neuronerd

I am almost finished my first year of university! I started my 3rd week of neuroscience today, which is my second last block of the year. So far the term has been super interesting - maybe just because I'm a huge bionerd, but I love learning about the body. Although I was amazed by the brain before I studied neuroscience, this class has really made me appreciate the complexity of the squishy pink organ that floats around in my skull like highschool never could. I like the way the course is organized because in addition to learning about the intricacies of the brain in class - we get to design our own experiments and use other students as test subjects...dun dun dun. Although we don't get to use scalpels, we still get to participate in experiments that physically demonstrate how the brain processes visual images or sound for example. For my visual experiment last week, my group and I used what's called "the waterfall illusion" to test if complex cells (which are cells that are responsible for processing moving images) are affected by long-term caffeine use. You can see the illusion for yourself here. It's pretty intense though - and as experimentation went on, we started to refer to the effects of the illusion as free drugs hahah. So be warned.

Here is a picture of our experimentation -

and this is my neuroscience class on a field trip to the SFU library to do research on our final paper.

The field trip was actually the most endearing thing - because we all filed off the bus, and immediately got overwhelmed by the cold, grey concrete of SFU. We felt so small and lost and we were immediately struck with the fact that no one at the university acknowledged eachother. It felt like wandering in a mall or in a big city. It felt so anonymous. I'm pretty sure everyone appreciated Quest the moment that our bus pulled into the parking lot - because all we could talk about throughout the three hours we spent on the SFU campus was how much we wanted to go back to our little university on the hill. My friend Alana summarized our feelings the best: "Even though Quest is a small school, in some ways, it's bigger than a university like SFU. Schools like SFU may have more students, but at Quest, you know more students."
I definitely came back from the trip with a little more appreciation for Quest, and I came to the conclusion that I am so happy to go to a small school instead of a mall- sized-mammoth university. Hallelujah!


stay tuned for updates about the upcoming residence and student council elections which will be happening over the next couple of weeks!

love,
caro