This fall, my school fully reopened, which brought forth a torrent of new opportunities,challenges, and experiences. Seeing my campus at full capacity, with people bustling to and from, made it finally feel like I was at college! This feeling was added to by the sports games, class events, and extracurricular activities that are also now available. I got involved with the organization of such events by becoming a member of my Class Coordinating Board. I was elected as Community Outreach Officer, whose job was to help organize events with the rest of the board, as well as do work collaborating with groups on and off-campus. Through this position, I learned more about Brown and the broader Providence community.

I also became more familiar with Providence thanks to my bike. I found myself biking all over Providence this fall. This became a great vehicle by which I could explore the neighborhoods and towns around me. The East Bay Bike path is now one of my favorite spots in Rhode Island. It provides a beautiful ride down the East coast of the Narragansett Bay and a fun day trip with friends. Overall, Providence feels much more like a second home to me now.

A great benefit of in-person classes was the chance to work in laboratories. I have pivoted from engineering, my original major, and am now majoring in cognitive neuroscience. This led to me working in a perceptual learning lab, where I was able to design and test an experiment related to the Dual Visual Stream Hypothesis. My experiment entailed working with virtual reality and laser technology to track people’s finger position in 3-D space. It was an awesome opportunity for hands-on experience with lab equipment, and next semester I will be working in a lab studying sleep’s role in visual perceptual learning. I can’t wait to design more experiments in the future as I work towards publishing my own research. This is one of the many goals of mine that I am thankful to have the support of MVYouth in pursuing.