Off Course

This picture is from a few weeks ago, I thought I would share. It was an interesting sight.

A boat washed up on the beach overnight down by the Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk

 The last two weeks have been extremely crazy and right now I'm just trying to get back on track because currently I am feeling a lot like that boat up there.
*Cue pity laugh here*

So now for an update on school for the week of January 29th through February 4th.
Monday, we had a new falcon visit the class and got he hear a lot of cool stories. I will post about that sometime this weekend hopefully.

Unfortunately, because I had a lot of other things on my mind that week, I failed to take any pictures of cool things I did in class... even though they weren't really all that cool.

In exercise lab, we had our EKGs taken and did an exercise recovery test. The Electrocardiogram (EKG) shows my heart pumping. The peaks and dips in the lines represent the contractions and recovery in my heart.

This is my heart!

My heart was going a little fast that day. Not sure if it was from nerves or stress. The large sharp peak represents my ventricles contracting pumping blood to my body. For a girl, my line is very tall. Because I have played soccer my whole life my heart has adjusted to the need and is therefore larger than average. I thought this was really cool.

For my exercise lab's recovery test, we took a resting heart rate, blood pressure,  and respiration rate and then went and ran for five mins. Then while I am sweaty and struggling to breath, my lab partners take my blood pressure and heart rate and count my breaths over specific intervals to track my recovery. Pretty simple. Nothing exciting. But I must say, it was loads less stressful compared to last week's "Power Assessment".

In my Invertebrates lab, this week, we got together in partners and dissected a mussel (mytilus californianus) and a clam (venus mercenaria). I was responsible for the mussel. We had to make 11, that's right 11, drawings that night. Normally I don't mind working in partners at all. But lab goes until 9pm and I had the prospect of driving home that night, getting 3 hours of sleep and then getting to my fight that left at 6am the next morning looming over my head. I spent a lot of that night drawing quickly and badly and then waiting on my partner who was taking days!

So sorry I have no pictures of the dissection! It was petty cool though. Like the snail, most of the mussel's body was taken up by it's gonad (the gamete producer) so it was clear that they put a lot of effort into reproduction.

Reproduction seems to be a very important reoccurring theme in my studies since I started college. It seems to be the sole purpose of most living organisms. They are born, they reproduce, they die. As long as they reproduced, life was a success. Ugh, It sounds like my sister! I'm stubborn and I'm not having kids.

More updates to come.