Throughout my life I have always heard that one of the
things that people strive the hardest for is to create something incredible.
This could be in the form of music, artwork, or in our case, projects.
When we started our second summer
down in the Keys with CMR, both Lauren and I knew that we were going to be in
for a lot of work. We spent many of our evenings staying up reading scientific
papers, coming up with a project design, and preparing to present our thoughts
to a community of marine biologists. By the end of a long summer of designing
our projects and collecting data, we went into our next semester ready to start
analyzing everything we had done.
It took many months of long days in
the lab identifying substrate, organizing huge data files, and watching videos
of damselfish behaviors before we got to the point that were able to actually put it
all together into something worth seeing. During this time, I fell in love with
my project. It was truly like building something from the ground up and being
to see it come to life
This past semester was incredible.
I was given the opportunity to present on the project we’d worked so hard to
develop at the Southeastern Ecology and Evolution Conference (SEEC) at Florida
State. We spent weeks practicing, running data, and fine-tuning the PowerPoint
to become something worth showing to people from all different colleges around
the country. Presenting the project was a once-in-a-lifetime experience.
Despite some (unsurprising) troublesome technical issues, it was a lot of fun
being able to talk about something I cared so much about.
What built on the experience even
more was our trip to the Keys the next day for our quarterly data collection.
Kylie, Daniel, Lauren, Thomas and I had a blast that week. Not only did we work
extremely hard to finish everything up in time, but we also got to spend our
time hammocking, fishing, and even jamming on the boat to some our favorite
“Key’s songs”
As great as this semester has been,
there are a few things that are really sad about it ending: two things to be
exact; losing two of my favorite people from our lab. Daniel has been with me
from the start of my time in CMR. We became certified together, cheered side-by-side many times for our
favorite magician (Michael Trixx), and have shared many dinners at Jersey Mike’s. Lauren has become one of my closest friends both inside
and outside of the lab. From making crazy jokes that no one else really
understands, to laughing uncontrollably at scientific names, and even bonding
over getting lost on field trips together, we have really had some adventures.
Needless to say, I am going to be completely lost without these two people in
the lab next year.
While the purpose of this Creative
Inquiry is to learn and develop us as scientists, I truly feel like it’s about
much more. This lab has given me some of the best friends I have even known,
but as sad as I am to see some of them leave, I know that they are going onto
bigger and better things because of what CMR has taught them. Here’s to a great
semester with some awesome people, and two more to come!
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