1) Explain your favorite or most cherished athletic/exercise accomplishment

My most cherished athletic moment was scoring a hat trick in lacrosse during my senior year of high school. A hat trick is when someone scores three goals in one game. Lacrosse is something I have been passionate about ever since starting it in the 7th grade. Out of the three sports I did during high school (basketball, football, and lacrosse) lacrosse was the one that that I always seemed to perform at best. We were playing at home against one of our conference rivals, Christian Brother’s Academy. I was the 3rd leading scorer on my team averaging about 2 goals a game. Our two best players were out with injuries so naturally my team looked to me to step up and score more, which I did end up doing. I scored my first two goals very quickly in the earlier periods and ended up scoring my last goal on a buzzer beating game tieing goal to send my team to overtime. We ended up winning the game in overtime.

2) Why do you think exercise physiology can serve as a paradigm for understanding biology?

Exercise physiology can act as a paradigm for understanding biology because a lot of what we will speak about in class will be based on how our body acts in certain conditions and what pathways or mechanisms affects the way that we act as well. It is important to be able to understand how the body works during exercise or any form of physical activity so you know the ways not to harm yourself and allow your body to perform in the best way it possibly can.

3) How can you use what you learned in previous upper-level courses (BIO, BNG, NS, BioChem, CHM, PHYS, or ?) to contribute to our exercise physiology discussions

I have taken a lot of upper level course that I believe will contribute to my understanding and discussions in this class. I have take organic chemistry and a lot of what we will be discussing is how certain hormones, proteins and other functional groups impact the way our body functions in exercise. I have also taken behavioral neuroscience and neurobiology, and both courses talk in detail about how all of the pathways in our bodies work to send out certain signals which help our body to function on a daily basis. These classes and others will help with my ability to participate in exercise physiology discussions.