Week 10: Papers, Posters, and Parting Thoughts - Buffering… Complete

Ten weeks ago, in my very first blog post, I asked if you knew the feeling of watching a “typing…” bubble vanish, or the pit in your stomach while waiting for a portal to load. We started this journey exploring the “cognition of waiting.”

Well, the waiting is officially over. Welcome to Week 10. We made it to the finish line!

Putting the “Paper” in Paperwork 

With the elusive Contingent Negative Variation (CNV) signal finally caught and the data thoroughly analyzed, my biggest task this week was putting it all together into my formal paper.

Taking ten weeks of messy, unpredictable science—the scheduling bottlenecks, the comfortable-chair conundrums, the noisy data, and the final breakthrough—and translating it into a neat, academically rigorous document was surreal. I finally got to format my literature review, methodology, and results into a cohesive story. Seeing the final draft from all the printed copies sitting on my desktop is probably the most satisfying feeling I’ve had this year. 

Pixels and Posters

 Of course, I can’t just hand everyone a dense research paper and expect them to read it. I have to present this entire journey at our upcoming Senior Symposium!

I spent a good chunk of this week designing my presentation poster. I got to channel all the experience I gained from the New Jersey research conference a few weeks ago with Dr. Zaidi. Figuring out how to visually balance text, my methodology, and those beautiful, hard-earned brainwave graphs was a fun challenge. I am so excited to stand with my poster and talk people’s ears off about my study.

A Final Reflection 

When I started this, I thought research was going to be an obvious line: write script, collect data, find brainwaves, write papers. Reality: It was a winding road. 

It was pivoting from a tourist in the Galapagos to a recruiter. It was learning that high schoolers’ Google Calendars are harder to navigate than neural pathways. It was realizing my simulation was “too relaxing” and having to adapt my evaluation method.

But that is the beauty I saw. As reflected in us as people, our brains are wonderfully chaotic. I stepped into this project as a high school senior trying to understand the biological machinery behind the anxiety my friends and I feel every day. I’m stepping out of it with a massive appreciation for the scientific process.

Thank you so much for following along with me over the last ten weeks. Thank you for reading through my alliterations, my frustrations, and my victories. Not just for me, but for us — the “waiting game” is finally over.

Signing off one last time,

– Josh Peter