A lot of our research meeting this week was spent discussing a New York Times article Professor had sent to me the night before about Amy Cuddy, a social psychologist most known for her TEDTalk on “power posing.” It has recently come to light that some of her findings on how posing in powerful positions can actually raise your hormone levels are not totally replicable, this being one of the pillars of ethical research. While this is certainly concerning given her success, she faced arguably uncalled-for backlash that is really more like bullying. In relation to what Professor and I are doing, it speaks to the importance of conducting ethical and accurate research, but more importantly, what it’s like being a woman in a male-dominated field, as sexism was the real root of this issue.
My week was also a bit different in terms of research, as in addition to finishing cleaning the last transcript, I had the opportunity to visit and observe my professor teach her graduate course at Harvard concerning UDL, the subject we’re studying. The main things I noticed during the class was the size, as there were about 30 people and most of my general ed classes at Lasell don’t even have that many people, the diversity of the students, happily surprising given I go to school in a rich white people neighborhood, and the length, as the class was over 3 hours long, which I think just comes with the fact that it’s a graduate class, and it’s at Harvard.
Overall, it was a great experience, and it was nice having a week with such cool opportunities, all of which came because of my position as a research assistant, and all things I didn’t think I’d get to learn about or experience.