Being Studied

Though I have not been a brother of Alpha Phi Omega for very long, it has provided me quite a few opportunities that I wouldn't have had--or been aware of having--otherwise. For instance, last year I spent some time plucking weeds at a muddy campus garden and knocking on dorm room doors, asking students for their unneeded shirts. I'm a bit behind on my service hours for APO this semester (I need 20 by the semester's end, meaning I should be around 10 hours right now; unfortunately, I'm only a bit over 5) but I have still engaged in some new opportunities through APO this year. For example, I got to attend a kindergarten through third grade dance at the YMCA and represent Alpha Phi Omega at one of Susquehanna's activity fairs. 

Most recently, APO has asked brothers to sign up for some of the research studies SU students conduct.

Yesterday I participated in a Psychology study. It was a very simple way to help out my fellow students. All I had to do was report to a classroom at 7 p.m., fill out a consent form, and take a test, mostly about myself and my personality. The only downside, for me, is filling out test bubbles. I spend so long on each bubble! That definitely contributed to me being the second to last person to finish the test. Still, it was only a painless hour of time that helped out the pursuit of academics at Susquehanna.

Taking that study helped me appreciate the work that is done in other, more research-oriented majors, like psychology. It seems like a whole other way of life, when I think about what my Creative Writing major requires of me, and it strikes me how much our areas of study impact our college experiences. However, there are ample opportunities for students of different disciplines to support each other--that is, if we take them.

It's funny that these research studies come up now. My group in my science course for the Honors program, Thought & the Natural Sciences, is in the preliminary stage of our own research study. Since this research is coming from a science class that is more general and meant to fulfill Central Curriculum requirements, obviously our research won't be as in-depth. Still, we will follow a similar process on a smaller scale.

I suppose college gives not only the chance to study, but do studies and be studied in return.

Group Projects

In my Intermediate Fiction class, I just completed something I haven't done in any of my other writing courses--a group project. Like the rest of my writing courses, Intermediate Fiction is divided between workshopping people in the class and reading published works. Each group in our class is leading the discussion on two authors. Today, my group had to lead conversation and activity around two David Foster Wallace short stories. I was a little bit worried that I wouldn't contribute enough, because I wasn't leading a section on my own, but I think I was able to ask some interesting questions as well as respond to some of the questions my other group members raised. What I liked about this group project was that it was not nearly as stressful as many I've done!

My Thought & The Natural Sciences course also relies on group projects. For tomorrow, we need to turni n the next stage of our end-of-unit group project. Our professor gave us a lot of freedom as to the topic and medium of our projects. My team ended up choosing to do vlogs, or video blogs, of different scientists involved in aviation, in order to convey biographical information about these scientists as well as scientific concepts. I am playing Daniel Bernoulli. Aviation was before his time, but the Bernoulli principle became very important in flight. Our last due date we all turned in outlines of our research. Tonight I need to write my video script so I can hand that in. The next stage will be actually filming my video, which will be interesting--I feel like I need to find a good costume!

For Friday we also have to come up with an idea for an experiment we could conduct as a team. We're still in the brainstorming stage, but we are leaning towards something to do with psychology.

Usually, I'm very wary of group projects, but for both these classes, I've had good group members. I have yet to really feel my normal group project stress. I hope that I can continue warding that off as our group begins a new project in science.