Jordan Graham
Neurobehavioral Research Project
Ability to manage and cope with change and uncertainty
In the fall of my senior year, I was able to get a coveted spot in the Neurobehavioral Psychology Lab that only had 25 spots available every quarter. Students wanted to take this course because the professor, Jaime Diaz, is probably one of the most charismatic, intelligent, and wonderful human beings at the University of Washington. The topic is also extremely interesting, as we spent the entire quarter dissecting brains, performing alcohol sensitization experiments on rats, and conducting a research project in a setting that was very self monitored. All of the work was dependant on our lab groups, which consisted of three members who were to go into lab and weigh our rats every single day and input them into the class database. As a group we also dissected three brains together, and were to use our experimental data to propel our final presentation topics.
The first day of class I was nervous to see whom I would be able to choose as my group members. I was relieved when my friend Rachel walked in, and another girl from the Greek community I knew from mutual friends. Rachel and I had been friends since we were 3, attending the same daycare before reuniting in junior high and high school. We never actually taken a class together, despite both being Psychology majors since sophomore year. The quarter started off great, as our lab progressed into in depth analysis of our open field tests, memorizing brain parts, and planning what our project would focus on. Our professor had one major exam scheduled for Week 7 of the course, where we were supposed to identify over 50 different sections of the brain, at different stations around the room with a time limit of 2 minutes each. It was extremely stressful to say the least.
Exactly one week before the exam, Rachel and I were quizzing each other on campus before we meet up with friends to engage in Halloween festivities. I remember telling her I hoped to see her out on the Ave, and to text me when she figured out where she would be going. I never ended up seeing her that night, and I texted her the following morning to ask how her night was with some sassy comment about not wanting to meet up with me. I received an email from my professor later that day with a simple message: “One of your classmates, Rachel Hashim, was in an apparent accident last night and has passed away.” To say I was shocked would be an understatement, as after calling a few friends who were with her that night, I discovered her death was ruled a suicide. I would never have predicted this to happen to a person with such a promising future, and so much happiness in her life.
Able to organize one's life and responsibilities
After spending the weekend at home with my family to grieve, I returned to class on Tuesday trying to figure out how to distribute a three person final project to only two people. It was already extremely time consuming with three people, as it involved a lot of data input, statistical analysis, and research. I also had our giant brain exam the following class to prepare for, and an inbox full of emails from Rachel with study tools we made together. I worked through with my other partner our new distribution of work for our final project, and compiled our final study guide for our exam for the next class. I was uncertain with how I would get through the last 3 weeks of the quarter, as I had to cope with this sudden change in not only my school life, but my personal life as well. Having to deal with this loss in an academic setting proved to be difficult, as managing my emotions while also trying to succeed in the class was a lot to handle. Professor Diaz was more than understanding, and commended me for being able to push through the pain and focus on my school work. I took on a lot of the responsibility for our final project, and buried myself in studying for our exam. I became a team leader in our new group situation, and took on the role of doing the statistical analysis and data conclusions for the project. This involved hours of entering in data points of our rat lab trials from the whole quarter into excell, performing descriptive statistics, and combining them to perform a more in depth analysis. My lab partner did not even know how to do any of this, so the role was kind of forced on me from the start. I spent hours reading the outputs from the computer program, and compiling data into a viable research question and report.
I learned so much in this class about being able to cope with sudden change, and uncertainty with how things would eventually turn out. The intersection of personal tragedy in an academic setting taught me an important lesson on coping with and balancing different parts of my life.
