Maybe I’m going insane, or maybe it’s just finals week. I am about to compare these two days of finals to the foot strike pattern of a walker who plants their heel on the ground first.
For starters, the graph below is of the forces produced by a walking, heel strike gait pattern.
Here, the first peak indicates the heel hitting the ground. I’m going to compare this to the Biomechanics midterm I took this morning (in which I described this graph and 3 other walking gait pattern graphs) followed by the 110 question multiple choice Anatomy & Physiology exam that I sat immediately following.
Next we have the dip in the graph showing that the forces in your foot are dissipated across the arch of your foot. Here I sit, about to dig into writing 6-8 essay outlines in preparation for my Philosophy final…the short rest, we’ll call it the eye of the storm.
Tomorrow morning, I’ll get up and sit my final exam of the quarter in my Philosophy class. All the while I’ll be comparing it to the final arch in the graph above where the walker pushes off of the ground with the ball of their foot, driving forward. Finally, at the end of the graph, the toe leaves the ground. Tomorrow, after 10 AM, Winter Quarter 2013 will come to a close and I’ll have only 4 remaining terms of undergraduate classes (hopefully).
So onward I press, putting one foot in front of the other, reaching for the next deadline, circling as many correct answers as possible and trying not to let the incorrect ones weigh me down. In three days I’ll be home, spending Spring Break with my family (and my cats) for the first time in my college career.
Cheers! To one more cup of coffee, a scantron, a blue book, and a Ticonderoga pencil.
