Anirudh Ranganathan

Hey there! My name is Anirudh Ranganathan and welcome to my Senior Research Project blog! This year, I got the exciting opportunity to conduct a Senior Research Project (SRP) and I am very excited to share my journey with you! 

As a brief introduction, my name is Anirudh Ranganathan (I know, hard to pronounce right?) and I am a senior this year at BASIS Scottsdale.  These past four years have been a stressful but fun time for me with the help of my amazing teachers and friends. 

When I’m not busy studying for a test or finishing my homework, I like to relax by playing the guitar, listening to music, or spending time with friends and family.  When I am feeling energetic, I usually like to play and watch sports such as basketball, soccer, cricket or football or go to the gym. But when I just want to enjoy a day inside, I frequently watch movies on Netflix or funny videos on YouTube.

As I said before, this year I have the opportunity to conduct a Senior Research Project. Given my diverse academic interests such Math, Gov’t, and Biology; I had initial difficulty choosing a topic to research about. Eventually, I chose to conduct my research project on the effects of fitness on different mood states, specifically stress.  I chose this topic as it is of particular importance to me. I personally had difficulty managing stress, and for me, fitness was one way I was able to release my stress. Sooner or later, fitness also became an interest of mine. Thus this topic was perfect as it allowed me to pursue my curiosities while continuing my hobby.

With regards to my actual project, I will be interning at Underground Fitness(pictured on the right), a personal training center, where I will shadow the owner, Matt Hoodie.  Through his guidance and the assistance of my faculty advisor, Ms. Brittany Afsa, I will able to fully delve into how fitness can affect people’s mood states. I also hope to discover the effects of physical exercise on stress and intend to share these results with the general populace. 

As February arrives and I have to say farewell to my remarkable teachers and peers and to a school that I have gone to since seventh grade, I find solace in a wonderful opportunity ahead of me to pursue my curiosities. 

Thank you for bearing with me through this first blog post! I hope you’ll follow me through my journey as I post weekly about my progress for the next ten weeks. If you have any questions, ideas, or suggestions with regards to my research or blog posts, do not hesitate to comment below!

Spring Break!

Hey Everyone! This week I am taking my Spring Break!

I know it is April and really late to take a spring break, but I have been saving this for my college visits.  But, I will still continue analyzing and finishing my final presentation. Tune in next week for more updates!

Woah! It's Already Week 9

Hey everybody, happy Friday! I hope your weeks went well! We are nearing the end of the project time span and I cannot believe what an amazing three months it has been! I’ve gotten to work with some cool trainers and meet some very interesting clients.  The overall experience at my site was amazing!

But enough reflection for now, onto what I did this week. In terms of my research, I continued to ask my site mentor to distribute the surveys for the control group. I was able to get more people, but like the sample group surveys, results were not coming in as a fast as I had hoped. I had discussed potential reasons why this was occurring. One major reason that this kept happening is that the criteria for my control group were really specific. My site mentor said that it was difficult to find people who matched exactly to that mark. As a way to mitigate this, I suggested that we find clients that closest fit that mark. This way the control group is not too specific to gather. But although this problem still existed, I was still able to get two more people to be a part of my control group. So, progress!

With regards to other things I did this week, I was able to observe more clients exercise. I also had more discussions regarding dieting and mood.  Last week, I discussed how dieting affects mood. This week, I discussed if the reverse was true. Instigated by the comments last week, I asked one of the trainers and he said that the reverse was possible. He said people can eat emotionally. He had said sometimes people could eat based on their emotions. For instance, he said people sometimes could eat more when they are stressed or sad to feel better. Thus, one’s mood could affect how one eats.  So it was pretty cool to learn how mood can also affect dieting.

Next week, I hope to incorporate my results and analyses from both my control and sample group into my presentation draft.  I also hope to get a few more participants for my control group, so I can have a good analysis.  

Well that’s all for this week! This week was pretty slow for me in terms of what I did but it still lived up to the benchmark of the previous weeks. It is still really exciting how I am able to learn new stuff this late in the project! So far this is what I was able to do this week! Keep reading to find out what I do next week!