Monday, December 21, 2009

A Semester of Blessings

I've just finished my first semester of my senior year (one more left!) here at ULM. I've really come to love this school, well, at least most of it. Me and the library, we've become good friends. I spent most of my time, when I'm not in class or at work, there. When I'm not there, I would've been found on the third floor of Strauss Hall, where us Psychology majors live in the lab. Thanks to wonderful teachers/mentors and my great friends I've finally made it out of the semester alive with my sanity in tact.

I've found that, recently, all of my hard work and effort has really paid off nicely. Many blessings and opportunities have come my way. This semester, I worked on a memory experiment with my adviser. He came up with the idea, and I did all of the grunt work. I spent over 26 hours testing participants and gathering data, but our data was inconclusive. Even though it didn't work out great, I now have lots of experience collecting data and working with human subjects.

My work with my adviser soon got around to another professor of mine. He runs the Social Science Research Lab on campus (conveniently located on the 3rd floor of Strauss Hall, also). He sought me out to help him on some of the projects that they are working on. I'm currently working on two big projects.

The first, is a MacArthur Foundation grant for northeast Louisiana. We are working with the juvenile justice system and helping improve it. For an internship in the spring, I will be helping a graduate student with this project.

The second, and most exciting, is a project dealing with cancer patients in northeast Louisiana. I don't want to give away all of the details, but I'm the lead person on this project. If everything works out according to plan, then we may be able to help improve the quality of life of cancer patients in our area!

Lastly, I have done better (grade-wise) this semester than I have ever done in the past. I made the Dean's List! I was so excited when I found out; me and my dad did the 'party dance.'

While taking an inventory of the blessings that have come my way recently, I can't help but stop and thank my Heavenly Father for His hand in all of this. It has been the most memorable semester thus far, and I am so thankful for all that I have received.

If I don't post until after, I hope that those who read this will have a Merry Christmas!