Neuroscience Research: Publishing my First Article
Grey Matters Journal
Entering college away from campus, I never would have expected to be able to dive into scientific literature in my first quarter. However, I quickly discovered that there are so many opportunities for me to get involved, I just needed to reach out. One of my primary interests has always been how the brain works, so a neuroscience club seemed like a good fit. I submitted an article proposal to Grey Matters Journal about a mental condition called aphantasia, which is the inability to mentally visualize. To my surprise, it was accepted! I've now spent the last couple months working on my first research article, proving to myself that I don't have to wait to get involved at the University of Washington.
Throughout high school, I got some experience working with podcasts for Truthlines.com. From this familiarity, I was excited to hear that for my ENGL 182 class (Multimodal Composition), a podcast was an option for our final project. Working together with Jaden Wang, we researched the implications of musical EdTech both within and outside of the context of COVID-19. It was especially rewarding to reconnect to our previous high school orchestra/band directors for interviews that are included in Episode 2. To see the additional transcripts, feel free to visit our website linked here. I have loved this class because it has taught me how to portray information in a more modern format that appeals to people who don't have the time for lengthy formal essays.
Podcasting: Virtual Music Education
ENGL 182 K
Learning the Basics of the Husky Marching Band
MUSEN 303
I knew going into college that I loved music and was not ready to give it up. So I auditioned and was fortunate enough to be placed as a second trumpet in the Husky Marching Band. As you might expect, we didn't exactly get a whole lot of the experience with COVID forcing us to be virtual. Nonetheless, the new rookies and I did our best to memorize the marching tunes and choreography so that we are ready to get into full swing next fall. Attached on the right is a recording of my audition playing through some tunes and the four main songs (Victory for Washington, Bow Down to Washington, Louie Louie, and Tequila) along with what I now know are many mistakes after taking MUSEN 303 (Marching Band) albeit virtually. I'm planning to replay these tunes sometime later in college to survey my improvement, along with some choreography I have learned.
Going into this year, I had no experience programming besides a short introductory class enough years back that I absolutely no useful recollection of it. As such, immediately having to complete our labs for CHEM 145 through graphing in Python was one of the greatest challenges of this year. It was immensely frustrating because much of what I wrote didn't make intuitive sense to me, instead I just accepted that "x" did "y". However, as I began to learn more about the language and the basics, when presented with a problem that had a direct application through Python I started to see how satisfying it was to solve. After the quarter had ended, I even decided to find some more introductory materials online, which led me to a game formatting module called "Pygame". Soon after I successfully recreated a simple version of the popular 1972 game "Pong"!
Coding: From Despised to a New Hobby
