
Five of My Favorite Assignments
Since I'm not taking classes this term, I thought it would be fun to look back at five of my favorite assignments throughout the years. They might not have been easy, but they were interesting and rewarding to complete! I also wanted to show the variety in the types of assessments professors decide to use.
- No. 1
Genetics Group Exam
I had never done or even heard about a group exam before this genetics class. In the first week of class, we were assigned to groups, with whom we worked on problems every class. I was pretty intimidated because I was just a freshman, but I loved having extra support from my group. During group exam weekends, we would meet in the library for chunks of time to solve open-ended and complex genetics questions. Fun fact: our group name was Blue Genes!
- No. 2
First-Year Seminar Project
For our final project, we were allowed to choose any topic related to the course - The Body and the Nude in Western Visual Art. I decided to delve into the personification of Western ideals, such as democracy, liberty, and justice, as female figures in artwork. I really loved learning more about famous paintings and sculptures I had known about all my life - like Liberty Leading the People, American Progress, and The Statue of Liberty.
- No. 3
Quantitative Analysis
In my class on Applied Multivariate Data Analysis, we also had the ability to choose our final project topic. With three other students, I worked on a project on the factors determining sentence length and severity for U.S. inmates surveyed in 2004, across both state and federal prisons. It was a great learning experience to apply analyses we had covered to our data.
- No. 4
Gravity Simulator
This project really scared me at first, and I was not looking forward to starting it. It was for introduction to computer science, where we have a few labs over the course of the term. The goal of this lab in particular was to design and implement a simulator that animates the motion of the stars, planets, or moons. We had to input real masses, distances between objects, and velocities, and the final product was so relaxing to watch!
- No. 5
Maria Montessori in the Modern Age…
This last one might have been the most unique and fun. To help develop our Italian skills, we were all assigned a famous or historical Italian figure, mine being Maria Montessori. This project involved imagining what our person would be like in the modern age. I designed some Instagram posts for Ms. Montessori, while others made Tinder profiles or Facebook status updates.