May the gods of quail and parentheses aid us! Our mission is almost complete, and presentation day is soon arriving. I don’t think we will ever be ready enough. We’re pretty much done with our power point, besides some touching up and rehearsing, but I just don’t feel up to it. We had a practice presentation with some of our struggling comrades and we went over time by more than a minute, and I didn’t know what to say, and I felt the order was strange, and our fellow vertebrae is elsewhere…So we’ll see how it goes.
The mid-term is basically our presentation (to a panel of scary professional people who will judge us immensely) and we have been working on it for the past several class periods. Me and Zabdi, as biomed peeps, have been working on the power point and finding any last minute figures, while the engineering half of our group has been building a prototype. About that. Most of our materials haven’t come in (all we have is the foam roll) so they made a temporary prototype out of pipe cleaners, popsicle sticks, and fluff. (Quail save us.)
But the biomed slides seem mostly okay, and with our fearless leader to go over them it should end up decent. We have a slide about what body systems are involved with our bendy pillow (skeletal and nervous systems) and how they are involved (seven vertebrae in the cervical spine, the curve helps to bear weight and stress as well as aiding movement and balance; the spinal cord is protected by the vertebrae, nerve transmissions can be assisted or inhibited (through subluxations) by the structure of the spine…), about the curve (ideal versus normal degrees in the lordotic curve, benefits of it, how most pillows don’t help support it), a slide on consequences of bad posture (while sitting, standing, or sleeping- can lead to subluxations or kyphosis) and some on the problem (statistics on neck pain).
And pictures. Everywhere. (We shall hypnotize them with images of spinal curvature and illusionary pillows …)
Myahh. My brain is so scrambled when it comes to this assignment. I’ve been reading about spines and subluxations and cervical vertebrae and lordosis and kyphosis and the lordotic curve for so long I just don’t know what to say. What do they want me to say? What do they already know about spines and curves and inhibited nerve transmissions and the ideal angle versus the normal angle for the lordotic curve? There are so many questions and what if’s and ohmygodswearealmostoutoftimetorehearseandwhenisZabdigettingbacks!
It’s quite unfortunate.
But we’ll present and (by the gods) it’ll work out.
Or we’ll just fail.
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