of really cool people in Neuro and I really can't wait to see everyone in person. 

Neuroscience 301 might be my favorite class that I have ever taken. And not for the reasons that you might think. Professor Moody is absolutely amazing. On the academic side, it is very fair. I worked really, really hard. I spent my time making a cheat sheet on every single lecture topic and did lots of practice exams. My study group was also amazing, we spent countless hours preparing for the exams. They were as dedicated as myself and really cool people (I look forward to meeting them!). There were three of us in a smaller group and six in a larger group, which worked out nicely. I really did well on the exams. I also feel like I never forgot anything - that is how hard I worked. I didn't hardly study for the final beyond practice exams because in all reality I had been preparing for the final exam all quarter. I feel so much smarter after taking this class. The one complaint I do have was the labs which were (understandably) bad online. The professors and TAs tried so hard, but nothing compares to being in-person (this lab technically qualified for in-person, but the professors opted to hold it online). The labs took on average 15 hours each, but luckily there was only 4 of them and I had a great lab partner. The labs were also graded nicely. By the end of the quarter, I felt confident reading some basic Neuroscience papers which was really exciting after my not-so-great biochem 450 experience. My two artifacts are one of my study sheets (above) and my 4th lab report. 

Honors 345: Interdisciplinary Research Writing was a really excellent class. Largely it was for two reasons: contract grading and pick-your-own topic. Contract grading, in this case, was that if we submitted all the required assignments at a satisfactory level, we were guaranteed a 3.5. If you got below a satisfactory level, you could resubmit with changes to get up to that point. To get above a 3.5, you had to submit additional assignments that I found relatively simple, like reflection assignment. It gave me piece of mind to know that I would still do well in the class and try new things with my writing. The second great aspect of this class was being able to choose your own topic. We built up to one paper all quarter and learned different techniques to improve our writing. The overarching idea was popular media and intersectionality. For me, I chose to look at how people with disabilities were portrayed on television (naturally). I absolutely love this topic and really enjoyed the writing. I will actually be doing an independent study during spring quarter to try and get this paper published. For my artifact, I have my 'hook' above. Superstore was my inspiration for starting this paper and it is a really funny show (highly recommend).  

Biochemistry 406 was not a bad class. I found that it was just memorization and having a good cheat sheet (thank god for open note exams). The material was interesting and it was not too bad overall. I took a screen shot of my cheat sheet that I would 'control-F' during the exam for my artifact above. Regardless I certainly learned a lot, but I do wish I had done a little bit better. 

Normally, a disability studies class is in my top two. For Global Disability, there were really one strong pro and two strong cons. These are mainly just because of the online format. In person, I imagine I would enjoy it more! Genuinely, I am pretty done taking humanities courses online - part of the fun of humanities courses is talking to different people. Global Disability was a really fascinating class and great topic. The class readings were absolutely phenomenal. The two problems were that class time was spent just reiterating the readings I had already read and in class discussions were dull. I also found that assignments were not graded on a rubric (or at least not one we were given) which stressed me out a lot. I also did an ad-hoc honors project for this class and, again, considered children with intellectual disabilities around the world. Below is my two page brief on the education of children with intellectual disabilities. It was really fascinating to learn about!