Hi everyone! I’m so excited to start blogging for LC. My name is Caleb, and I’m a Junior Psychology major from Milwaukee, Wisconsin. I’m already almost halfway through my third year at Lewis & Clark! Since we’re in the midst of a global pandemic, this semester has started a bit differently than usual. After moving home from campus in March last semester, I decided to come back to Portland over the summer. I spent the summer living in a house with several other college students, who are now my housemates this school year. We spend a lot of our nights studying together, playing board games, or binge watching TV shows.
(Practicing climbing skillz while waiting for the Pio at Freddie’s last year)
This semester I’m taking three classes: Psychology of Sustainability, Behavioral Neuroscience (a lab course), and Spanish Intro to Literary Studies. Psychology of Sustainability and Spanish are fully online this semester, and Behavioral Neuroscience has both online and in-person components (especially important since this is a lab class)!
The highlight of my semester so far has been Psychology of Sustainability with Jolina Ruckert. This is a capstone course, which is one of the graduation requirements for Psychology majors. Capstones are the culmination of your studies at college, so I was a bit nervous to take mine Junior year! But so far I’ve been really appreciating how engaging and supportive Jolina is. I’m in the early stages of deciding what my capstone will look like, but at the moment I’m planning on conducting a study about factors that predict both pro-environmental behaviors and following health guidelines during COVID-19. Right now I’m working on developing scales to measure environmental and COVID behaviors.
My other classes have been fun as well. Two weeks ago I got to hold a human brain in my Neuroscience lab! In Spanish, we’ve been reading poetry, and now we’re starting a play called Fuente Ovejuna. This semester I’m also returning to my job as a circulation desk assistant at Watzek Library. Even though the library runs differently during COVID, it’s been great to see my coworkers and supervisors again.
One other exciting thing that’s happening in my life at the moment: I recently adopted a dog! Her name is Winnie (Winona), and she’s a 5 year old chihuahua. She’s very sweet and cuddly, and as she’s settling in she’s getting better about barking and separation anxiety. Still, adopting a dog has been a big undertaking! A few days earlier my housemate Kessa adopted a kitten named Ruben, and they’re getting along well so far, even though he sometimes walks across my keybomjkgdhbdfmflll96theabGEW.
(Ruben and Winnie)
That’s all for now! I’ll be posting more in the coming weeks. Feel free to reach out with any questions, calebweinhardt@lclark.edu.