Ode to Undergrads

I was going to send this in an email, but it's much more fun to memorialize it on the bloggity-blog. This post is in honor of what was hopefully my last semester as a teaching assistant. As promised to a couple of my loyal readers, here's another edition of "Actual Quotes from Undergrad Papers." (No offense to anyone who is an undergrad, because the ones I know and love are quite intelligent.) Sorry if some are a little psych-heavy, but I think they are sufficiently funny such that knowledge of psych jargon isn't necessary...

Without further ado, the "Top Twenty" from my most recent round of papers:

1) An analysis of variance (ANOVA) was used separately to break down the interaction of all of the interactions.
[Now, I haven't taken statistics in awhile, but I don't think that's what ANOVAs are for. Leslie?]

2) [Referring to the brain] The overall functioning of this magnificent muscle has always captured the fascination of me and the scientific community.
[And all this time I thought the brain was an organ... silly me.]

3) This study should be of most importance to pilots and flight attendants since their primary job is to be in the air at all times.
[When I fly I like to start and end on the ground, but maybe that's just me.]

4) Some of the results from we can only compare to stuff from other species that we know, and not because it has been tasted themselves.
[huh?]

5) None of the participants were at the time of the experiment under any medical condition.
[What about on top of a medical condition? Or beside one?]

6) People who suffered from amygdale lesions can show some deficits in handing out angry expressions, and the processing of fear seems to be easier for them to give and take.
[Emotions now come in pamphlet form?]

7) Holding the pen in the hand doesn't utilize any facial muscles.
[Quick, somebody call CNN! This is a ground-breaking discovery!]

8) The participants will help come up with the results of the study.
[Apparently research is now a democratic process that involves participant brainstorming.]

9) This experiment followed the Helsinki Declaration of ethics instead of the U.S, because it was administered in Helsinki.
[Um, actually they clearly stated the research was done in California (or did they secede from the union and I just didn't hear about it?), and the Helsinki code applies internationally. Way to just plain make stuff up.]

10) [On potential experimenter bias:] This could be avoided by having a bi patrician party administer the study.

11) Though many of us would love to for go puberty and the entire process that physically makes us men and women the overall process if still very fascinating.
[Oh really now?]

12) The hypothesis states that if the word leg was used along with an action word the brain would direct itself to the leg.
[Man, I hate it when my brain goes down into my legs.]

13) This particular article stood out to me because the no matter how different we think we are we are so much alike but our chemical breakdown maybe the only difference.
[What?]

14) I also work at an MRI clinic, and our policy is not to provide sedation to patients with sleep apnea which accounts for lost revenue for our company, and therefore, smaller bonuses for me... Thus many aspects of sleep apnea affect my personal and professional life.
[Wow, I'm glad you're so concerned about the effects of sleep apnea on the patients who have it, and you don't just think about yourself all the time.]

15) Society has also emphasized the ideal of being busy and not having time to stop and consider your surroundings.
[Another interesting perspective on how the world is "ideally" supposed to be.]

16) The next step would be to discover this neuromuscular reflex is broken and fix it.
[We're talking about a neurological process here, not a bone or a toaster. I don't think it's that easy.]

17) This study is truly enlightening to me, and I hope that other research studies can shed some light that is concrete in order to help the future mothers of this country.
[Concrete light? Ouch.]

18) People always say they have a photogenic memory when they can see the actual text in their head.
[Yeah, I've always thought my memory looked good in pictures, too.]

19) The journal article I chose to summarize was Medial prefrontal cortex and self-referential mental activity: Relation to a default mode of brain function by Debra A. Gusnard, Erbil Akbudak, Gordon L. Shulman,and Marcus E. Raichle Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2001 March 27; 98(7): 4259–4264. Published online 2001 March 20. doi: 10.1073/pnas.071043098. This particular article stood out to me because...
[Looks like someone got a little click-happy with the copy-and-paste function and forgot to proof-read.]

20) The existence of other anxiety disorders may have inflicted on the results of the study in many ways due to the fact that some anxieties may target the several sections of the brain with stronger emphasizes and by these the researchers may believe that the strong reactions were inflicted by the Generalized Social Phobia and not by another anxiety.
[My, what a beautiful word salad!]

And now... I am le tired. Zo, I vill take a nap, and zen... FIRE ZE MISSILES at ze undergrads!