For Future Reference

At the very last second, I decided to walk w/ my colleagues, carrying my 20 lb. backpack plus holding my thick Biochem book, to the Pyramid, which I haven't entered that blue structure since Fall 2004, for a symposium.  We didn't exactly know where to enter, & so we went through the South entrance, & I finally got to see how the interior of the stadium looked, & I was a bit astonished with the way the benches were lifted like the flaps of an open box (yea, I suck at describing the geometry, & unfortunately I didn't carry my camera) for a more gymnasium appearance.

Anyway, we finally entered the right hallway & got to browse around posters regarding research from various departments: criminal justice, engineering, psychology, chemistry, kinesiology, & of course (micro)biology.  Many were mediocre, some were cute (such as the relationship between working in the chemistry lab and listening to an IPod), & some were a bunch of jargon that lacked even a figure to visually demonstrate their purpose.  Besides reading this cool project about using a specialized MRI that you can sustain a whole, valuable specimen without cutting & thinly slicing a brain to visualize, there was another that caught my attention.

From what I got, after trying my best to read carefully, it was a psychology research about the relationship between the lack of healthcare and discrimination against race/ethnicity, gender & socioeconomic status.  Even though the poster was a giant version of a review paper, I was disappointed that I couldn't exactly find what the researchers were measuring because, most notably, what ever they were surveying didn't answer their question: were they looking for any thoughts from the random samples that these individuals wish they were in a different ethnic background (which was odd) or were they were sampling for individuals that got denied from entering a clinic.  But that's different if someone had different results & thus his hypothesis was incorrect, or in Biostats terms, was failed to be rejected.  Speaking of Biostats, maybe if I could at least try to decode their relationship findings, based on their regression/correlation measurements (which I just learned today in class--oh nerdy me), I might have obtained a basic, clear understanding about this project.  Even their conclusion was blurry, & so, yup, it belonged to that category of jumbled jargon.  Oh well, I was just inquisitive.

At least I enjoyed walking through the aisles of words & graphic displays, & that I got more "advice" on what I'm looking forward to my last college year, like writing a small summary on each of the 5 scientific research projects for Microbial Physiology!?