Week 5: Midterm

No midterm tests for me! Yay!

It was obligate biped week in BioAnth Lab, we talked about the pelvis, femur, tibia and fibula. The students once again compared human bones to chimp bones. I will start grading lab write ups for that on Friday. Dr. Stevenson descriptions of the pelvis and childbirth are funny. She held up a articulated pelvis and said "This male. He could only birth a squirrel."

There's no BioAnth lab class this week since the students are supposed to do study animal behavior outside of class on their own time and then do a write up on it. They need to watch some sort of animal for about 2 hours and form some sort of hypothesis about the animals behavior or do some sort of experiment where they intervene and observe behavior changes. It will be interesting to see what they come up with.

In MedAnth, we have had some good class discussions about aging, diet and health. The undergrads are finally starting to participate in discussion. The abstract for our final paper is due Monday, but I am still working on how I can turn it into a section for my thesis rather than starting on a new topic.

We wrote up our research problem for Research Methods and provided criticism for each other's problem statements. My cohort is working on some cool projects. Unfortunately, I'm still having trouble with the whole "comment sandwich." That's where you sandwich the less positive comments between positive ones. I can do the first positive, then some constructive criticism, but that last nice thing is hard for me to come up with. (I have a hard time with small talk too.) We all got and gave some good suggestions and we got feedback from Dr. Stevenson. She told me I have 900+ abstracts to read yesterday on the method for my thesis experiment. That's what I will be doing today.

In our Research Mentorship class, we had a guest speaker come talk about the Institutional Review Board and Human Subject Research. I won't need IRB approval, but I might need Animal Experimentation Approval. I haven't figured out my methods exactly yet, hence the 900 abstracts to read.

I'm not watching the Superbowl today. I wish I could watch it with my family. I usually ignore the game and watch the commercials and the half time show. We always have good munchies too.

I will get to see Kelly and some of the kids when they come to Tacoma for state wrestling in a couple weeks.