Homestretch

Chapter four: Vulnerability

November 13, 2021

I thought high school went by fast, until I took a deep breath and realized I had a semester left of college. As a first-generation student I didn't think I would make it this far. For a long time, I wondered if higher education was the right path for me, but along the way I become consumed with what I was learning, and time flew by.

Schemas

In a few of my psychology classes, we have discussed the importance of schemas. Schemas are defined as mental structures that an individual uses to organize knowledge and guide cognitive processes and behavior. For example, why don't you get paralyzed from anxiety when you go to the first day of class? Because you have developed these schemas of the university that causes you to be familiar with our campus, the classroom you might be in, what happens on the first day of class, ect.

For people, like first generation students it wasn't just the first day of class they had to develop schemas for but for the whole college experience. No one told me what to expect moving in, what all to bring, what I had to sign up for, how to become familiar with the campus, etc. I had to figure it out on my own, with the help of other people in the same situation. The fact that I am first generation and achieving the accomplishment of graduating in four years with a major and minor makes me realize that I am more than capable of reaching my goals.

Research Update

We sent out the survey to UWEC faculty and instructional staff about two weeks ago (10/13) and had an overall response of 160 participants. Which is about a 30% response rate. The survey to Mayo Clinic physicians and allied health workers was sent last Tuesday (11/2) and the reminder email was sent yesterday, we have about 450 responses so far.

While the Mayo Clinic questionnaire is active we have been analyzing the data from UWEC faculty and instructional staff. I have been learning how to analyze data using SPSS and Jamovi, we have so far computed a computation matrix to see correlations between variables and the outcome variables. Then we are going to account for personality. A lot of it is repetitive and tedious but a very useful tool in interpreting responses. Hopefully, now that we know what to do the Mayo Clinic data should be easier to analyze.