Day in the Life of a Theta Foundation Founders Memorial Scholarship Recipient: Part 2

5:30 a.m.: My Mondays call for early wake ups as I start each week with a softball workout. I grabbed a protein bar for an on-the-go breakfast and met up with my teammate to walk to spin class.

6:00 a.m.: I started my week with one hour of spin and a one-hour lift with the softball team. We have workouts at least three times per week, but luckily, they’re not all this early in the morning.

8:15 a.m.: I headed back to the Theta house after practice to shower and get ready for the day. I grabbed some snacks for a second on-the-go breakfast and headed back to the quad for my first class.

9:30 a.m.: My first class of the day was Developmental Psychopathology, an elective for my psychology major. We learned about the criteria for diagnosing a variety of psychological disorders and how these disorders develop in adolescence. Today, we focused on eating disorder development and treatment in the United States.

10:30 a.m.: I walked across campus to my second class, Biological Mechanisms of Brain Disorders, which counts towards my neuroscience major. This class brings in experts on various neurological complications to discuss the presentation, course, and treatment of each disorder. Today, we learned about Parkinson’s Disease from a researcher at the Cleveland Clinic.

11:30 a.m.: After class, I went back to the Theta house for a quick lunch before heading to the research lab I work in. My lab studies neural circuits in rodent brains to better understand the neural underpinnings of behaviors. I worked on my capstone project in lab through which I study single neuron activity correlated to specific behaviors. I have also worked on projects related to multiple sclerosis and epilepsy in my time as a student researcher.

2:30 p.m.: I hustled from the lab to the Theta house and then to our campus grab and go restaurant to pick up a snack before my next class.

3:15 p.m.: After quickly eating my snack, I went into my third class: Human Anatomy. This class is part of my physical therapy school pre-requisites, so it is very important to my post-grad plan!

4:15 p.m.: Directly after class, I headed to one of our university centers to knock out some homework. I mostly focused on polishing my presentation for my last class of the day.

5:00 p.m.: Next, I went to the member development committee (MDC) meeting. I am the outgoing vice president operations (VPO) for our chapter, so today, I helped our incoming VPO transition the new MDC members into their roles and helped them prepare for the semester ahead. This was my last MDC, so it was bittersweet.

6:00 p.m.: I had a group meeting after MDC where we ran through our final presentation that we were to give during my night class.

7:00 p.m.: I was off to my last class of the day! This class is Emotion and Emotional Regulation, where we learn all about how emotions arise, how they can be regulated, and how current research approaches emotions. Today, I had my final presentation on the pursuit of happiness, the importance of gratitude, and the power of forgiveness. I specifically discussed pursuing tasks that initiate flow states and how one can harness flow states to enhance their feelings of subjective wellbeing.

10:00 p.m.: I had a late dinner and studied with some friends before getting ready to do it all again tomorrow!