I passed my thesis!!

Lactate threshold: The comparison of running on a land treadmill versus head-out water immersion treadmill running.

by

Stephanie Jones Zobell

A thesis submitted to the faculty of

Brigham Young University

in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of

Master of Science

Department of Exercise Science

Brigham Young University

August 2009

Friday the 15th I defended my Master's thesis and passed! Now comes the process of going through all of the red tape that's required by the University. To be honest I thought I'd be able to be out of Provo by Monday of this week since I defended last Friday...I was wrong. After you finish defending your thesis at Brigham Young University you are then supposed to change graphs, tables, and page layouts to fit the standards for your journal to be printed and bound. It isn't really that big of a deal but seriously it's insane ho

w many LITTLE things are thrown at you. For example, I needed the SAME people to sign multiple different forms saying the same thing... I passed...

I understand the signatures are backwards on this display but these were the people that quizzed me during the defense. My camera is victim to my packing and is somewhere in my new luggage so I used my sister's ibooth on her computer.

I just decided to give a short rundown of the steps my master's program:

1. Take the required classes for your program (about 30 credits)

2. After HOURS (days, months) of researching on what has been done and what you could do, think of a hypothesis that could produce a workable question.

3. Write up a proposal which entails:
a. Introduction
b. Review of literature. (the BEAST) This requires reading about a hundred of peer reviewed journals over the topic I was interested in, grouping different thoughts together, and then writing about them. It took me a couple months to put to gether something.
c. Write a methods section describing how to prove your hypothesis...or the null hypothesis...This also entailed HOURS inside the lab with Dr. Mack and Crystelle going over pilot (or practice) work. Here are some pictures of us trying to f igure out how we'll draw blood from the median cubital vein in the arm from the side of a pool AND keep the site of the needle clean and not drip blood INTO the pool. I'm holding up a 72 inch extension tube that is attached to the actual syringe. We had to draw 5mL of waste mixed with the blood before we could draw the actual blood we were analyzing.

Sometimes we'd miss and spill...practice made perfect though and we're happy to say we didn't have anyone bleed too excessively! :)

At times I think I looked like an addict with all the holes I had in my arms where Crystelle and I would practice putting in catheters

4. After figuring out all the kinks you've got to propose the thesis to a committee of professors. This was the first time I had to go in front of my profes sors and propose my plan of action. They critiqued my paper, asked me a ton of questions, made me revise some methods, and then sent me on my way to gather data! (this was accomplished in October of 2008)

5. Now you THINK you're ready to just start working on your methods and get your data...WRONG. You need FUNDING and approval from the University! I had to fill out other forms to get money for research supplies and also get approval from the IRB saying it was ok for me to do experiments on human beings.

6. After we had approval, it was time to obtain the data. I think we averaged 15-20 hours/subject and we had 11 subjects. We did that in t he time course starting the first week of December and literally finishing it the day before Brett and I got married. (Feb 7)

7. After gathering the data, it was time to analyze the data. I thought this part wouldn't take too long...WRONG again. Stats take a while. Organizing your data in the way that looks the best takes LONGER... But I believe I had some pretty pictures made from it!

(this is one 1 of 6 of my figures)

8. Write up results and discussion/conclusion. This was fun. There were some hard parts because I'd write up part of the discussion, show it to Dr. Mack where he would decide we had to look at a different thing. I had 7 drafts of a discussion.

9. THEN I got to defend my thesis!!! Woohoo! We all got together, I put together a powerpoint presentation and lectured on my thesis for about 15-20 minutes. I then was drilled by members of my committee to be sure I knew what it was I was talking about. That was a little intimidating. The first question they asked me I was a little lost, I account that to nerves...but after that I think things went smoothly. I did PASS!

10. Now I'm in this stage of things. I have to get signatures from committee chairs, the chair himself, graduate coordinators, graduate administrators, etc. I also had to go over some revisions my committee decided would be good for me to talk about.

I hope to get these things done by Friday this week because I'm moving to Peru!!! I am excited for the move, just nervous to get all things done. I will officially be Stephanie Jones Zobell, MS in Exercise Physiology at the end of this week.

I hope this helps fill ya'll in a little bit about what I've been up to for the last little while. Next time I write I'll be a Peruvian!

Adios!

Copyright © 2009 Stephanie Zobell

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