There were many new challenges on account of coming back to in-person classes. The first being time everything: walking in between classes, time between meetings, walking to campus, etc. I started becoming late to things simply because I scheduled things back-to-back. However, all of my classes were flexible and accomodating to our new normal. These were such great classes and a great balance of learning. It also worked out nicely that my Friday class was typically online, so I had Fridays off. 

I took Honors 220 this quarter which is Evolution and Human Behavior and it is taught by Dr. Herron. He also taught my Biology 180 course and is an absolutely brilliant professor. He is so much fun and I really think about human behavior in a different way because everything really should come from an evolutionary perspective. My artifact for this class is the final group project. We had to create a research question and make a survey to answer that question. Our driving question was, can people identify someone's sexual orientation based on their voice? We got 91 respondents on our survey and had some very intriguing results. It was a very fun final project! Another great part of this class was the ability to customize the class to my interests. Dr. Herron helped me find research papers to read/write about that were related to disability and autism, so I had a really great time with it. 

Neuro 302 is all about the development of the nervous system. This is 1 of 2 courses in the Neuro major that has an associated lab, so this was the first and only time we will be in the lab. It was an absolute blast! We were also able to choose our lab partners (COVID :)), so I got to work with my friend. We had lots of fun and did some fantastic experiments. In labs, we had two TAs and two professors for 12 students, so we really go to know the professors. I really enjoyed the labs (see cockroach lab above!). I enjoyed the lab reports less, but it is all part of the process. The content of this class was pretty interesting. It was a bit disorganized, but I figured out the material. It was neat to think about what happens when development goes wrong because that is frequently the population that I work with. The last thing that is worth mentioning is that it was nice to meet and see all of the other neuro students. They are all so cool and nice!

DIS ST: 434 is Disability and Law. We focused on US and International Laws that relate to people with disabilities. Obviously, we mainly focused on the Americans with Disabilities Act and the Rehabilitation Act. I found that these laws were too complicated for my non-law mind. The laws are complicated in and of themselves. Then you add in lawsuits that have changed the meaning of the laws and the concept. Therefore, I spent much of the quarter confused. I would have liked to focus on a couple laws more closely and not jump around so much. My artifact above is one of the essays that I wrote considering what makes a life worth living. I don't necessarily agree with my thesis, but it certainly made it easier for me to write a convincing essay. 

DIS ST: 430 was a new, trial-run course about Disability and Healthcare. I think that the idea was there and I think that there should be a 5 credit course that looks exclusively at disability and healthcare (as opposed to 2 law courses). However, the speakers for this seminar were not disability focused. The best comment that I can give is that disability means very different things depending on what field you are in. I think that is something very important to learn, but I do wish I would have gotten some more context within a healthcare field and profession. It was more just about the barriers to healthcare and not what actually happens in a healthcare profession. I guess that is what I was looking for more than barriers because I know that there are barriers in accessing healthcare and those are not the barriers I want to solve (even though they are very important!).