January 2022

A new semester, and another month of remote learning! First, Ida and now Omicron. Personally, I have found that I am most successful with in-person learning overall. While attending a lecture in your pajamas has its own appeal, I've found it can be difficult to maintain focus when staring at a screen for several hours a day. For me, it's quite a bit easier to engage with lectures and discussions when physically present in the classroom. While I'm sure others can feel differently, I also struggle with presentations over Zoom compared to an in-person presentation to the class; there is something about the absence of audience feedback in a Zoom presentation that I find unnerving.

With the new semester also came several new courses in the curriculum. So far, I have found all of them to be interesting and full of new information. I am a big fan of presentation-based courses; I think that being able to present scientific findings is a really important learned skill set that doesn't always overlap with general presentation skills you might need for a different subject matter. It takes plenty of practice, which we will definitely all be getting this semester with 5 total presentations of varying length across the program.

With remote learning for the month of January, I have not been able to participate in any of the service opportunities that I had worked on last semester. Unfortunately, that means I do not have any community service hours this month. That said, I will be returning to New Orleans for in-person learning at the end of this week, and I am looking forward to being back in the classroom.