This week was a fantastic week for me, both in terms of my experience teaching and my laser research. In the 10th grade physics classes this week, we spent a lot of time in discussions, certainly more than in previous weeks. The discussions at the start of the week were continuations of the card sort whiteboarding, and later they were about practice problems that had been assigned for homework. In many of these cases, I was the one leading the discussions, specifically for the card sort discussions, however there were two important differences from the discussions of the previous week, one of which led to the other. Last week, Preethi and I discussed that I would be leading the card sort discussions before hand, which gave me time to think about it. However, for me, time to think is really time to worry, and as result I went into the discussions scared out of my mind. The first difference was that for all the discussions this week, Preethi sort of just told me to lead them right before they happened. This led to the second difference, which is that I was just flat out not worried in the slightest during all of them. While there are two other possible causes for that lack of fear (first, I now had more experience leading discussions and second, that I had prepared without expectation of a “test”, that being leading the discussions), I really think I wasn’t worried because I didn’t have time to worry. For every task, there are two things I think about when I’m told about it: the fact that I have to do a good job and what might happen if (an if which gradually turns into a when) I do a bad job. Usually I start off by being mostly concerned with the good job part, but the more I think about it the more I doubt myself and my capability to do a good job, as well as what might happen and who would be mad at me if I do a bad job. However, by telling me about the task right before it happened, I was simply didn’t have time to dig my hole of self doubt; there was something to be done and I had to do a good job. If I hadn’t been prepared then I think it’s obvious that worry would have been amplified rather than eliminated, but either way I found it to be a very interesting insight into my own anxiety. Regardless, I think I’m getting better at teaching/leading discussions, as I felt much more able to ask the right questions the get the students to dig deeper into what they had learned about, and I was able to answer their questions more confidently than I had last week.

In terms of lasers, this was my last week purely devoted to research for my lasers research project, and I’m very happy with what I’ve learned. I learned more than I could write here about the science of lasers in general, I learned about their practical applications in various contexts, and perhaps most interestingly (to me at least) I learned about three different types of specific lasers: CO2, Nd:YAG, and Neodymium Ruby lasers. I had an indescribable amount of fun learning about lasers and while I’m sad that now the really fun part ends and the work begins, I’m pretty excited to compile all I’ve learned into one paper. Next week I’ll start the process of writing my research paper by making an outline for what I want to write. My plan is to start and finish that within the week with time left to start writing, but I have time built into the rest of my senior project experience to allow for a full week of outlining, though I do hope that isn’t necessary.

Once again I’m thoroughly enjoying my senior project and I can’t wait to see what next week has in store for me!