Week 10: Day 2
Well, as you can see, I missed week 9 entirely. It was too busy. I had two midterms; the first one was in my Neurological Disorders class (I failed to pass the 1st midterm), and the second one was for my Human Growth and Development class (for which, the format was intentionally vague and this left me feeling not super concerned about it).
I was also stressing the fuck out about trying to find work for when school is over. But that's another post. ;)
Anyway, so now that my 5 weeks of midterms are over, all I have to do is write two papers and make a little Powerpoint presentation.
Paper #1 is for my Psychology of Work class: I'm writing it on how Participatory Management affects employee motivation. What's "Participatory Management"? It's a style of management that is used mostly in large companies with lots of "peons" at the bottom. The lowest level gives feedback to the upper level with regard to how their jobs should be carried out. The literature I found so far seems to suggest it does increase motivation but...for how long? Once the new style is implemented, do they revert back to not being motivated? And, does increased motivation necessarily increase performance?? 4-5 pages double-spaced is a pretty short paper.
(This is probably the one most valuable thing I have learned from this course: that job satisfaction, employee motivation, and job performance are all separate metrics that are not necessarily related. For example, I have consistently been motivated to finish my degree, but I am consistently a "C" grade student. Then how do you measure performance? Is "school letter grade" a valid metric of being "a good student"? Seriously fucking cool shit, imo!)
Paper #2 is for my Neurological Disorders class: I'm writing it on oligodendroglioma (I mentioned that my first week of classes). I have to talk about the mechanism (what causes the disease) and the treatment. This paper needs to be 15-20 pages double-spaced, so I'm going to relate the mechanism to genetics and heritability, and talk about the different kinds of treatment (radiation, chemo and its kinds, combination), the treatment order, and how these all relate to life expectancy. Prognosis also depends on exactly which chromosomal mutations have occurred, are they able to operate, and age of onset. All I've discovered so far is that the median age of onset ranges from late 30s to 50s but can range from 17 to 70.
My Powerpoint presenation is also for my Neurological Disorders class. It only needs to be 6 minutes long and allow 2 minutes for questions. I chose my topic to be positron emission tomography (PET), just because I thought injecting the brain with fluorinated glucose was the coolest thing ever! It's common to use in diagnosis of Alzheimer's Disease, Frontal Temporal Dementia, and other diseases whereby decreased glucose uptake (as indicated by the change in colour in the brain scan) indicates that region is inactive. This is because half the glucose we consume is used by our brain - so they correlate is, if no glucose is used, the area must not be functioning.
I am likely going to deactivate my Facebook soon until finals are over, as I have to not only complete these assignments, I have two more little papers for my Human Growth and Development class ("little" because they are 4 pages double spaced, but each are worth 10%!) and keep up with all my course notes, for which I'm quite behind. Not beyond repair, just not on the ball. ;)
If I get the job that I am expecting to though...all of this will be worth it! :D
I was also stressing the fuck out about trying to find work for when school is over. But that's another post. ;)
Anyway, so now that my 5 weeks of midterms are over, all I have to do is write two papers and make a little Powerpoint presentation.
Paper #1 is for my Psychology of Work class: I'm writing it on how Participatory Management affects employee motivation. What's "Participatory Management"? It's a style of management that is used mostly in large companies with lots of "peons" at the bottom. The lowest level gives feedback to the upper level with regard to how their jobs should be carried out. The literature I found so far seems to suggest it does increase motivation but...for how long? Once the new style is implemented, do they revert back to not being motivated? And, does increased motivation necessarily increase performance?? 4-5 pages double-spaced is a pretty short paper.
(This is probably the one most valuable thing I have learned from this course: that job satisfaction, employee motivation, and job performance are all separate metrics that are not necessarily related. For example, I have consistently been motivated to finish my degree, but I am consistently a "C" grade student. Then how do you measure performance? Is "school letter grade" a valid metric of being "a good student"? Seriously fucking cool shit, imo!)
Paper #2 is for my Neurological Disorders class: I'm writing it on oligodendroglioma (I mentioned that my first week of classes). I have to talk about the mechanism (what causes the disease) and the treatment. This paper needs to be 15-20 pages double-spaced, so I'm going to relate the mechanism to genetics and heritability, and talk about the different kinds of treatment (radiation, chemo and its kinds, combination), the treatment order, and how these all relate to life expectancy. Prognosis also depends on exactly which chromosomal mutations have occurred, are they able to operate, and age of onset. All I've discovered so far is that the median age of onset ranges from late 30s to 50s but can range from 17 to 70.
My Powerpoint presenation is also for my Neurological Disorders class. It only needs to be 6 minutes long and allow 2 minutes for questions. I chose my topic to be positron emission tomography (PET), just because I thought injecting the brain with fluorinated glucose was the coolest thing ever! It's common to use in diagnosis of Alzheimer's Disease, Frontal Temporal Dementia, and other diseases whereby decreased glucose uptake (as indicated by the change in colour in the brain scan) indicates that region is inactive. This is because half the glucose we consume is used by our brain - so they correlate is, if no glucose is used, the area must not be functioning.
I am likely going to deactivate my Facebook soon until finals are over, as I have to not only complete these assignments, I have two more little papers for my Human Growth and Development class ("little" because they are 4 pages double spaced, but each are worth 10%!) and keep up with all my course notes, for which I'm quite behind. Not beyond repair, just not on the ball. ;)
If I get the job that I am expecting to though...all of this will be worth it! :D