The Sweet & Salty Taste of Freedom

Dear Blogosphere,

Oh, wow. I am pretty much done with this semester!! The only thing I have left is a non-cumulative exam in my Intro to Music class. I'm taking it as early as possible: Tuesday (Cinco de Mayo!) at 4 PM. It only covers two units in the textbook so I'm going to start the study guide tomorrow night and just do it at a snail's pace. After this past Tuesday there is not a worried bone in my body.

Last Tuesday was exciting. I worked on my statistics project like crazy. I found some very interesting things out, like the children of divorce are much less likely to believe in an afterlife and feel further away from 'God.' If they do believe in an afterlife, they are more likely to believe that the afterlife will include a reunion. Women are more likely to believe in everything... I had no idea that sex (or gender...) would play such a huge role in religious beliefs. Strange, strange. Particularly odd that most churches are patriarchal yet women are far more religious. Mother's attendance at church also plays a huge role (greater than father's) in beliefs. So, hopefully I'll get to return to the data in the future, because in the end I sort of fell in love with it. I guess if you spend enough time on a project you never really want to let it go. Ha ha.

I also wrote an "exploratory literature review" (how's that for trying to title something loosely?) about the effects of divorce on children and how attachment plays a role in the whole thing. I think there's a lot of room for further research on that topic. I also ran across a few things on attachment and religiosity/religious views. Very interesting stuff. I think we like to think that we are consciously in control of what we think but... ha ha... perhaps just like with our political beliefs, taste in music, and opinion of the death penalty, it has some sort of genetic component or it draws from some of our earliest experiences.

So, in addition to Intro to Music, Nick's Stats and Russ's Attachment courses, I took Human Sexuality through the Health Education department. It was a great course. I wish we had touched more on sexuality through the lifespan, but the cool video of a few live births was AWESOME as was watching someone roll a regular condom down their arm... reaching their elbow. Too much information? I'll stop right there....

I'm rather sad to be done. It was much fun to be Heather's TA, collect stories from toddlers, watch preschoolers dramatize stories, and have the opportunity to watch Mike finish his thesis and Jackie start on hers (fortunately, I'll be staying in the research group through the summer). It's going to be strange to be able to do whatever I want to... whenever I want to this summer! A few friends and I are going down to Las Vegas on the 18th to see Ben Folds in concert, so that will be so much fun. I love Vegas. It is sensory overload. I will certainly be posting photographs.

And Emily is getting married so I'm excited to get everything ready for that! Yay, yay, yay!

Well, that's enough updating. I'll post again probably with graduation pictures! Oh, speaking of which, if you feel like coming it is in the Huntsman Center at 11:15 AM on the 8th. It's the College of Social & Behavioral Sciences, and you'll be killing at least two birds with one stone as Sara is in the same college....

Yay!

-Natalie