Robert Pangilinan

Welcome to my blog, fellow knowledge seekers!

My name is Robert Pangilinan, and I am honored that you have chosen to view my exciting blog about the world of autism.

Before we dive into the core of my Senior Project Proposal, here is a little background of my life:

Yes, it is true. I am currently a senior in BASIS Scottsdale, one who is already feeling the serious conditions from Senioritis. Yet I carry on with my head held high, because like the great Walt Disney had once said, "Keep moving forward!" And yes, I like Disney, so prepare for all the Disney gifs.

When I am not in my bed sleeping all day, you may see me occasionally dancing in my room alone while listening to K-pop music or simply feeling very hipster as I take aesthetic shots of a chair with a cup to demonstrate how deep and interesting I am. No I am not crazy, just a little weird. But really, I do enjoy music and photography, both of which make me who I am.

Introductions aside, I want to give a little explanation for my title and background. The reason I choose the puzzle as the overlying theme for my project is due to it being the symbol for Autism Awareness in the United States. This is because autism is a very puzzling condition with many of the inflicted feeling isolated from society due to their struggle to 'fit in.' One of my side goals is to break the stigma surrounding children with autism, showing the rest of the world (or at least a couple of people) that we can progress past this stereotype and see the beauty and intelligence of these children.

For my Senior Project, I will be interning at the Southwest Autism Research & Resource Center (SARRC) with my on-site mentor Dr. Christopher J. Smith, who has kindly accepted me into their program so that I can help support the advisors in their screening projects as well as provide assistance in diagnostic services. It is one of their main goals to screen cases early in order to get a better diagnosis for the patient, so in the future, they can provide better lifetime support for individuals with autism and their families. Through observing their screening sessions, I hope to put the pieces together so that I can find a definitive or effective way to educate children with autism.

Wow, congratulations! You made it to the end of my first post. I would like to thank you all for being here and listening to my exciting project. I will have more to talk to about in February, so be sure to subscribe if you want to get all the details. I can not wait and hope to hear from you all soon!

A Sad Farewell, to New Beginnings: Goodbye SARRC!

Hello friends! It's almost over. I know. I"ll most definitely miss the experiences I had at SARRC, having all the fun organizing CSBS forms and seeing all the kids. The "Journey at SARRC" is taking a close, and before I get all sentimental, let's just go over the last week I spent at SARRC. Let's go!

Even though it was my last week, I had to finish up some CSBS forms for good measure. It's actually pretty nice to finish off with something you've been doing for weeks now. It feels kind of relaxing to me. After the forms were completed and filed, Stephen allowed me to sit through more diagnostic sessions for my project. It was interesting to see that out of all the clients I had observed one of them was finally a female. As you may know, autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is more commonly found in males than in females, so it was quite interesting to see how females behaved compared to males. However, not much was different. They both tantrums and scream. Just kidding (not)! Yes, though they do throw fits once in a while, they still get to finish the assessments with little to no problems. 

I'm just teasing. Hehehe

Other than that, I was allowed to have a whole day of working on my project. On Thursday, Stephen gave me the time there to work on anything I wanted to, so I took the opportunity and worked on my PowerPoint. Though I must admit I spent an hour or two on YouTube, falling deeper into it's abyss, I pulled away from the distraction to work on my presentation. I worked pretty hard on it afterwards, but I'm unsure whether it was as good as I thought it would be. When it comes down to it, I'd push through my procrastination tendencies to finally get work done, whether the quality of it is good can be debatable. 

I've yet, however, to come up with a potential final product. I was thinking along the lines of an informational brochure, but I'll accept any thoughts or opinions about that. I hope it will turn out well because deadlines are coming up so fact. Yikes! 

Anyways, I wanted to spend a little time to thank everyone that's gotten me this far (yes, you've reached sentimental canyon. And on the right, you can see river of tears). Just kidding. So I really wanted to thank my on-site mentor Dr. Smith for giving me this opportunity to intern here. I had literally no experience in anything, but he allowed me to learn and help as much as I could. And thanks to Dr. James (or Stephen, he prefers that) for guiding me through the process, I had fun helping as much as possible. I wanted to thank Mr. Witz and Ms. Conner, both of which have helped me overcome my shortcomings and showed me the way. Lastly, I wanted to thank you all for following me this far. I appreciate all the interest you've given my project, and I hope that you are inspired (like I was) to pursue yours head on in the future.

I wanted to end this with a cliche quote so here it is: "Every story has an ending. But in life, every ending is a new beginning..."

Bye for now! I hope to see you all in my Final Post (so sad)!

 

Asking & Observing: SARRC's Plan and Research

Hello again friends! Nice to see you all back at my almost finished blog. It's coming down to the wire and I'm so very excited to pull through and get started with the presentations at hand. It's been a long journey, but it's almost over so let's get on to my second to last post.

B/c Journey get it....Don't stop Believin...never mind.

So here's the thing. Looks like I actually did get a chance to interview the doctors. Dr. James (or Stephen) actually helped convince some of the clinicians to find room in their schedules to go thorough with my interviews, so I was very excited but also very nervous. Though I might be sacrificing sample number for in-depth answers, I think it might be better to have a select few but also having quality answers at the same time. I got into the whole interview, knowing absolutely nothing about how to start or do anything, so my heart fluttered about and I blanked for a few seconds. However, once I got into the first few questions, it was just like any regular talk but with me leading the conversation (which I'm not used to). 

Here are the questions I asked:

1. What are some of the early signs/indicators for autism? The most prominent one?

2. How early can you detect these specific symptoms for autism?

3. What are some of the issues when diagnosing cases later (like when they're more mature)?

4. What do you think are some of the challenges when diagnosing children with autism?

5. What made you interested in starting you research in autism? (personal question)

I went through about three interviews this week, but I'm hoping to at least get three more next week to get some more different conclusions. I learned quite a lot about autism research some more, and it was definitely interesting to talk about how many of the clinicians got into their field of study and research. It was really a great motivator to push me into working harder for my career in the future.

Other than the interviews, I continued with more diagnostic sessions with more clients. I'm trying to observe a sample of children to see if similar qualities and behaviors are shared with children who may have autism. So far this week, I got three more session, two of which were hard to sit through. The second child was not as loud and uncooperative, but he was very shy and sometimes failed to do the tasks because I was sitting there in the room. I understand the whole strangers are scary thing because I was the little kid once, but it really hurts the other way around. I now sympathize for the adults that I shied away from. :(

However, the other two experiences were not as mellow. I've noticed that most kids with autism have a strong fixation to a singular detail or object, and once it holds on to that specific thing, the child can't focus on anything else. It was kind of strange how both kids were acting. It was sort of like they were in some sort of trance, and if anything disturbs the specific object of focus, they freak out. For instance, one of the kids had a liking to one of the hair brushes in the room because of the weird texture in the front (I think). Whenever the clinician tried to remove the brush from his hands, he would scream and sort of like panic. It's really to grab their attention once their focus is somewhere else, and this is part of the reason why, sometimes, the tests go nowhere. Additionally, it's very interesting to see that most of the kids we get a week are mostly male, which kind of justify the idea that males are more likely to get autism than females. It was just something I noticed because all of the clients I had so far were all male. Interesting.

That's pretty much happened this week. I'll start working on more of my project presentation this week, so I can't wait to tell you guys some more details of what everything will be like. I hope you all stay next week to see the last week of my SRP at the SARRC facility. Bye!

Too Many Questions & Too Little Time: Project's New Direction

Hello friends! Glad to see you all back for my Week 8 post. We're almost there at the end of our project, but still have a lot to finish up and correct before the big presentation. I will address some more slight changes to my data collecting process, but other than that everything is still pretty much the same. Let's get to it then!

This one change in my data collecting process involves the interviewing sessions I wanted to do when I had all my questions already planned out and made. Since the doctors have more of a tight schedule than I initially assumed, with more and more children (and parents) to handle, the time for interviews can't be spared. I had to come up with a different and less direct conclusion.......

....maybe I can make a sort of questionnaire instead and email it to all the doctors. No no wait. Hear me out! I understand it may not be thee best sense of handling this kind of new data and information, but I feel like it'll satisfy the non-time consuming requirement, allowing the doctors to find a time that works for them the best. I feel like this was my best conclusion, so sorry if I couldn't carry my original plan through. A majority of my questions was formulated thanks to my faculty adviser Mr. Witz. He gave me a link to this interview that circled around the idea of the diagnosis of autism really well, so it helped me quite a lot with what I wanted to delve into more. 

After finally settling this current situation, I continued my desk work duties per usual. I checked all the CSBS forms of the day to see if they were scored properly as well as entered thee client information. I helped separate the fails and passes from the stack of filled-out forms, which took quite a while. I also continued with the client insurance monitoring and the filing of a clients medical records and other important information that SARRC needs to know about. Yeah, it's kind of hitting that repetitive point, but I'm still working head strong (so no worries). I plan on working my best even outside the diagnostic sessions I sit through. 

Sorry for another pretty passive week. I'll try get more interesting stuff to talk about soon, and hopefully I get some emails back so I can talk about some of the questions I wanted answered. Additionally, since the presentations are coming around the corner, I'll start introducing some ideas of that I can potentially talk about and do. We can talk about it more later. Till next time! (on Dragon Ball Z...) Never mind. :P

The Old and the New at SARRC

Hello again friends! I'm back at it again with the new post this week, compiling the new things I've done for the past two days. Some relatively new, and some old stuff as well, but nevertheless, a great experience. Let's get started then!

On Wednesday morning, I was anticipating to see my mentor finally return from his trip to Switzerland. I walked in the building, thinking I was early as usual and feeling like I beat everyone to another game of "Who can show up to work the earliest?" Unfortunately, Dr. James was already there. With a kind welcome back, he then gave me some Swiss chocolate as a souvenir from his trip. I was quite surprised, but very grateful (I want to travel to Switzerland one day, or anywhere for that matter). Anyways, I started off with entering more CSBS forms into the SARRC database as usual, since more and more clients come in every week the list piles up. 

Here is my office space with more CSBS forms

One that same day, I helped Jennifer, one of the receptionist in the SARRC facility, with some of the work that she needed help on. While she was receiving and taking calls left and right, I was in charge of monitoring the insurance and payments the parents made for specific programs and appointments, inputting specific dates of payments and the programs they enrolled in. It was quite labor intensive, but interesting to learn and do it myself. Though I felt like I was doing nothing very important, it was nice to here that I helped cut Jennifer's workload that she'd been working on for years now. 

No not really hehe...

On Thursday, I had a chance to see more of the facility because roaming during lunch hours is fun. I took a little peak into the Beneficial Beans office. It's pretty amazing in there even though I didn't get the opportunity to ask what they really do in there, but here's a picture so you can guess for yourselves.

It kind of looks like they were working on a new product for sale

It gets pretty lonely during my lunch sometimes because no on their is my age, but I've gotten better talking to random strangers that are older than me so I call that a success. After my casual Thursday, I had another opportunity with a diagnostic observation session. It was quite the same and different compared to my first experience. The setup was quite similar, but how the child reacted was quite different. Unlike the last patient who was quite uncooperative and restless, this child was more playful and easy to work with. It was pretty clear that the child had no problems following with procedures, but the only section that was a problem was the speech aspect of the ADOS tests. Since the child hadn't established a foundation of vocabulary words yet, the names of certain of objects were difficult for them to answer. 

Starting next week, I'll start interviewing the doctors at SARRC to find what success the found in these early diagnostic sessions, and how has it improved the lives that go through these testings. It'll be quite an adventure so make sure you don't miss it next week. Hope you guys have a wonderful week! Bye!

The Heavy Load Returns: SARRC's New Task

Hello friends!! Glad to see you back to visit my blog. I had quite a casual work week this time around, so there won't be anything to deeply exciting. Don't get your hopes up. Additionally, for all my followers that have mocks this weekend, I wish you the best of luck. I know all of you guys will do amazing, and that doing your best is all that matters.

The two days I spent this week were mainly work done at my little office once again. Since my on-site mentor was offsite this week, there wasn't anything planned for me to work on, so they decided to put me in charge of creating a spreadsheet that compiles a list of items that they bought at the office as well as diagnostic materials (basically a bunch of inventory work). I created a spreadsheet on the specific details of the product numbers, the price, the quantity of the item purchases, as well as the date of purchase. Though it was tiring and dull at first, I did some of my own snooping by looking into the details of what the materials were specifically for. I can't remember them at the top my head other than the Mullen or the ADOS, but if I get the chance, I'll compile a list of items and what each test is used for.

Here is a subscription magazine that show the kind of materials they sometimes bought

Along with the work, I started to tweak my project some more. I decided to move towards more in the direction of the diagnosis practice rather than the treatment. Though I wanted to work on the treatment aspect initially, I had more opportunity (lately) to work on the research aspect of early diagnosis and all the tests involved in completing a child's sort of guideline to what programs to look for in the future. Also, since I've been able to watch some of these sessions of my own lately, I want to also include an early detection aspect to my project, showing what observations I've picked up on the specific behaviors with children the with autism. 

Lol I don't know where this from. 

Unfortunately, other than the words above, nothing else really happened this week. Once my mentor comes back from Switzerland, I hope that I'll have something more interesting to talk about. I'm also preparing a set of questions to ask more about the reasons why an early diagnosis is important as well as some data that they have compiled that might direct me towards my answer. Otherwise, I want to thank you again for reading my blog and I hope to see you back next week. Bye!

SARRC's Early Intervention Programs

Hello friends! Glad to see you all back! And to all the 9th and 10th graders following my blog, I hope you had a wonderful break. Feel free to talk about under the comments below! No seriously, I get bored sometimes.....anyways, let's get back to my Senior Research Project.

The first day has been quite similar to my intense Thursday last week. Completing those Early Intervention files is no joke, and I had to finish those before the week ended, so that Chris (my on-site mentor) had that information ready to better help the clients coming in in the future. Through this long tedious process of entering all the information, I learned a little more about different programs that parents enrolled their children. The checklist indicated different aspects of what needed to be worked on and if the child was getting any treatment or help in that specific area of growth and development. Like if there was a child who was taking Speech Therapy, the parents would indicate in the checklist what programs they attended, the amount of time attended, and a rate of how successful the treatment was. This is especially helpful as a reference for other parents to see what kind of programs that they can enroll their own children in, giving SARRC the necessary resources to assist the clients. 

One example of a program for helping children with autism was called Dynamite Therapy.

Here is a link to their website: https://www.dynamitetherapy.com

This specific therapy program assist in many different aspects of development within children, like Physical Therapy, Speech Therapy, Developmental Special Education, etc. It's a great place to help further develop a child's physical and mental growth if they're struggling or if they do have autism.

Last thing I wanted to talk about was a meeting I attended for a research paper that SARRC has been doing for a while now. It's part of the GetSet Early Model which aims to provide evidence for the benefits of Early Intervention and monitoring of a child to better seek proper treatment. We sat in a call from UC San Diego (because SARRC partnered with them) and talked about a few details about the paper, like how the CSBS forms have been going and certain data concerning if we have enough clients to have an accurate sample size. Though I felt irrelevant during the whole meeting, Dr. Smith reassured me that my help was valuable to the completion of the study because all the forms needed to be implemented into a document to be sent in the future (so not completely useless, yay!!). Additionally, we talked a bit of Stephen's research (one of the researchers at the facility that watches over me) and it's progress. He wanted to see if there were any initial differences between males and females scores on the CSBS forms, which I found really fascinating and at the same time overwhelming. 

I covered most of the week, but I feel like there is a lot more to do in the future. I will prepare myself for the work ahead (ahh!). Thanks again for coming over to my blog! See you next week. Bye!