Megan Gabruk, Entry #7, Going by too Fast

Another great week has gone by so fast. I have learned even more because of new tasks I took on. On Monday, Kate was nice enough to take the time to drive the other high school student, a college student, and me around to put up flyers and hand out brochures. We went to local child care centers, the YMCA, and libraries. We have been doing better with recruitment because we contacted some mother groups in the area. Hopefully, this trip will help us get even more participants. Also, I made a chart for a book chapter Kate is publishing.

Brochure we handed out.

            On Tuesday, we had our weekly RA meeting and one of the Ph.D students presented on cortisol responses and early life stress. I continue to work on the Horvath clock and DNA methylation project I was given. I have to identify literature that uses the Horvath clock method. Also, Kate gave me four articles about what she studied at her previous lab and had me identify variables as well as make another chart.

            On Wednesday, Kate held her weekly meeting for her RAs. We always share our highs and lows of the week because I suggested it at the first meeting. We also discussed what irritability was (an emotion, mood state, temperament, or disorder). Along with the highs and lows as well as the discussion about irritability, we also went over more statistics, specifically we went over Zagat ratings of restaurants in Los Angeles to demonstrate how to use the program. The high school student and I sorted pictures to prepare for programming the dot probe task. We had to switch all of the adult photos out for baby photos, but we could not just insert the photos. So, we had to code for the photos.

            On Thursday, I coded for all of the photos and tested out the task to make sure it worked. I was successful in this. On Friday, I tested out the dot probe task with different biases and recorded those results. I also continued to identify potential funding sources by their deadline. Outside of the lab, I continue to explore Palo Alto, discovering new spots to run.