Week 7

As this term winds to an end, I force myself to reflect on the past two and half years of my life in graduate school.  I have learned a great deal in my first two courses at the University of Florida.  The research course has definitely been the most challenging by far of ALL of the graduate courses I have completed, but the information is very valuable.

I have to say that the importance of relaying information is crucial.  Whether this is being done from the office at work, or reporting the findings of research, communication must be clear and concise.  I enjoyed distributing the questionnaires for this particular week's assignment.  The most encouraging aspect being that the participants were very excited about filling the questionnaires out for me.  Also, there were several questions asked about where this project was headed; the interest in the topic was overwhelming. 

I am looking forward to following through with this research proposal.  While there is a great deal of additional organization necessary to ensure a quality product, I believe that the data gathered can help to improve performance for students of all ages.  What is even more intriguing is that the administration on my campus may be interested in the results as well.  If these techniques can help improve relaxation in performance settings, it could certainly help in test taking scenarios as well. 

It will be interesting to see how this plays out over the next several months as this research takes place and data is continuously evaluated.  My original hypothesis was incorrect, there is no correlation between 14-18 year olds and their level of performance anxiety.  I expected that older students would feel more comfortable in performance settings, but some of the older students' levels of anxiety were equal to, if not higher than that of younger students.