Every DePauw University senior must take a senior seminar that will help them write a thesis, create a project, or pass a test that encapsulates their four years of learning. Each seminar looks different depending on what your major is so I thought it would be fun to interview my roommates, who each have a different major, and see how all of them differ. This is part two of three of me interviewing my roommates about their different seminars.
HerCampus: Thanks so much for sitting down to talk with me today. I know you’re starting to get really busy with your seminar.
Lauren Curley: Yeah, no problem.
HC: What’s your major?
LC: It’s kinesiology, but I also have a minor in sociology.
HC: What made you decide you wanted to be a kinesiology major?
LC: Well, I was deciding between kinesiology and sociology, because I’ve taken classes in both areas but ultimately, I realized that I wanted to get a job in some sort of rehabilitation center and work in the medical field so kinse made the most sense for me.
HC: Can you tell me a little about your senior seminar?
LC: We get to make up our own project. For mine I choose to look at different types of stretching, static and dynamic, and how they affect performance. I’m looking specifically at how stretching immediately before affects aerobic exercises. We spent the first semester of senior year picking our project, finding articles that related to our topic, doing research, picking our methods, and the specific test and exercises we would need to do our tests. We just get everything put into place first semester and then second semester is when we actually do the project. So right now I am getting a certain number of subjects, scheduling times, and then they will come in and we go through the procedures I made, for mine specifically we will go through the win gates test and then I’ll put the date in a computer program. After I get through all the participants and have all the data collected, I will put it into graphs and tables, and then I’ll get to analyze it and see if the results turned out differently than the literature predicted or not. Then at the end of the year, I’ll create a poster that I can present that will include an intro, my methods, procedures, data, analysis, and then a short conclusion.
HC: How has COVID affected your project?
LC: It has greatly affected it. We normally get to use anyone in the DePauw community as test subjects but because of COVID, we can only use people in our class. This means that I can only pick between 13 people. Also, as of right now we still get to have our poster presentation in May where I will get to share my results, but that could always change.
HC: What advice would you give someone going into their senior year as a Kinesiology major?
LC: Definitely, set up meetings throughout both semesters with your advisor because those meetings will be so much more helpful than when you meet with the whole class. Also start early on your literature review and your data collection, because it is all time-consuming and time goes by super fast.
HC: Thanks so much for talking with me today, Lauren. Good luck finishing up your project.
LC: Thank you!