User:Elijah Elefson/My sandbox

A FIG at the University of Washington is a pre-packaged cluster of high-demand freshman courses. Approximately 70% of all entering freshmen will register for a FIG. They offer several advantages:

-They simplify the registration process. You can register for most or all of your courses at once, all of which are guaranteed to fulfill general education requirements.

-Take classes with the same 20–25 students, so even lecture classes will seem small.

-Meet students with similar interests — after all, you chose to register for the same courses!

-GEN ST 199: The University Community is included in every FIG. It's a two-credit course designed to assist you in your transition into the UW.



Elijah Elefson
I took a FIG my freshman year that was comprised of English 131 and Marine Biology. The Marine Biology class sparked my interest in fishes and led me to take Biology of Fishes.

Biology of Fishes
The evolutionary origin of the substance we call bone coincides with the origin of vertebrates. The earliest fossil vertebrates (fishes) date back to late Cambrian and early Ordovician, but are only little broken bits and pieces. The earliest complete fossil remains of vertebrates appear during the Silurian (440 MYBP). By this time an extensive adaptive radiation had taken place and produced six major orders, 24 families and hundreds of species.

The common trends in these early fishes were that they:
 * 1) Lacked jaws
 * 2) Lacked paired fins
 * 3) Shared a thick exoskeleton (entire head and body was covered with plates of thick bone)
 * 4) Internal skeleton was made up entirely of cartilage

The early fossil record is difficult to interpret and highly controversial because:
 * The diversity of form and the taxonomy of extinct fishes is highly complex
 * There are very few whole specimens and during the Paleozoic Era the fossil record is in poor condition
 * Evolutionary convergence can lead to erroneous conclusions because when different fishes have similar selective pressures they can morphologically converge to a similar state while still being completely unrelated species (ex. sharks vs. porpoises)

The earliest recognizable fish fossils, belonging to a group called the Pteraspidomorphi, appear in the early Ordovician (490 MYBP). There is a strange lack of fish fossils before the Ordovician and therefore we cannot tell what came before the Pteraspidomorphi fossils (many invertebrates fossils can be found during the early Cambrian and Precambrian times but no fish despite similar the shells and bones being almost the same). The Devonian also known as the “Age of Fishes” was a time during which all major lineages of fishes were in existence.

The pteraspidomorphs (heterostraceans) flourished during the Silurian and Devonian (430-380 MYBP) and they were characterized by having a mutli-pieced head shield and a hypocercal tail. Another major subgroup of jawless fishes is the Cephalaspidomorpha, first found in the mid-Ordovician (460 MYBP).

Orders :
 * Cephalaspidiformes: The best known fishes from this group; abundant with many intact specimens
 * The crania of some of these fishes are so well preserved that paleontologists have been able to reconstruct the internal anatomy in remarkable detail
 * A parallel can be drawn between these fishes and similar, modern-day benthic stream fishes, such as catfish
 * Anaspidiformes: more closely related to the group that gave rise to lampreys

Both the pteraspidomorphs and cephalaspidomorphs were heavily armored with thick plates of bone and this armor:
 * Functioned to protect these fishes from predation by giant “scorpions” (crustaceans)

The thick outer bony plates of these earliest kinds of fishes were multi-layered:
 * 1) A dense outer layer of dentine
 * 2) A middle layer of cancellous vascular bone
 * 3) An inner layer of lamellar bone

Because these plates represent the first appearance of bone and because they develop from the dermal layer of the skin, they are called “primary dermal plates” or “primary dermal armor”.

For Experience the Campus I attended the Engineering Career Fair. This fair was for per-engineering students to meet engineering graduates to see their varying jobs and to find out what the student may be interested in after graduation. The fair was very eye opening because many of the jobs presented by individuals were very unique and I did not even know existed. Most of the representatives were very knowledgeable and were excited to share information about their jobs and careers.

As a pre-engineering student I am on the e-mail list for the department of engineering from the University of Washington. The fair was advertised several times, but the floor of my dorm also went to the fair as an event since our floor is exclusively engineering majors. It was a pretty easy decision to go since all I had to do was follow my friends one afternoon.

The fair showed me numerous career fields and specific jobs available to me after graduating with an engineering degree. I looked at some jobs specific to mechanical engineering, my intended major, as well as electrical and industrial engineering. I was pleased to find that most engineers love their jobs and have a lot of fun doing what they do, contrary to the stereotype that engineers are extremely boring nerds who live alone and sleep in the lab.

I gained valuable information at the fair but will definitely follow up by going to any similar events in the future. I will also make sure to strike up a conversation with anyone whom I know is an engineer or has a cool job.

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[washington fig 65]

Experiencing the Campus
While there are many different events on campus, there were not that many pertaining to communications and philosophy this week. I decided that the thing that would help me out the most was a meeting with an advisor in the field of communications. [communication]

I know I want to go into the field of journalism so I thought figuring out what I need to do so was a good start to this process. I want to have an upper hand on others trying to get into this field but was lacking guidance in how to do this. Also, being that I will have 102 credits after this quarter, I am going to need to make decisions soon and apply to the program I want or get an extension if I am not ready to do so. I learned a lot from attending this meeting. I feel somewhat more worried now because I was told it was a very competitive program, so I need to work hard in school as well as get some extracurricular in the field. He told me about a radio station where people can volunteer to write, speak, or do a variety of other things through. I am thinking I might check this out because it sounds interesting and it will also be good for getting into the program. I also want to further research other ways to involve myself in the field both through the school and outside of it. I think going outside of the normal realm that students normally do is what really makes a difference when applying to programs. He also advised me on what classes will help and will look good for the program. I will probably take some more writing intensive classes next quarter. I also need to start spending more time on school. It has been a struggle my first quarter to balance everything, but through talking to him I have found more motivation to buckle down on school work because I really do not have much time before I need to figure out what I want to do. I am glad a met with him and I learned a lot from it.

[washington fig]

Links and Majors Project
This project is designed to allow you to think about the academic and co-curricular opportunities that exist on campus, and how they may be combined to create a comprehensive undergraduate experience. This project focuses on three phases in this process: exploring, experiencing, and mapping.

Sample Response
My first choice for a major in the “Links bubble chart” is computer science between the E.T. and SAMLink. Technology has always been a fascination of mine, but my understanding of its function was always confusing. Personally, I feel that in order to fully experience the technological innovations in our devices one must understand its complex interior. I frequently keep up to date with the latest releases of devices (phones, computers, tablets, etc) because of the unique sophistication that each one has to offer. The main focus of computer science is to be able to understand the concepts of technology and its language. With that being mastered, one can then develop programs and software that improves the user experience of modern applications. I believe that the assignments presented to students require a lot of collaboration and teamwork with other students. Mainly because the problem solving process is best approached when there is more than one student. In class sessions would mainly be lectures and demonstration of how to apply the concepts and functions of programs. Some personal experience I have had in this field was in early high school when I took a “game design” class. I found it to be challenging and intimidating but only because my teacher wasn’t too motivated. The second major is Psychology from the SLink.

Like computer science, Psychology is a study that has no limitations. Experiments and research is constantly ongoing and perfected ideas often lead to immense understandings of the human mind. One thing I find interesting about psychology is the thought process and people and how one issue can drastically affect another. The center of study for psychology is to understand how the mind of people interacts with another or itself when presented a specific situation. By learning the behaviors and actions of humans, we can learn about psychological disorders and treatments. From my understanding, I think that most of the larger assignments will be experiments and studies in order to let students come to their own conclusions about the human mind. I have had some experience with this major from my participation in my friend’s study for her psychology class. I became strongly intrigued by the topics in which the students researched.

Sample Response 2
The two links I am picking is SAM Link and E.T. Link. The reason why I am picking these two is because I have always been interested in math, science and computers. The core focus in both of these links seems to be math and science. The two major that interest me are Computer Science & Engineering and Informatics. I picked Computer Science because I have tried programming and have found that I like the challenge. I picked Informatics because looking at the chart Informatics is in the E.T. link, Social link, Business link and Bio link. Also if a E.T. based link doesn’t work out I can switch out to a Business based link or a Bio link. Informatics has a wide range of things I could do. In Computer Science I think the learning style would be to have groups work on complex problems. This is appealing to me because you can always ask your group members for help. Also every computer based problem you work on if you run the code and an error come up you can fix it, instant result is appealing because you don’t have to wait for grading. In Informatics the kind of learning I see is basically anything because Informatics is broad. In computer science you could be a programmer, networking, software engineer and a server manager. You can take an internship in any major corporate company such as Microsoft, Google. In Informatics you can be anywhere because it’s so broad a major.

References:


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