Goals for the upcoming week

             So I have many goals of what I want for WISE and myself for the next week. By this time next week, I am hoping to have put together the audio and visuals that I want to use for my WISE presentation and complete at least half of my outline. Also, I want to try to go to my hip hop class 1 or 2 times next week, plus the dpjcc to work out for one day. I joined the new weight watchers pointsplus system this morning and my goal for this week is to lose 3 lbs.

Early Release=4 hours of babysitting + senior awards :-)

So today has been one busy day..Just got home from babysitting Kari and Claire from 12-4 and now I am finally working on WISE a lil bit and waiting for my best friend Ashley to come over. Then tonight, my family and I are going to senior awards and supposedly im getting an award, but have no idea what its for! I guess ill find out at the awards ceremony.

Lots of stuff going on..

So...this week, I am defenitely getting a sense of time management practice; babysitting 4 days this week, getting prom/grad bash arrangements figured out, beginning to work on getting together my WISE presentation, and a huge Statistics test tomorrow! Right now, I just finished writing an overview of everything I have done in WISE, like different research ive done, hands-on experiences, and interviews I have done. That way tomorrow, I can start coming up with how I am going to present this whole experience. In a few min,I am going to look for a book on public speaking and making presentations to help me prepare for speaking in front of a crowd for at least 45 min, and then I have to study for my stats test, then babysit from 3-5 pm, and then later, I am supposed to work out at the gym with my best friend Ashley.

An experience that I will never forget!!

So out of everything I have done hands-on in the WISE experience, I have to say that yesterday was one of the most incredible experiences I have ever had! I got to shadow and help the nurses out in the post-partum unit of Family Birthplace at Memorial West Hospital. So.. cool!! Got to learn how to take vitals, like heart rate and temperature on newborns and even got to help a nurse make rounds and perform these tests on the newborns themselves. I watched a nurse give 2 babies a PKU and Billyrubbin test and they were so.. cute. I remember one of them was a 5 lb, 2 oz baby girl and she was scared and wrapped her entire little hand around my finger and squeezed it so stop crying.. she was the cutest baby girl I have ever seen!  Afterwards, I watched 2 baby girls go through hearing testing. Also, I was responsible for supervising and watching out for a little baby boy named Daniel who was born april 19 and was in the jaundice infant incubator for more than an hour. On another baby boy, I watched a neonatologist do a kidney synogram on a 1-day old baby boy and he was explaining about how he has a kidney problem. It was so.. cool because I was able to observe, help, and handle the newborns and even helped get a couple of them dressed and got to feel their soft skin and those little fingers and toes. Lastly before I left, one of the nurses gave me a pamphlet about audio development in babies, and a packet that the hospital usually gives to new parents at birth, which is a booklet all about infant development, feeding, holding, bathing, health, ect. I enjoyed this incredible experience and it as really hit home about how precious a little one's life is. <3

Middle school observation and prep for Birthplace/NICU experience :-)

Yesterday was a very fun but hectic day for me. I was at school including 4th hr because Coach Love was presenting his wise presentation and then afterwards, I headed over to Falcon Cove to meet Dr.Johnson, a 7th and 8th grade science teacher at the school. I came and observed both her 7th and 8th grade classes and noticed huge differences and similiarites between the students. Her 8th grade class was so..hyper, non-compliant, and just wouldnt listen to dr.Johnson and made her raise her voice. However, the 7th graders took dr.Johnson very seriously and listened to her, followed directions, and once they got comfortable, became little chatterboxes, but were hilarious. I think the reason behind this is that the older the student is, the less likely they will listen to an adult. Younger students look at adults as "grown ups" while the older ones only refer to them as being "older than me, but not wiser." In addition to observing her class, Renae's medicaid person, Ingrid, came over and surprised us and then the two of us went to JCPenney outlet and picked out scrubs for me to wear tomorrow when I go to memorial west to shadow a nurse from birthplace and the nicu. I am so...excited!! I have been looking forward to this since January!!

Remembrance and research on development

First off, before I get into the research I have been doing today on developmental psychology, I want to just say that I feel for the family and friends of both Sasha Abitante and Juan Zambrano, two members of our senior class who were killed last night in a highway car accident along alligator alley. RIP both of you and let this be a lesson to other teenagers and teen drivers about the safety of wearing a seat belt at ALL times.


Aside from the depressing news, I am pleased to say that this week, I get to focus on my favorite subfield of psychology, developmental psych. Today, I am researching and learning about developmental stages throughout the life cycle.
          The first stage I have looked at is called the pre-natal stage, which occurs in pregnancy. A pregnancy is approximately 9 months and can be broken down into 3, 3 month periods called trimesters. In the first trimester, in embryo develops from a single cell and the embryo begins forming an eyes, nose, ears, mouth, and small arms and legs. In the 2nd trimester, bone develops from the rubbery cartilage of the baby's skeleton and at this stage, a baby can hear and kicks and motions from the baby can be felt. In the last trimester, her skin and body develop more detail including eyelashes, finger and toe nails, and neurons in the brain become active. Until birth, he or she usually spends the last few weeks of the trimester gaining weight. Tomorrow I will begin looking at infantile stages of development through toddlerhood.

Intelligence test results.....

So here is the breakdown of my 2 friends' results from the intelligence test I created:

Steffani: Top 2 intelligences were Linguistic (Word Smart) and Interpersonal (People smart)
Lower 3: Intra personal (self smart), Logic-Mathematical, and Naturalist (Nature smart).
Although the results seem a little surprising considering Steffani excells in mathematics, what lowered her overall score from that section was the non-mathematical logic question.

Yarlin:Top 2 intelligences were Linguistic (Word Smart) and Interpersonal (People smart)
Lower 3: Intra personal (self smart), Naturalist (nature smart) and Logic-Mathematical.
To me, Yarlin's results are pretty much expected since she has a strong point in the social sciences and english.

On a luck streak...YEAH!!

                  So yesterday was a great day! My mom let me stay home from school since it was a pointless day to come because of FCAT testing and all, so she took me to Sawgrass to go prom dress shopping and we picked out my prom dress! Very beautiful and I love how I look in it.. can't wait to show it off at prom! Anyways, not only did that make me feel great, while my mom and I were waiting in line to pay, I got a call by Ana Lugo, the nurse manager of Family Birthplace at Memorial West hospital! She told me that she would be glad to help me out and set me up with a day that I can come in and shadow a nurse from birthplace/ the NICU. Finally, after trying since January, I am getting cooperation! So next thursday, I will be shadowing one of the nurses from the neonatal intensive care unit and family birthplace...so ecstatic! In conjunction with my studies on intelligence, I have taken video footage and observed kids and teenagers playing tennis/piano/violin to show the aspects of music bodily-kinetic intelligence, aka athletic intelligence. It is really interesting to see such diverse talent! Watching two girls in my class play tennis, its pretty amazing to see how much hand-eye coordination and skill it takes to play tennis successfully. Also, I am really impressed by the two kids that I babysit,  sisters Claire and Kari, who play violin and piano and how they are so fluent and capable of identifying notes and scales and following the rythym of the songs they learn.

Reality of time kickin' in!

                  So I think after getting back from Orlando with my family and reading Coach Love's website, I think the reality of time has finally clicked in to me and I am realizing how much I still want to get done for WISE in so..little time.. I need to get myself on a good basis between hw, babysitting, WISE, and enjoying time with friends and family. So I have gone to Memorial West hospital's family birthplace and NICU to speak with a nurse about coming in to shadow a nurse there for a day and I called both head managers and left them both a message so now I am in the waiting game. In the meantime, I am focusing this week on Howard Gardner's 9 Intelligences and have created an intelligence test to tests 5 out of the 9 different types to see where different people are stronger and weaker in their intelligence. If you would like to be a part of my experiment, you can email me at Gwadler1014@aol.com and let me know and I will send you the test.

Sea World Orlando..HERE WE COME!!

I am so..excited!! Tomorrow, my parents, sister, best friend, and I are heading to Orlando,Fl!! We are going to the annual Sea of Dreams event hosted by the Autism Society of Orlando, which we belong to as a support group for my sister, Renae. We are all ecstatic and love attending this event every year to meet other parents and children with autism, and enjoying the day at Sea World.. Also, while I am there, I am going to try to have some more hands-on animal encounters as part of my comparative psychology studies.. Will def take pics once we get back!! :-)

Research on personality

                Today, I decided to do some research on personality psychology and how personalities are organized, figured out, and categorized. To begin with, there are different parts of a personality, including common knowledge, verbal intelligence, creativity, and logic. Each part gives special abilities to someone. Common knowledge helps people in daily life and driving, verbal intelligence gives someone the opportunity to speak fluently and express opinions. Creativity is a person's imagination that helps them with fields such as arts, music, social sciences, and english. Logic, is a person's ability to do arithmetic and science, where memorization and following directions comes into play. A person can have a mixed personality or simply one type, depending on how much of a certain part is present. The Myers-Briggs type indicator is a test to identify what personality type someone has.

Psych Bowl victory and Personality Psych week

Good News!! CBHS defeated both Stranahan and Deerfield beach high schools in the inagural psychology bowl held at Nova Southeastern University!! So..proud of the great work accomplished and glad that 2  of our students placed 2nd and 3rd in the poster competition! We are true stars!! This week, I have decided to focus on personality psychology, which I am thrilled about because this is one of the topics in psychology that interests me the most. Today, I conducted a personality inventory on both my mom and I. A personality inventory is a series of personality tests that reveal parts and aspects of a person's personality and behaviors accompanied by them. What is interesting is the fact that just from testing my mom and I, it is possible to see that personality traits and behaviors can be inherited from parent to child. My mom and I shared scores within 1 standard deviation from eachother on all 4 of the personality tests,which means we share similar aspects of our personalities, which I believe is true.

Finally showed video to coach love!

So after all of the trouble I encountered getting my WISE preview to work for coach love, I finally brought my laptop in wed and let him watch my presentation and he loved it! So..relieved! So yeah, this week, the only "exam" i had to physically take was tennis and we played doubles and ran a 1/2 mile! I love 2nd semester of senior year! Its so..nice, considering today is my best friend ashley's birthday and she is bringing a group of us out, to Boca di peppo's! Also today, I am volunteering with Psychology Honor Society at the 1st annual Psychbowl at nova southeastern.