Ella- Week 8 and reflection

Throughout this summer, I have had plenty of opportunity to experience and reflect on the culture of science. As this was my first foray into scientific research "in the real world", I was often surprised by the obstacles that the professional scientists around me ran into. Questions such as "how do we communicate and work together in the best way possible?" and "what is the best way to design this experiment?" were very real obstacles in Hatfield research, just as they are in the classroom. I was, however general impressed by the level of cooperation that is in place here. From the weekly community donuts and seminars to collaborative projects between labs, to lunchtime soccer matches with the researchers from these various labs, one can tell that networking is an important aspect of research. Furthermore, it was very exciting to be able to be a part of the research being done here, because without investigating the coastal and oceanic environment, we would know nothing of this big beautiful natural resource we call the Pacific ocean.

I am very grateful to have been able to go through the COSEE program and the research ethics program here at Hatfield with the guidance of all my mentors Itchung, Waldo and Matt and with the support of my office mate, Katlyn. I am happy with the presentation that we put together on our work this summer and it has inspired me to further pursue a career in the sciences. I am also grateful for the skills that I was able to develop such as working with the programming language R, excel and powerpoint, and being able to analyze and present data. After being in an office working on these things, I know that I would like to be outdoors more, and I am also grateful for that lesson as well. In summary, this was such a great opportunity and I count myself lucky to have been able to work on this project. Below is the view from our office window. I was also able to visit the aquarium (literally two minutes walk from our dorms) on my very last day!

Our clear name tags from our office door take center stage

Adieu and thank you for a great summer!