Academics

Hello, beautiful people!

It is nice to be back after a lovely summer; there is so much to catch up on. The most exciting thing that happened to me this summer was going to see Taylor Swift at The Eras Tour. It was genuinely the best night of my life. I got my favorite surprise song, and I screamed my heart out the whole night. As for Odyssey work over the summer, I actually have a new gym partner! My stepsister, Sydney, and I went to the gym together all summer, and, through my guidance, she has greatly improved. I’ve seen physical changes and mental changes, and I am excited to share her journey with you during my end-of-the-year presentation. She has gone from putting no weight on the leg press to pushing 100 lbs! I'm very impressed with her, even though she still skips cardio. I have improved a lot as well. I can now squat a plate, and with the bar, that is more than my body weight. I am really proud of this because I have been working on mobility for a whole year, and I have achieved a good squat depth while still lifting heavy. 

Now that the school year has started, I am ready to explore some new topics with my project. I am also pretty excited about working with my junior partner, Izzy. She’s super cool, and our projects are very similar; I think we will gain a lot from each other. This year, I want to start researching gut health and female hormones and how they affect a woman’s health journey. I have changed my research question: How can elements, including female hormones, gut nutrition, and exercise environment, affect a woman’s health journey; and how can they be manipulated for her benefit?

I am much more comfortable with this question, as it includes my interests other than exercise physiology. The next step in my project is to write questions and interview my grandpa, who is a retired endocrinologist from UNM. I think our conversation will be really helpful and interesting. I am also planning to create and send out a survey for the high school that will ask about their gym and exercise experiences (More to come in the next blog). So, that is the plan for the upcoming month. I hope you had a fun and restful summer and are looking forward to a productive year. I know I am going to make the most of this year because it is my last year at Prep. I am going to leave you with a picture of me having the time of my life at Eras. See you next month!

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Hello, beautiful people!

Fall is rolling in (finally), and this month has been one of planning and preparing for my research ahead. Most of my time in Odyssey this month has been occupied with preparing for the juniors’ speeches. A lot of practice and revision went into their speeches, and they did an incredible job. I’m really interested to see where their projects take them. That being said, I did not get as much work done as I would have liked this month because of the unforeseen amount of time that we would spend preparing. I did, however, set up an interview with my grandpa, and I learned a lot. My grandpa, Francis Byrn, is a retired reproductive endocrinologist from UNM, and so our interview centered around female hormones and their effect on women who exercise. 

After asking my grandpa about his career: what he did, patients he saw, and what conditions he specialized in. As a reproductive endocrinologist, he helped women dealing with hormone dysfunction and infertility, and he helped them balance their hormones so that they could get pregnant. So, in short, he knows a lot about estrogen and its presence in the female body. I learned about testosterone, and how its presence in the female body benefits muscle growth. I learned about menstruation and menopause, and how they do not affect exercise the way I thought they did. Most of all, I learned that there are two different types of estrogen: estrogen that deals with reproductive characteristics in a woman’s body and estrone, which is a female hormone that is present in fat. I am going to be much more in-depth in an interview response paper, so, if you want to learn more, feel free to check it out!

Next month, after writing my interview response, I am going to use this interview to launch myself into research about estrone, fat distribution, and how exercise affects hormone levels (not vice versa, like I had originally thought). I am starting my work with the swim team at the end of the month, so I will be creating a Google form to get their opinions about weightlifting and exercise before I start working with them. I hope to inspire them to start exercising on their own so that they can have an outlet like I do. I still plan on doing the other Google form that I talked about in my last blog. I hope to get a lot more done next month. See you then!

Hello, beautiful people!

This month has been a little stagnant product-wise in the Odyssey department. I've only really had time to work in class, so I haven't written anything other than a couple of annotated bibliographies and my workout plan for the swimmers. Last week was actually my first week with the swimmers! It's going pretty well so far. We've done two leg days, a back day, and a push day, and I've worked out the kinks in the timing and program, so everything is moving pretty smoothly. We start out with 10 minutes of cardio, during which I set up the room we’re working in. Then we work our core, which I really prioritize because it is the center of everyone's body, and is essential for balance during heavy exercise that works other body muscles. The kids are struggling a little with core, even the stronger ones, but I see them improving daily. There are a couple of kids with whom I really have to work with and give a lot of attention so that they participate throughout the entire workout and don't injure themselves. My goal is to get these specific children more excited about weightlifting because of the focus I put into them. Next week, we are starting to incorporate swimming along with a shorter dryland session, so the fast-paced work begins. So basically, this month was spent preparing for that.

I also participated in Passport to Prep, which helped me get a little more excited about my project because, as you know, the last month was rather unproductive. I got a source from one of the parents I met, and I plan to look into it soon. I've also come up with an idea for my end product, which I am actually excited to do. I was worried for a while because I changed my end goal, and none of the end products were interesting, or they didn't relate to the advocacy portion of my project. I am planning on writing and publishing an article in the Prep paper or even in an academic journal, which is a stretch, but it would be very cool. I could maybe even make a podcast episode or go on a podcast! The plan for next month is to do my community observation and continue my annotated bibliographies and sources, as well as read academic journals in order to figure out how to structure mine. 

Non-Odyssey News: 1989 (Taylor’s Version) is out, and it is INCREDIBLE. Please go stream if you’re a Swiftie because I am totally in my 1989 era. I waited an entire month for this album, and it was worth the wait. I also went on the Border Trip to El Paso, and it was life-changing. I cried my eyes out and had a lot of fun. I could go on and on about that trip, but I will just leave you there. Until next time!

-Ava

Hello, beautiful people!

This month has been more productive than the last couple of months. I've been working with the swim team almost every day, and everyone is getting the flow of everything and starting to look a lot better form-wise during all of our exercises. One of the difficulties I have with working with a big team, though, is that I don't get one-on-one time with each swimmer to track their weight or really help them with their form. I expressed my concern to Mr. Dominguez, one of the coaches, and he and the other coach found a solution for me. They are going to allow me to work with small groups of swimmers on Mondays and Tuesdays. I am going to get a small group at the beginning of the week, and they are going to do an entire workout with me. The group will rotate, so I get to work one-on-one with everybody. With the younger, more inexperienced kids, I am only going to allow them to work on the machines. During our dryland workouts, because we have such a big group, we need to use free weights. This isn't really good for beginners who are unfamiliar with the movements we are doing, so they are at risk of doing it wrong and getting injured. But now, I get to allow them to strengthen themselves in a controlled environment with less risk. I might make a chart to track their progress since the machines are easier to monitor. 

Everyday after dryland, I have to wait for my sister to swim so I can take her home. During that extra time that I had, I walked on the treadmill and did my community observation: an online lecture about women in sports medicine. It was a really interesting lecture, it talked about the inequalities in the sports industry and the lack of education surrounding women’s health and risk for injury when it comes to playing sports. For centuries, women were prohibited to professionally compete in sports; the Olympics has been around since 776 BC, but women were only allowed to compete there in the 20th century. Even then, they were only allowed to play sports that protected femininity and decency. Along with the lack of representation for women in sports, there is a lack of care. Sometimes, providers don't take anatomical and physiological differences between female and male athletes into consideration, which could lead to improper care for the female athlete. The speaker, Miho J. Tanaka, MD, is the Director of a Women’s Sports Medicine Program at Massachusetts General Hospital and an Associate professor at Harvard Medical School, and she addressed her concerns about these issues incredibly passionately. It was really cool to see a successful woman in her industry, especially one who is creating so much change for her fellow female athletes. 

Those are the most notable things I have done this month, other than a couple of annotated sources and studies related to my project. Odyssey is getting stressful; there is much to do, but I'm really excited to compile all my work into a portfolio and see physical proof of all I have accomplished this semester. Remember to take breathers and drink a lot of water during this upcoming finals season. You’re doing great! See you next month!

Hello beautiful people,

This is my semester evaluative blog. It is going to be a little longer than the others as it is an entire review of the research I have done and experiences and insights I have gained through the Odyssey Scholars Program. I would consider this semester to be the most difficult semester spent in this program so far, because there has been an increased amount of work and a lot of change. But, I am experiencing the difficulties that come with an extensive research project, the same difficulties I will surely encounter in college, so I am glad to be familiarizing myself with them now. So, let's get into it.

I started out this semester with many questions about hormones and gut health. There were a lot of things that I wanted to learn, and I had no idea how to incorporate them into my project. I had originally thought I was going to create a business plan for a women’s-only gym, but I decided to change the course of my project and dive into research. Last year, my project was focused mostly on anatomy and exercise physiology; things I was already really familiar with. I was playing it really safe. Feeling I needed to do more, I added so many other topics to my project, like hormone health, gut health, and women's studies. It was a lot. I realized that I couldn't get the depth I wanted when I was focusing on so many different things. So, I decided to eliminate the nutrition portion of my project and solely focus on exercise and its relation to women's health so that I could still incorporate my interests in exercise and women's studies, but my research would be more focused. Despite this change, I was still met with many challenges. 

I organized my first interview of the semester early on, in September. It was an easy interview, as it was with my grandpa. It was easy in the sense that it wasn't complicated to set up, and it could be more casual. I had a lot of questions about endocrinology and hormone health and its relation to exercise and he was the perfect person to answer them, having been a reproductive endocrinologist for over 20 years. I had gone into the interview thinking that there was a way to track a woman's cycle and hormone fluctuations and sync them with her training regime for her benefit. I thought that, for example, there was a specific moment in a woman's cycle where her hormone levels would allow her to get the most muscle gain from a training session. I asked my grandpa about this hypothesis, and he informed me that there was no real way to get a significant benefit from tracking a woman's hormones and basing her exercise program off of it. This was disappointing to hear, because it meant that I had to find a new focus for my project, when I had just started to get excited about the path I was on. 

After that, I took a break from looking into hormone health, and I started to dive back into exercise physiology. I started working with the swim team, and most of my research was based on relating swimming to resistance training. Though this research is important, it wasn’t what I wanted to do. I wasn’t really learning anything new, and I felt really stuck. I was losing interest and motivation. I didn’t know what direction to take, and I felt as though my project was changing too much. I had no idea what my final product would be. Every new assignment was met with anxiety, and I was scared that I would finish off the year having either done nothing, or having done everything carelessly. But then I realized that all of these feelings and changes were part of the process, and I just have to keep moving forward and everything will fall into place.

I started researching endocrinology again. All of the studies I have looked at have had different or inconclusive results, because women's hormones are difficult to research and perform studies on, as every woman has a different hormonal profile based on their genetic background, their body type, and even on the amount of exercise that they do. Even though all of the articles conclude that more research needs to be done, and the studies yield no finite results, they still allow me to learn more about female hormones and the complexity of the female body, and I realized that I shouldn't have given up on this aspect of my research as soon as I did. 

One of the biggest issues surrounding women in the exercise industry is that people don't recognize how impressive an athletic woman is. In doing this research, I have learned about all the factors that are working against women when they exercise. Their bodies are not built for muscle gain, they’re built for child birth. I know I have talked about this a lot, but it is incredibly difficult for women to gain muscle because their hormones don't assist muscle growth whereas, in a man, the most prominent hormone in his body is testosterone, which is an essential hormone for muscle growth. Women are also more susceptible to injury for the same reason. If they suffer from a torn tendon or muscle injury, it is more difficult for them to recover because they have a lower tendon-collagen synthesis rate, which means that their muscles regrow and heal at a slower rate because of their lack of testosterone. And even if a woman manages to overcome all of these challenges and she is incredibly built and athletic, there are still more obstacles to come. Women who exercise intensely and consistently will have less body fat, and the majority of female hormones like estrogen and estrone are present in that fat, so the loss of it can lead to an inconsistent period, irregular hormone levels, and even infertility. 

Something that excited me during my research process was finding a thesis paper that really corresponded with my project. It's a paper on gendered experiences in the gym, and it discusses how one's exercise experience can differ based on factors like their age, body type, and gender identity. It's a long paper, so I only read a bit of it for my annotated bibliography, but I plan on finishing the reading when I have more time to delve into and analyze it, and hopefully it will give me ideas for an academic article I plan on writing for my product next semester. I have found other really interesting academic articles, my favorite being one about the misrepresentation and hyper-sexualization of female athletes. It focused on a couple instances where a female tennis player was reviewed in a magazine, and the authors focused more on her physical appearance and femininity, rather than her actual athletic ability. The community observation that I did was also related to feminism and women's studies. It discussed the lack of research and information surrounding women's health in the sports industry, as well as lack of funding and coverage for women's sports. Articles like these allow me to include an advocacy aspect of my project. Throughout my highschool career, I've found myself to be an avid feminist. Every project or presentation that I have been handed I have used a way for me to be an advocate and a voice for my gender. I wanted to do that with this project too. To be brief, I want to voice all of the challenges that athletic women face, and use my research to support my voice. 

This project has been a long and strenuous process. This semester has been one of the more difficult stretches of this journey, and sometimes I forget how much effort and time I've put into it. I have encountered difficult cycles and discomforts in my exercise journey as well. I just have to push through the challenges and, like in fitness, I know the results will be so worth it.

Hello beautiful people!

I hope you all are enjoying the new year! For me, 2024 is progressing very slowly. We started this month by making a January schedule, but I've had difficulty sticking to it. I had planned to find interview sources, to read articles, and I'd had hoped to have started an outline on an opinion article by now. Truth be told, I haven't made progress on any of these things; my senioritis is really hitting hard. I have made progress with the swim team, though. Throughout the season, I have faced some problems with coaching the team, as there is a very wide-range of ages and skill levels on it. It is a team of both middle and high school students, so working with the entire group has proven difficult, as I haven't been able to record any data or focus on any individual's progress. I also haven't been able to weight lift with the students, which is what I was really wanting to do. To solve this problem, I developed a new workout plan in which I could separate the middle and high schoolers, so that everyone can do what they need to do to progress on the team. For the highschoolers, I made a page of 30-minute workouts, each based on a swim stroke. My workout focuses on targeting the muscles that are engaged in each stroke. The swimmer can choose to workout based on a stroke that they either regularly compete in or really want to improve on. The middle school swimmers still need a lot of attention, so I will continue working on mobility and core strength with them. I will be doing this workout plan for the rest of the season, and I hope the swimmers will continue to use my workouts when the season is over. 

I am re-reading and annotating the thesis I found last semester on gender norms and comfortability in the gym. Once I finish reading, I hope to have an idea of how I want my opinion article to look. I will be working on this next month, and doing my workshop with the high schoolers. I might cut out the articles I was planning to read so that I can just start focusing on my article, and lighten the load on my mind. I hope you all rest and try to workout when you can. Take everything slowly and prioritize your mental health. I will see you next month!

-Ava

Hello beautiful people!

This blog is kind of a review on what I did in the months February and March, because we won't have an official March blog (and because I totally forgot to do my February blog on time). At the beginning of February, I needed to get back on track with my project. So, I set up an informal interview with Mrs. Walters in order to organize my thoughts and ideas to continue my project. This interview was pretty informal, but the informality actually made it more comfortable and more informative. This lack of structure was helpful for me, as  I went to this interview disorganized and looking for structure. This talk with her was incredibly helpful. Even though I didn't really learn anything new, I got to talk about the things I have learned and the research I've done, which really helped me re-motivate myself about my project and reassure myself that I actually do know what I am talking about. It was really nice to talk to Mrs. Walters because we have very similar interests and passions surrounding the topics in my project, so we got to have an intellectual conversation about women's health and hormones and their relation to exercise. I was able to participate and share my knowledge, which really helped me regain confidence in my research. 

After writing my interview reaction, I moved back to the thesis paper I had been reading. At the end of the thesis, the author included a questionnaire that she made for the members of her gym in order to assist her in her research. I printed out this questionnaire, took it myself, and then went back and chose the questions that I would like to use in my very own survey. I wrote down these questions and I made some of my own and then I put it in a google form. It was an anonymous questionnaire that I sent out to all of the prep highschool students. I made it to assess high school students’ comfortability and experiences of discrimination or harassment in the gym setting. This survey was really successful, I got 70 responses within the first two days. Over spring break and throughout this month I will be evaluating and comparing the responses and connecting different responses to the gender identity of the survey taker.

Over the coming months, I will be having more casual interviews with Ms. Walters, and I will begin writing my article throughout April before we leave. I will also be working on my final presentation and doing my community observation in order to wrap up this final Odyssey season. Remember to take breathers, drink lots of water, and step outside and enjoy the warm sun as spring rolls in. See you next month!

-Ava 

Hello, beautiful people! 

This is my first blog, and I am excited to keep you updated about my project! These past months have been quite draining. I have begun my research and have been working on my mental health while persevering through my school work. I have actually been experiencing struggles that I hope to help my future clients with: motivation, mental health, and just being overwhelmed in general. Finding time for exercising has been difficult because I can’t even find time to finish all my projects. I am quite stressed, but I have done what I can and what is mentally sustainable for me. Everyday is a new opportunity, and it is never too late to be brand new. 

The month of September was inspiring. I really got into the research section of my project. I learned about kinesiology and all the subfields within that area of research, which include exercise physiology. Most of the research clarified everything I already knew, but it was motivating to have my work validated. I wrote a response paper that I am really proud of, and have kept consistent, informative, and visually pleasing notes. 

October was a difficult month. I had a lot of work to do, and I have experienced firsthand the negative feelings that come when I don't get to clear my mind through fitness. But I will look at the glass half full and use my frustration to work harder when I can exercise. I have requested, organized, and conducted interviews, one with a dietitian and two with a physical trainer. I didn’t really learn anything new from my first interview, but I refined my knowledge of nutrition and conducted it successfully. 

A week later, I met with physical trainer Marsha Gonzales and learned new things as well as expanded my knowledge about exercise physiology. She described working with patients, and how an exercise physiologist or trainer will have to prescribe workouts for their clients, and figure out what they need to do to help their body and reach their goals. I then met Ms. Gonzales in person; she allowed me to tour her gym while advising me about business management and informing me of her successes and failures. 

I am eager to compile all of this information into notes and a response paper, and to really get my thoughts together. Once I do that, I can start working on the knowledge I really want to gain about individual muscles and their physiology. The busy work is almost done, and I can’t wait until next month when I get to share the information I am most passionate about. I am thankful for everyone reading, and I remind you to do one thing today that makes you happy. See you next month!

Taylor Swift song of the month: “This is Me Trying”

Hello, beautiful people!

This month was a huge improvement from the last. The research I did was super interesting and fun, and I got to compile it all into a cute poster. I liked my response project this month because it really embodied who I am. It was colorful and organized, and I got to showcase my knowledge on what I love. I hope to put my poster up in the weight room at Prep to help others. Next month, I will do the same with the muscles in the upper body. Below is a picture of my project:

A Basic Guide to Leg Growth

I want to talk about something that happened to me a couple days ago that strengthened my confidence in the importance of my project. I was studying at a Starbucks, which is something I love because it allows me to focus on my work, and I get an iced coffee as a reward. I was listening to music--Taylor Swift’s folklore album, my favorite studying album--and both of my headphones were in. One of my peers from Prep was also studying there. I do not know her personally, but we have activities in National Honor Society together. We said hello, talked a little, and then resumed our studying. After about two hours, a man walked in and I got a weird gut feeling about him. He made me uneasy, but I was in an area full of people so I didn’t focus on him and continued to work. 

The girl, Abby, got up to go home and before she left, she walked up to my table to check on me. She told me that the man had been pointing at me and she just wanted to make sure I was okay. I hadn’t noticed him doing this, but I thanked her and took one headphone out of my ear to be more aware. I texted my mom and I had my pepper spray with me. After she left, Abby apparently found my number from the NHS website, and texted me to make sure that I got home and that I was safe. I did, and I thanked her for checking on me. This was such a pure moment of sisterhood, and occasions like these are the reasons that I value what I'm doing so much. It is so important for women to have a safe space in their lives, and I hope that eventually, my gym will be that place for my fellow women. I want to look out for them, as they have looked out for me. 

Thank you for reading this month, and Happy Holidays!

Taylor swift song of the month: “Mad Woman”

Hello, beautiful people,

I hope you all have enjoyed the New Year! This month has been productive, and I have learned a lot. For Christmas, I got an anatomy book, and my work this month has revolved around it. I have been annotating this book, titled Delavier's Women’s Strength Training Anatomy Workouts by Frédéric Delavier, for information about the upper body muscles. I have annotated  exercises, variations, workout form, and muscle diagrams. 

I even have a tab for questions so that I can check the book’s accuracy with Prep’s Athletic Trainer Cathy Walters, who is advising me on my project. I have also been annotating problematic statements or passages. The author of the book is a man who made some questionable statements. The author seems to be overly concerned with the “aesthetics” of a woman’s body and not building overall strength. I will be putting my reaction to this book in a response paper, which includes my negative reactions to his controversial opinions. 

On another note, I am doing a muscle lab in Anatomy that really relates to my project. I get to create a workout plan for another student based on their medical history, physical history, and personal goals. I am really excited to showcase what I have learned in Odyssey.  

Not much else has been going on. I have an interview scheduled for February with an exercise physiologist, so my next blog will be about that. I hope you all enjoy the rest of January and I hope the cold season brings us snow. I want to remind you all that it is okay to take a break, so sit down and do something for you. Resting is really important. See you next month!

Taylor Swift song of the month: "New Year’s Day"

Hello, beautiful people!

This month has been rather slow. At the beginning of the month, I had an interview with Dr. Darleen Sandoval, an exercise physiologist and professor at Anschutz Medical Campus in Colorado. The interview was informative but not exactly what I was looking for. I was expecting an interview with a clinical exercise psychologist, while Dr. Sandoval’s work is more research-focused and based in a lab. The questions that I had prepared for her were not really related to her job, so I had to think quickly on my feet in order to come up with relevant questions for the 40-minute interview. During the interview, I learned there are different types of exercise physiology, and it was really interesting hearing about all the different levels and layers that combine to create this complex field. 

The rest of the month has proved to be less productive for me, as spring break is coming up and teachers are rushing to meet the curriculum, which results in incredibly overwhelmed students. I am using this short month to unwind and relax, so I am solely focusing on the interview for my response paper.

The rough patches this month have taught me about persistence and determination, which are huge parts of the exercise portion of my research project. I made it through a successful interview, even though I didn't get the information that I wanted. I have persevered through the multitude of assignments that have been handed to me, and I have learned to stick it out throughout the times that I haven't been able to de-stress at the gym. 

I am hoping this month will give me needed rest in order to excel at my project next month. I want to remind everyone reading that it is okay to take it slow, and it is okay if you're not doing as well as you want to be. Take a deep breath, drink some water, and persevere. See you next month!

Hello, beautiful people!

I have a lot of information to share with you today, as this blog covers both March and

April. Fun fact, I am writing this blog while sipping iced coffee at a Flying Star on a lovely sunny day. The cotton snowballs that appear during this season make outdoor New Mexico look like a fairy land and I am loving the vibe. Anyway, over spring break, I went on a road trip and visited all of the national parks in Arizona and Utah. I spent over five hours in the car daily, so I had plenty of time to work on Odyssey. I spent my time reading and annotating the introduction to Delavier's Women’s Strength Training Anatomy book, which doesn't sound like a lot, but my annotations were really thorough. I annotated for questions, new things I learned, important information, and problematic statements. 

I took the questions I had to Ms. Walters for clarification on things like tendon collagen synthesis, for example, which is the rate at which muscles regenerate after being placed under stress. All of the information I learned from this book ended up becoming a five-page-long response paper. But, it wasn’t all new information. I, of course, had to include my opinion. And I gave my opinion on the controversial statements that were bound to be made, as this book is about women, and is written by a man. Some of the things he said just made me laugh. For example, when the author wrote about developing chest muscles in women, he stated their importance: “Without them, you would not be able to hold a baby very long.” I thought this was hilarious, as it implies that is the only value of chest muscles for women. Men can hold babies,  too!

Despite the misogyny in the book, I found a lot of the information valuable and I had fun complaining about it, so that’s what's important. I wanted to get a lot more done this month. I had plan ed to start researching estrogen and hormonal fluctuations, as that was something the author mentioned that caught my attention. But, naturally, a buttload of essays and busywork were handed to me, so I don’t think I am going to get the work done for that topic that I wanted to have done this year. On the bright side, I have a starting point for my research next year, which I am excited for because I will be entering unknown territory. I plan to organize an interview with an endocrinologist, so I can really delve into the women’s health component of exercise. I am looking forward to this aspect of my project next year because, though this year has been informative, I’ve only scratched the surface of the things I want to learn. Thank you for following the journey this year. Remember to wear sunscreen, dance in the April rain, and smile really big. See you next semester!

-Ava

P.S. The title of my response paper was after a Taylor Swift song. Are you surprised?