The Ultimate Goodbye

There's really no place like Ho(l)me. I am writing this last and final blog post from Hamilton Holmes Hall at Emory. A new year, a new residence hall. I'm going to travel back in time a bit to try and recap my last week at Oxford and the busy life of an avid traveler and ambitious researcher.

The last weekend in Oxford was bittersweet-Toby, one of the other IRES kids and one of my good friends, came up to visit England from Denmark. She spent Saturday with me and Heeryoung, an Emory student who was studying at Oxford through the British Studies program. We had a blast showing her around as I had my last glimpse at Oxford. We toured the Bodleian, climbed up the tower for the beautiful view, had a full English breakfast, and even had a fun sleepover at my little place in Greater Leys.

The heart of Oxford

full English Breakfast (vegetarian version)

the view from the tower!

Magdalen college

Sunday was another day of exploration. Toby left early in the morning to spend Sunday in London with some friends from Emory who were studying abroad at UCL. I wanted to see another part of England, so I ventured with Alice, an Oxford undergraduate who is also working in the lab, to Stratford, the town where Shakespeare grew up, and the Cotswolds, which are little village towns that are part of the English countryside.

Shakespeare in the park

Thutch roofs of Cotswold

Stratford-upon-Avon

With my poster almost done, and my project completed, I wanted something to do for that last week. I started to help Jonathan, an undergraduate who was working on a cool perceptual learning experiment. Earlier this summer, I had met with Jonathan to work with him on his experiment that we had planned on starting in June, but we had some technical problems along the way, so the experiment was on hold. This particular experiment is similar to something my lab a few years back, so it was definitely of interest to me. It deals with the mapping of our fingers in the brain through a learning task. The experiment is drawn out over 4 days and lasts 7-10 hours. Basically, the participants are presented with little domes that have gratings. The domes vary in the space of the gratings. One finger is "trained" to learn how to differentiate if the gratings are horizontal or vertical (parallel or orthogonal) and other fingers are tested to see if they also learned to differentiate. Past research shows that the homologous finger and the adjacent finger do, which may have implications into how our tactile system learns and how the different fingers are mapped out in the brain. Very practical stuff. Anyway, not only was I helping Jonathan run the experiment, but being short of some money, I even volunteered to participate! It was a busy week and my time was divided into participating, helping him out, and packing all my belongings.

The last group goodbye was bittersweet. It was the last week spending time with the wonderful people of the lab. Only at Oxford can you sit in the Exeter College Gardens and have a beautiful view of the Radcliffe Camera. I will surely miss this place.

 Later that week, my mom and my sister joined me at Oxford before we left for a tour of Europe. After seeing the sights of Belgium, Germany, Italy, Switzerland, and France, a few days at home were surely cherished. Given the humid weather of Atlanta, I am missing England, but it does feel great to be back.