Concluding Remarks by Angelica Sotelo

It’s been a wild ride these past couple of months, learning all about fruit flies and a little more about myself! The long journey ended on a good note with my final project. So for my final project, I decided to test if different colored light has an effect on the mood of flies. I know humans as well as many animals can have strong reactions to color.

​Certain colors might provoke fear or aggression. Others can provoke happiness or sadness. I want to see if fruit flies have any reaction to color. Specifically, I want to determine if human color perception is an innate or a learned process. Colors are all around us and affect how we feel about things. Advertising companies choose certain colors specifically to persuade us, but do these colors naturally make us feel emotion or is the emotion we feel taught to us by the world we live in? I can attempt to determine this with fruit flies because they are very genetically similar to us so they should process color in a similar way.

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Even though I’ve learned a lot about fruit flies through the different assays I’ve done for my final project like Social Space, I’ve also learned a little more about myself. I’m a graduating senior and I’m going to be an Honors student with a major in biochemistry on the pre-med track at Temple University this fall. Because of my major, I’ll have a lot of requirements and opportunities for lab work. Through TRIP, I’ve realized how time consuming lab work can be, especially data analysis. I’ve had to analyze two months worth of data! Having to go through this tedious process has taught me to be even more patient not only with my work but also with myself. I have to give myself credit where it’s due and not be so hard on myself, especially since I’ll be doing this much lab work and maybe even more in college. I’m glad to have been a part of the TRIP family and learn that even though I was discouraged, I was able to pick myself up again. With the TRIP experience in my tool belt, I can take the lessons TRIP has taught me and now face lab work in college and just in general life head on!