No More Soccer

We finished the results section of our research paper today. Sadly to say, our hypothesis was not confirmed by the data that we collected. My group had hypothesized that students would perform better in both reading comprehension and recall after being subjected to a brief intervention focused on metacognitive strategies. While the students who received the intervention did perform at a slightly higher level, the difference between them and the other students was negligible. Honestly, I wasn’t expecting there to be a huge difference, especially considering that we only tested 34 people, but I guess some part of me subconsciously wanted the data to outright justify our hypothesis, so to see that the two groups were so close was kind of disappointing. Doing all of the data collection (which mostly involved testing people) was pretty satisfying, however, and being able to put the data into charts and analyzing it was really fun.

The A floor of the Regenstein, where we do most of our group work.

Before we worked on the results section as a group, we had class as usual. Today, we were lectured about how poverty and, consequently, stress can affect the learning ability and achievement potential of young students. The concept that the lesson was based off was that kids in poverty are exposed to a lot more stress and Adverse Childhood Events (ACEs). There have been many studies that indicate that stress is negatively correlated with learning, and it’s also just a fact that stress negatively affects the prefrontal cortex, which is the area that operates executive function. Executive function is basically the self-control, ability to plan, and problem-solving skills someone has. High exposure to stress as a child can lead to achievement gaps that widen over time. I don’t think it’s fair that those who are exposed to a lot of stress early on suffer academically, because most of the time they’re not the ones in control of their situation. Life itself is a very unfair experience; some people get lucky with their assets and traits, and others don’t. Learning about how uncontrollable factors can affect one’s learning throughout their lifetime has really made me appreciate my childhood and what I have.

The last session of late-night soccer.

Today was also the last late-night soccer session. We didn’t get to use the turf this week, which was regrettable, but there were a lot less people this week, which opened up the field and made the game more fun. The quality of the play was also higher than it has been, because most of the people who were just dragged along by a friend or didn’t really want to play weren’t there. Late-night soccer here has been something that I’ve looked forward to every week, and I’m sad that there won’t be any more of it. It was always a good opportunity to forget about all of the coursework on my mind and just get a sweat (and a couple of goals) in.