On a day-to-day basis, I always find myself daydreaming. A professor will be speaking about a subject, and sometimes my mind starts to wander and I begin to think about things that are very irrelevant to what is going on in class. I know it’s a bad habit, but sometimes I cannot help it. The range of things that I think about can be from what I’m going to eat for dinner, to what I’m going to do over the weekend, to when I should do my homework, clean my room, or when can I watch the next episode of One Tree Hill on Netflix, and things of that sort. I was always curious as to why people daydream and how we lose focus of the task at hand so often. Is it because we are so bored? Or are we just wishing our time away in the present without really realizing it. I decided to do a little research and see why our mind goes off into our own “little world”.

When thinking about daydreaming, the first thing that comes to mind is usually that you are dreaming while you are awake, which essentially, you are. Often times you can dream about getting kidnapped from your home with Beyoncé or seeing a unicorn at the mall, things that are as strange and as obscure as that. Those are unrealistic dreams, and usually unrealistic things will come up and seem real in our dreams at night. But, what we think about when we are awake is drastically different from what we think about when we are asleep. Instead of being asleep and in a semi-unconscious state, we are fully aware of our surroundings, but our minds are not. Surprisingly, we spend almost half of our lives daydreaming about millions of different things. But, why do we daydream so often?

Sometimes we daydream to escape reality. For example, if one day your boyfriend breaks up with you and you get a bad grade on a test, your mind may wander and think about things that make you happy to distract you from the pain that you are feeling. Or if you saw a really good movie the night before and you begin to think about dating the dreamy movie star that you saw on-screen. It is said that we usually daydream about things that we desire to occur. Scientists named the part of our brain that does the daydreaming the “default network”. This network activates when the brain is active and stimulates itself. Sometimes, we do just daydream and let our minds wander when we are bored. Sometimes, it is more than that though.

It is true that the events that are going on in our lives affect what we daydream about. Those outside factors can impact our mind so much that we alter our thinking and can often times lose focus of the task at hand. Just a few of the things we tend to think about that are influenced by our outside lives are past and future experiences, a looming decision we may have to make, or what other people are thinking about you. Whether we are excited, anxious, happy, sad, angry or all of the above, our daydreams have a direct causal impact on our everyday lives. Our daydreams can be sporadic or can be an extreme distraction to our lives depending on the day. Although this study was correlational, scientists suggests that daydreaming is very good for you if you are thoroughly thinking about realistic, positive things. It is said that those kinds of daydreams can bring you immense happiness; if you are doing it at the right time. When it is not the right time to be daydreaming, we should try to tune out our daydreams so that we can focus on what when we need to in order to be the most productive versions of ourselves. Ultimately, sometimes we just daydream about things that may be a little more exciting than biology class or a history lecture, but we mainly daydream to make ourselves feel better.

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Corporation, Australian Broadcasting. “ABC Health & Wellbeing.” Why Do We Daydream? N.p., n.d. Web. 15 Sept. 2016.

Krauss, Susan. “Why and How You Daydream.” Psychology Today. N.p., n.d. Web. 15 Sept. 2016.

It may not come as a surprise to you that I am one of the many girls that is dissatisfied with their hair. My hair is in an in-betweener stage where it is neither straight nor completely curly either. To sum it up, most times it is a frizzy mess. When I was younger though, my hair was curly and I had always loved to get it blown out and straightened by a hair stylist. Because of this, when I got older, I decided to get the keratin treatment on my hair to make it straighter and not frizzy. Now you make be asking yourself, what is the keratin treatment, and how does it work to essentially “straighten” your hair? Well, a hair stylist puts a chemical mixture, similar to a paste, into your hair that is able to straighten it and rid of the frizz. The chemical is then washed out of your hair after a certain amount of time and later the treatment is sealed into your hair by the use of a flat iron. After getting the keratin treatment done, I was always curious to know if it was causing serious damage to my hair, or if the treatment was not detrimental to the health of my hair at all. I wanted to research this so that I can feel confident that I am safe and that my hair will remain healthy if I continue to get the treatment done.

 
To begin, I first researched what the word “keratin” actually means. It is a protein that is found in your hair, as well as other various parts of your body. The keratin treatment is meant to reinforce and accentuate the healthiness of your hair. I then researched what kinds of chemicals are put into your hair and to see if they can damage your hair. The main chemical that is put into your hair for the keratin treatment is formaldehyde. It seems that instead of damaging your hair, formaldehyde has detrimental effects to other parts of your body when you are surrounded by it and if you inhale it at extreme amounts. Formaldehyde often times can irritate a customer’s eyes, ears, nose and throat while the treatment is being done. It can also affect a hair stylist’s health, so often times they will have to wear a mask so that the chemical is not heavily inhaled. When I got my keratin treatment done, my eyes began to tear up uncontrollably and my hair stylist took a break so that I was able to regroup and stay away from the chemical for a few minutes. In that case, the chemical had been severely irritating my eyes, which is a common thing that formaldehyde will do.

Although one may think that this chemical is damaging your hair, it is important to note that the chemical itself has damaging affects on your body and not your hair. It is said that the only damage that can be done to your hair is by flat-ironing it on a consistent basis. In fact, there is no causal relationship between formaldehyde and your hair, but rather a causal relationship between formaldehyde and certain sensitive parts of your body such as your eyes, ears, nose and throat. Formaldehyde causes uncomfortable feelings and symptoms such as coughing, wheezing, chest pains and worst case, bronchitis when there is high exposure to formaldehyde.

 
Ultimately, after reading my post and looking into some studies that have been done, would you risk your overall health just to have your hair look “picture-perfect” on a hot and humid day? Probably not. It is unfortunate but after researching the detriments of formaldehyde, I will no longer be getting the keratin treatment. There are many other ways in which I can style my hair when it is unruly instead of causing long-term damage to my health and to my body.

(http://keratintreatmentcenter.com/images/keratin-hair-straightening.jpg)

“Formaldehyde.” EPA. Environmental Protection Agency, 23 Feb. 2016. Web. 15 Sept. 2016.

Mann, Denise. “Keratin Hair Treatments.” WebMD. N.p., n.d. Web.

Platt, Isabel. “What’s the Deal with Keratin Treatments?” National Center For Health Research. N.p., 09 Aug. 2016. Web. 15 Sept. 2016.

When I was a kid, and still today, it was very evident that my more dominant hand was my right hand. I used it to eat, write, and basically do just about anything with it. I have a distinct memory of one ordinary day in my primary school gym class. We were told to throw a ball to our partner who was standing on the other side of the gym. I grabbed the ball with my right hand, tried to throw it and immediately felt the most awkward and uncomfortable feeling of my life. The ball did not travel very far, clearly. Feeling very perplexed, I caught the ball that was thrown back to me and threw it back to my partner once again with my right hand. Again, I felt that same awkward feeling. I threw it back once more and decided to switch hands and throw it with my left hand, seeing if that would feel any better. This time, I actually reached my partner and it felt normal to throw with my left hand. Still though, I was utterly confused as to why I was better at some things with my right hand and others with my left. (I later discovered that I use a tennis racket and bowl with my left hand as well). Since this is a topic that has always interested me, I decided to do a little research as to why this happened to me as well as many others across the globe.

Your handedness is determined at birth, and a parent is usually able to tell what a child’s more dominant hand is after they are a few months old. My parents knew that I was right-handed since all they had ever seen me use to do most tasks was my right hand. After realizing that I could do things with both my right and left hand, I thought that I was considered to be ambidextrous, which is when you are able to use both hands to do different things at an equal ability. As I further looked into why I am able to use both of my hands to do different things, I discovered that I am not really a true ambidextrous but rather I am mixed-handed, otherwise known as being cross dominant. What that means is that I am able to do certain tasks with one hand and other tasks with my other hand.

In fact, although it is not definite, it is assumed that people are mixed-handed due to a split of the different hemispheres in the brain. For example, a right-hand dominant person (like myself) has a more dominant left side of the brain, and vice versa. Cross-dominance doesn’t have to be solely just the use of your hands for different actions. Often times, cross-dominance is noticed in sports, where an athlete will perform an action, such as kicking a soccer ball with their left foot, but eat with their right hand. Whenever I spoke to anyone about my cross-dominance, they always thought that it was a strange phenomenon, but it’s a lot more common than one might think. In fact, it is said that cross-dominance occurs to about one-fifth of all people around the world. It is recommended for many that if you are having trouble with your cross-dominance, you should practice and try to learn how to do things with both sides of your body, so that you can actually become ambidextrous.

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In this case, since we are unable to unquestionably determine why cross-dominance occurs, there is not yet a mechanism to describe this phenomenon. Due to this fact, there is not any kind of causal reasoning to define this occurrence but we are fully aware that it must have something to do with the brain. All in all, it surprised me to discover that I am scientifically cross dominant and not ambidextrous. I think my cross-dominance makes me super unique and I am glad that I am able to impress people by being able to do different tasks with both of my hands.

This is a picture of Rafael Nadal who is a mixed-handed athlete.

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“Mixed-handed Children More Likely to Have Mental Health, Language and Scholastic Problems.” Mixed-handed Children. Imperial College London, 25 Jan. 2010. Web. 15 Sept. 2016.

“What Does It Mean to Be Cross Dominant?” WiseGEEK. Conjecture Coroporation, n.d. Web. 15 Sept. 2016.

Hi, my name is Justine Gaines and I am planning on majoring in public relations and minoring in business. To be honest, science really just isn’t my thing. It’s not that I was bad at it in high school, I just didn’t enjoy it as much as many other different subjects. As I was looking at the academic plan for a PR major, I noticed that I had to take some kind of a science course in order to declare my major. I really did not want to take a biology, physics or chemistry course due to the fact that they are difficult, confusing and not what I am interested in at all. I was worried about what I should do and decided to talk to my advisor and explain to her my situation and see if there was any way that I could get out of taking a science class. She informed me that I did in fact have to take a science since it was a required GenEd class for my intended major. We browsed through many different science courses and finally came across SC200, which she told me was the perfect course for someone who does not like science! I read the short description under the course and knew that it would be a super interesting class that would cover topics that I have always been curious about. After the first day of class and upon reading the syllabus, I was instantly reassured that this was the class for me. I was super intrigued by the topics and I can’t wait to learn more and become a better critical thinker because of this class. As it was probably clearly stated before, I am not planning to be a science major simply because it is not what I am most interested in. I think science can be very interesting and is essential to our lives but I would much rather base my profession around something that I am more passionate about, which is unfortunately not science. One topic that I am anxious and excited to learn about in this class is if a zombie virus could exist. I know that the topic is super strange, but I have always been curious about zombies and if a zombie apocalypse could really happen. This topic also immediately intrigued me because I used to watch The Walking Dead TV show, which was based around a zombie virus. After watching the show and discovering more about zombies and a potential zombie virus, I have been seriously captivated and anxious to learn more about it.

Here is a photo from The Walking Dead

A few days ago, as I was typing up this post, I found an article on the National Geographic website that detailed the possibility of a zombie virus. If you are interested in finding out a little bit more about a possible zombie apocalypse and/or a zombie virus click here, and read all about it!