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Pre-Nursing Student’s Summer Nutrition Course with Portage Learning
No full textThis reflection paper explores my experience taking an online summer nutrition course through Portage Learning as part of my preparation for nursing school. Initially, I viewed the class as a requirement, but it soon became a meaningful learning experience that shaped how I understand health, the human body, and patient care. The course covered topics such as macronutrients, digestion, metabolism, vitamins and minerals, and public health aspects of nutrition. Alongside the scientific content, I developed skills in critical thinking, time management, and resilience as I worked through challenges like calorie calculation. I also discovered a genuine enjoyment in learning how nutrition influences disease prevention and patient recovery, strengthening my commitment to a holistic approach in nursing. Overall, this reflection highlights both the academic knowledge and personal growth I gained, and how these lessons will support my future role as a nurse
Climate Action & Advocacy Intern at Seaside Sustainability
No full textDuring my internship as a Climate Action and Advocacy intern with Seaside Sustainability, I explored environmental storytelling through newsletter writing. I covered topics such as the California wildfires, carbon footprint reduction, and the environmental impact of President Donald Trump\u27s policies. This experience improved my research and writing skills and aligned with my academic focus on social justice and sustainability. Publishing my work on Seaside\u27s official site empowered me to raise awareness about climate challenges and advocate for meaningful change in a time when many sustainability organizations face resource constraints
Capital Group – Information Technology Summer Associate Reflection
No full textThis reflection discusses my experience as an Information Technology Summer Associate at Capital Group in Irvine, California. During the internship, I worked on the developer portal team developing custom field extensions, deploying system enhancements, and troubleshooting client issues to improve internal workflows. The role deepened my understanding of how enterprise technology supports business operations in the financial sector and helped me refine my technical skills in JavaScript, TypeScript, and API integrations. Through collaboration with cross-functional teams, I gained valuable insight into agile development and learned how effective communication drives technological innovation. This experience strengthened my commitment to bridging business strategy and technology in my future career
Writing the Border between Socialist Self and State: Christa Wolf\u27s East German Autofiction
Get PDFThis thesis considers the life and work of Christa Wolf in order to examine her role in East Germany as a “loyal dissident.” Wolf was born in the German Third Reich in 1929, and the German Democratic Republic was founded in 1949 just as she entered adulthood. Also in 1949, Wolf joined the East German socialist party and dedicated herself to the socialist project. Through an exploration of the publication, contents, and translations of four of her major works (Moscow Novella, Divided Heaven, The Quest for Christa T., and Patterns of Childhood), I examine how Wolf navigated East German political boundaries and guidelines in order to contribute to the creation of a new East German national literary identity. I draw on material from Wolf’s essays, diary entries, and lectures in order to examine how she balanced her personal and private life. I also analyze the translations of her work into English and Russian as a case study of Cold War cultural attitudes and policy in both the United States and the Soviet Union
The Power of Community: A History of African American Education in New London County, Connecticut
Get PDFIs This It: Doubts about Transcendence in the Twenty-First Century Novel
Get PDFThis thesis explores how twenty-first-century novels grapple with the possibility of transcendence, communication, meaning, feeling, and emotional authenticity in our increasingly digital world. In my grouping of Dennis Cooper’s The Sluts, Ben Lerner’s Leaving the Atocha Station, Tao Lin’s Taipei, and Megan Boyle’s LIVEBLOG, I identify a shared urge towards accessing feelings and sincerity in an age of irony and skepticism through a variety of different formal strategies. I propose the concept of “internet realism” to describe Lin’s and Boyle’s attempts to capture how digital mediation affects communication, meaning, and sincerity. In these works, I highlight how these two writers play with narrative, time, and conceptions of self. I then move to Cooper’s The Sluts and explore how the writer adapts transgressive fiction to the digital age. Despite the artifice and lack of truth in The Sluts, I argue that Cooper suggests online spaces—specifically queer spaces—can serve as sites for genuine community to be found, and transcendence can be reached via digital transgression. Finally, I turn to Lerner’s Leaving the Atocha Station and study how, despite the lack of the digital—in both form and concept—the novel echoes the absence of sincerity and feeling present in the other novels of study. Lerner posits “the experience of experience” as a means of transcending irony and detachment to reach a new kind of sincerity, appropriate for the twenty-first century. Across these texts, I argue that while transcendence is often not reached, the desire for connection persists. Even in their failures, these novels offer insight into how literature can continue to function as a clarifying tool in an era of irony, detachment, and loss of meaning
The Impacts of Stress on Microglial Behavior: Potential Implications for Multiple Sclerosis
No full textChronic Stress can be caused by a variety of environmental factors, including factors such as persistent racism or sexism. We are currently in the midst of a chronic stress epidemic, so what does this mean for autoimmune disorders? Here, we focus on the potential impact that stress may have on multiple sclerosis via microglial cell behavior. Given the role of microglial cells in multiple sclerosis, a phagocytosis assay was performed to understand how stress may impact microglial activity. It was observed that cortisol levels impact phagocytic behavior in a negative parabolic fashion, with higher levels still having increased phagocytic behavior overall. RT-qPCR was also performed to observe the expression of relevant genes at different cortisol concentrations and different time points, with the results remaining somewhat unclear. Overall, potential relationships between chronic stress and microglial behavior were observed, which may have implications for disorders such as multiple sclerosis, but further studies must be conducted to find more definitive answers
Examining Collaborative Healthcare for Substance Use Disorder: A Case Study of Brigham and Women\u27s Hospital Bridge Clinic
Get PDFIndividuals with substance use disorders (SUD) are clinically underserved due to increased health and psychiatric comorbidities, structural barriers to treatment, stigma, and insufficient resources. This suggests that there is a need for an accessible and culturally competent treatment model. Brigham and Women’s Hospital (BWH) Bridge Clinic is a multi-disciplinary, low threshold SUD treatment to promote collaborative healthcare and the transitioning of patients to longer-term care. The aim of the current study is to better understand personal accounts of patients and various clinical and non-clinical providers to optimize the BWH Bridge Clinic’s approach to treatment. Patients (N=5) and providers (N=6) participated in semi structured interviews that explored their experiences being treated or providing treatment in a collaborative, low threshold substance use disorder clinic. Using thematic analysis, codes were created and assigned using both deductive and inductive approaches. Patients characterized the flexible and low threshold approach as helpful in initiating treatment and the compassion, resources, and sense of community displayed by providers to be pivotal in maintaining treatment. Providers found the Bridge Clinic’s multidisciplinary team approach beneficial for patient quality of care and workplace environment. Both patients and providers identified transitioning out of the BWH Bridge Clinic to be challenging to experience and facilitate. Future research is needed to improve bridging efficiency within the transitional design of the Bridge Clinic model and to explore additional implementation of culturally competent care
