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As part of my undergraduate career at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, I have to complete and independent research project. This was done under the supervision of a grad student and PI. I also enjoy research and running experiments. I have worked in my lab for over a year now and its research focuses molecular  biology signaling pathways. Our main focus is the mTOR cascade in the mechanical  regulation of  skeletal  muscle mass. What has been established by our lab and previous research is mTOR is necessary for mechanically-induced hypertrophy. A clinical goal is the activation of mTOR can prevent muscular atrophy. Currently studies are supported by mouse models but they are successful. My specific project revolved around the transcription factor TRIM28 and its activity via the mTOR growth pathway. I predicted satellite cell derived TRIM28 is required for mechanical overload induced hypertrophy of myofibers. To fully immerse myself in this project I ran all the experiments that included genotyping, DNA precipitation, and IHC staining. The hardest experiment to learn was IHC staining because it involved the use of primary and secondary antibodies and if the secondary didn’t match the primary I would not see a signal under the microscope. I specifically stained muscle cross sections for IIa,IIb, and IIx fibers. To learn the process of IHC staining the theory of contextual influence was implemented. The theory of contextual interference is how we schedule parctices to improve the retention of a skill. The methods of practice, blocked or variable, help determine the best transfer and retention. When I learned to do IHC staining it was similar to blocked learning where I spent 2 weeks only learning to perform IHC on the same samples. I became very good at it and when the samples were done I went back to genotyping. After taking a break for 2 weeks I was asked to stain muscle nuclei (something I had never done before), but essentially it’s the same process with different antibodies and mix of solutions. I was so adapted to staining muscle fibers half way through the experiment I subconsciously reverted back to how I was taught to stain muscle samples. This ruined my nuclei staining and I wasted 5 hours of my time. I was accustomed to only staining type II fibers when I had to stain nuclei I exemplified negative transfer. This negative transfer is an example of perception action coupling. Perception action coupling is when memory representation develops from learning a previous skill so it makes someone perform the wrong skill in a transfer situation. After many staining mistakes I learned the differences in procedures and antibodies. No muscle fatalities have occurred since then.

Here is an image of muscle staining.

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My life ambition is to become an emergency room doctor. The question I get from most people is why would I want to be in school for the rest of my life. Unlike most, I enjoy school when I get to take the classes that interest me. I know medical school will be extremely difficult but the majority of the content are things that interests me. To prepare for my future career in the medical field I took an emergency medical technician class 2 years ago. So far, it has been my favorite class in my undergraduate career. Not only did we learn physiology behind emergency medical conditions but how to help patients in possible life or death situations. Emergency medical responders need to think quickly and sometimes only have seconds to respond to a situation at hand. Over the summer I worked my first job as an EMT. I worked for a private company in Madison so majority of the 911 calls were taken by the Madison fire department. The most life threatening event I helped a patient with was a 60 year old woman fell in an elevator and started seizing. In medical emergencies there is not one correct response, treatment is case dependent. First, I checked her head to see if there was bleeding that resulted from her fall. Next, I stabilized her neck and my partner and I rolled her on her side. This was to make sure she wouldn't choke on her own vomit. I am only an EMT basic, which means the medications I can administer are very limited. Seizure protocol involved calling the Madison fire department because they bring advanced life support. Working as an EMT uses Hicks law in action. Hicks law is the relationship between increase in reaction time as the number of choices increase. As the severity of the situation increases my reaction time will increase, only by a small amount. I still have to act quickly in an emergent situation, but there will be a longer reaction time in result of a seizure than a paper cut. The different choices of treatment for the seizing patient create a longer response time for the EMT, but this creates a safer outcome for the patient.

A long 12 hour shift can be exhausting so, if we are idle waiting for a call sometimes I will take a nap in the back of the ambulance. This is to keep my reaction time high in emergent situations.

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During my club swimming career I became a certified swim instructor. I wanted to teach younger kids the sport I loved doing. Before I started lessons I didn’t think it would be hard to teach. I had to take a swim instructor certification course that involved an online water safety course for instructors, attend in person training sessions, pass a skills test, and get above an 80% on the final written test. All of this was easy for me because I was proficient at swimming and it was almost automatic for me. The challenge came from actually explaining how to swim into words.

The memory storing process has 3 parts. They are encoding, storage, and retrieval. The storage process is where information is encoded and is stored in the brain to be retrieved when needed later. Storage of memory can then be broken down into procedural and declarative memory. Declarative memory is conscious memory system of what to do. This can be broken into semantic and episodic memory. Semantic (explicit) memory is the ability to recall general facts. Episodic memory is the ability to remember past experiences. Procedural (implicit) memory is the unconscious model that explain the person knowledge of the ability to do something. I had to use each of these memory systems together to teach children how to swim. An example of using explicit knowledge to recall the steps of skills such as how to flutter kick and the process of keeping their back in a straight position to float. The use of implicit memory was difficult to explain because it is an automatic process of memory. To adapt to the difficulty in explaining something automatic to me, I demonstrated in the water how the skill was done. The hardest skills to explain were how to side breathe and do a flip turn. The use of these two memory systems helped me teach novices how to swim. Teaching swim lessons improved personal skills such as patience, explaining concepts in different ways (which is something I continue to do), and leadership.

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I have been skiing since I was 6 years old. Skiing has not always treated me well, from a broken wrist in Telluride to almost sinking beneath the snow trying to ski the back mountain in Breckenridge. After many injuries and unfortunate situations it continues to be my favorite sport. Skiing is easy to learn but hard to master, after 14 years I would say i’m no expert. The thrill of skiing down a mountain at 20mph is addicting. Most injuries occur when my friends and I try to race, but completely worth it. Sadly, this sport is only feasible 4 months of the year. In the summertime i’m forced to switch to water sports. This isn't an issue because I swam competitively all my life, so I love the water. The problem was I was never satisfied with just laying at Bradford Beach in Milwaukee, or fishing up north. I needed an activity that fired my sympathetic nervous system. I was 15 when my friend Katie took me up to her lake house on Sister Bay in Door County. My family doesn't have a motor boat so I never had the chance to do any fast water activities. That was all about to change. Katies family spends the whole day on the lake tubing and water skiing. Tubing requires solely to hold onto the handles, something I was capable of. Water skiing on the other hand, from what Katie told me, was difficult to learn. Not only from Katie but I heard from multiple people it takes many tries to get up on water skis. I assumed I would be good at it because it’s almost the same concept of snow skiing except I was being pulled. In my mind it seemed like an easier activity. I get into the water put my skis on fully prepared for whatever embarrassing outcome would occur from my first attempt. To everyone's surprise I stood up immediately and lasted, from what I remember, a very long time. The schema theory explains when people practice a class of movement they acquire rules or schemas. These schemas are then used when a variation to the skill is performed. The proficient skill I have from years of practice for snow skiing increases the GMP parameters available to attempt a variation of the skill. Snow and water skiing have slight differences but my previous schemas that resulted from snow skiing created positive transfer to water skiing.

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Growing up with a Lebanese heritage came with many advantages. Month long trips to Lebanon every year, American-Lebanese conventions around the country, and the best part was my mom's Lebanese cooking. The Lebanese culture revolves around social gatherings, especially in America when many peoples' families lives over 2000 miles away in Lebanon. Our annual convention gives our community a sense of comfort by being able to interact with people who grew up with the similar values and customs. These conventions are personally my favorite part of the year. Every year it takes place in a new city. I’ve attended conventions in Miami, Chicago, Cleveland, Boston, and many more. On top of traveling the country I get to do it with some of my closest friends who I only get to see this time of the year. The convention has many activities that pertain to exploring the city, but this is short of the best part. It’s normally a 4 day weekend vacation and every night from Thursday to Saturday there is a Lebanese halfi. Hafli is the essentially the Lebanese word for party. This is where we become fully immersed in our culture with Lebanese music playing all night and Lebanese dancing. A form of Lebanese dance is called dabke. It’s a combination of circle and line dancing, everyone is holding hands in a line performing the same steps around the dancefloor. Someone with bad coordination such as myself, dabke becomes a very difficult task. I have been dancing dabke since I was a kid but it was not easy to learn. I remember my friend Micheal was trying to teach me and he told me the key was not looking down. He said, “if you look down you will fall down”. From experience I can concur. Visual search is necessary for dabke because I continuously need to process what the people are doing around me to make sure I stay in-sync with their movements and the beat of the music. The feature integration theory suggests that when perceiving a stimulus features are registered early and automatically while objects are identified at a later stage in processing. This also relates to how experts perform a better visual search than novices. As a novice, I would only look down and place all my attention on my feet causing me to stumble and fall. But, as I practiced dabke, Michael helped shift my visual cues away from my feet to other surroundings in my environment. It seemed to be the best visual focus for success. I became a better dancer, rarely fall anymore, and currently teach the kids at the convention how to dabke.