It sounds refreshing to have various perspectives and insights into your project! 

It is wonderful to be able to immerse yourself in the culture and art of the place you are traveling to. Bath sounds lovely, and being able to share that experience with family makes it even more special. Elderflower lemonade sounds delicious! 

This is great, Laila! Your reflection on Re:Assemble and your work with WeCanMake truly captures community development as a deeply relational and spiritual practice. It is inspiring to see how you emphasize imagination, care, and doubt as necessary for transformation. I loved the quote about the diaspora relinking flows of care through land justice, it reframes the idea of home in such a powerful way! Thank you for sharing this reflection, I am excited to hear more! 

Thank you for sharing this, Gersely! I admire the emotional depth and responsibility you are bringing to your role. I can imagine how challenging it must be to ask clients to recount deeply traumatic experiences, and it is admirable that you are doing it in a way that centers compassion and trust. It is great to hear how your cohort at Project Rousseau is prioritizing mutual support. That kind of community makes such a difference at work, from debriefing after a heavy conversation to simply sharing a lunch at Bryant Park. 

Liam, this sounds great! It's great that you are gaining multiple types of experiences within the same field and diversifying your skills, such as working in a wet lab, public health, the business side, and science education! Having a multidimensional perspective is so valuable when tackling complex issues in medicine. I am also interested in what you said about science education being overlooked, as this resonates with me. I am currently volunteering at the Women's Foundation Nepal, where I am seeing firsthand how important accessible education is in community contexts. The intersection between public health and education is essential, and it is exciting that your project will touch on that. Excited to hear more! 

I'm glad that you brought up such an important point of research -- to be able to sit with oneself in order to process all that one has learned, giving one time to ponder over these new ideas and connect new thoughts that may prove to be insightful. I am glad that you were able to allow yourself to do this; it's highly important! I am excited to see where your research takes you, and the new discoveries that you make -- not only within the topic you are researching, but also within yourself. 

Priyanka, it sounds wonderful that you have your partners in lab that excite your curiosity and foster an environment for you to learn more. I understand the struggles of developing a protocol, but with time, it will all begin to come more naturally and make more sense. I am excited for your next step of collecting data, and I can't wait to see where this project takes you! Good luck with everything! 

• What new ideas, challenges, or other issues have you encountered with regard to your project (this might include data collection, information that contradicts your assumptions or the assertions of others, materials that have enriched your understanding of the topic or led you to change your project, etc.)? How have these ideas or challenges shaped the bigger picture of your research? Has the scope or focus of your topic changed since you began this project? If so, how?

We had encountered various different obstacles when designing the experiment, and shortly before finalizing the experimental design prior to recruiting participants. The most primary concern for us was to ensure that the sound decibels for the noise cues were at a safe and comfortable volume decibel. We also had to ensure that the same was true for the Gaussian White Noise, while still masking the natural sound playing underneath it. What we learned, after much trial and error, was that it was Psychopy itself (and not the sound files) that was increasing the volume level. While we tried many different methods to reduce sound volume levels, we learned it was simply a matter of changing the settings in the application. My biggest takeaway from this experience was that, sometimes, the problem seems larger than it is, and the solution is simpler than expected. 

• What research resources have proven particularly useful to you as you continue your research?

Having support, patience, and kindness from the lab itself has been incredibly useful for me as I continue to learn more. The workshops we did on how to find research papers (such as on CLIO, and how to use Zotero, etc.) has also proven to be helpful as I continue reading more papers on topics related to this research project.