Leaving the Nest by Kaya Horton

Every week I feel like I am making small improvements and walk away feeling more confident then when I walked in.

​So far I’ve been having a lot of fun in TRIP! I feel like I’ve learned so much in these past few weeks: about the people I’m with, communication, the value of ideas, oh yeah and science! Enduring the loads of homework, learning how to make solutions and use lab equipment. Learning these skills have immensely helped with my confidence working in the lab. Every week I feel like I am making small improvements and walk away feeling more confident then when I walked in.

Everything that I’ve been taught in the prior weeks has been to prepare for...MY INDEPENDENT PROJECT!!! I’m very excited to work on my independent experiment, and apply everything I’ve learned in my own way. For my independent project I will be testing the effects of isolation on mood and observing the effects with and without medication. To do this I will isolate flies with and without exposure to anxiety medication and put them in social environments to see how they react to the medication/ interact with other flies. I want to test the effects of isolation on mood to see if how an isolated fly compares to a social fly and if medication can help with the anxiety of going from constant isolation to socializing. I have always been very anxious and introverted but I after years of working on my anxiety I’ve found that medication helps a lot, I think it would be interesting to see if medication will positively impact stress.

I can’t wait to see how it goes these next few weeks!