my baby

I have to brag a little.

I did research last summer along with my internship at Cedar Creek.  Once all the data and analyses (is that how you spell "analysis" plural?) came back, it was time to present the research at the university's Student Research Days.  My mentor and I spent countless hours on this project so it felt really good to win an award for all our hard work. 

Some lessons I learned along the way:

1)  No matter what you are doing, there is always someone along for the ride and the best thing you can do is ignore the fact that they are not contributing at all whatsoever to the project, but at the same time, accept the fact that you have to include them since they were on the grant.  Anger and resentment are horrible feelings to harbor.

2)  Immediately when opening a working poster document from your email, "save to" in a safe location.  That way, after 5 hours of meticulous editing, you do not lose your hard work to some random, untraceable temporary internet file.

3)  Remove yourself from the project and ask "Does this make sense?"  Lucky for Skott, he got to be my guinea pig.  I would explain a concept on the poster to him.  When the glazed over look happened, I knew I needed to change the way I was presenting and explaining.

4)  People will criticize and attack your work.  Some are genuinely being mean.  Some are trying to be helpful and make you think outside the box or take it a step further.  Wear thick skin.  Don't dwell on the mean people who are out to find fault no matter how well things are portrayed.

I like doing research and hope to continue with this project this summer as well.  We want to get three days of measurements in.  This doesn't sound like much but for this project, we are monitoring leaf activity (gas exchange, water content, air in/out, temperature, etc) all day which means starting at 4:30am and measuring a set of plants, at set intervals, in set locations every two hours until 7pm.  So far, we haven't been able to do anything because of all the rain.  Our project involves droughted plants and "normal" plants grown under ambient and high carbon dioxide levels to better understand how plants are coping with global warming and decreased water availability.

(Not quite sure why I am leaning in all these pictures) Me and my mentor Dr Tali Lee.  Oh, and that one guy who was along for the ride.