Reflections on 2017

In January, I wrote my goals and expectations for the year. When I started grad school in 2007, I also wrote my career and life goals for 2017. Over the summer I wrote a post reflecting on a decade of blogging, but I'd like to take this opportunity to reflect on both sets of goals/expectations for this year. 

I'll start with what I wrote in 2007. In short, I described my career objective to become a professor a place like Small Friendly College, which would include teaching, research with undergrads, occasionally leading foreign study programs, and doing some kind of science outreach. I knew I needed good teaching experience, international experience, and to write my own grants to support my research. I got the grants and the international experience, but not so much teaching experience (in part because I was successful with fellowship applications). My decision to steer away from the liberal arts college professor path was motivated in part by wanting to be geographically narrow (to be near Jon's family eventually) and in part by realizing (mostly from conversations with SFC faculty) that I wasn't going to be terribly competitive for those jobs without a much stronger teaching and research record.

I've been able to play to the same interests articulated above and strengths I developed in grad school in unexpected ways and chart a very different path than the small-liberal-arts-college-professor way. There is a strong international component to my current work. My interest in outreach and an unconventional science communication opportunity helped my land my first real job as a PhD. It's really all of my side interests and ancillary skills from grad school that have gotten me to here, rather than my research itself. I suppose I expected the same to be true as a professor, so I've just applied it differently.

I'm most proud of my self-awareness in 2007:

At this point in time my ideal job is quite specific, and I’m not even sure it exists. However, the breadth of what I want to do to is great enough that I would be happy to pursue other careers that fulfill some, if not all, of my interests in other ways. I will remain open to other options that I can’t even imagine yet.

Not bad, huh?

I also wrote about wanting to start a family:

I do plan to start a family by 2017. I am not sure exactly how children will fit into the picture, nor can I realistically expect things to go as planned. But if I could choose, I’d like to have two children relatively close together to minimize the pre-school time period. When in my career I try to have children will depend on my research plans and post doc opportunities. Perhaps I will try to have kids between finishing field work and defending.

I did strategically aim to give birth between my dissertation defense and the end of my NSF Graduate Research Fellowship, which worked out pretty well, except for the part where I almost died and then had a pretty rough start to motherhood while trying to find a job. We've decided to only have one child instead of the two we'd originally intended, but I'm feeling ok with that. Given the state of the world, it doesn't seem like the right decision for us to choose to have another child.

For my goals defined at the beginning of this year I wrote:

This year is not about being wildly aspirational—it's about modest changes to try and protect us (in the immediate and broader sense) in uncertain times.

I did well on the goals and elaborated on several in a post earlier in the year.

Personal/Familial
Help Jon get a new, full-time job with benefits
DONE. He's not wild about the workplace culture, but it's ok. He's keeping an eye out for other opportunities.

Get Adele a passport and renew mine
DONE! 

Clear my inbox every month

Nope. I completely failed at this and my work email has now gotten a bit unwieldy too. I've practically given up on my personal email. I need to find a strategy that works for me, but in the short term I'm just procrastinating on it.

Celebrate my blogiversary (10 years!)

Kind of. I wrote a reflection on a decade of blogging, but I didn't get it printed like I considered. I didn't find a way to print it that was easy and satisfying enough. I'd still like to do that someday. Suggestions welcome!

Read four books

DONE! I read a book about my field of work which included many people I know personally, which was pretty cool. I also read How to Raise A Wild Child because I want to make sure that Adele is well-connected to nature.

Financial
Pay off our car
DONE!

Pay off all of Jon's course/credit card debt
DONE! 

Shorten the repayment term on my student loans
Nope. We have instead put more emphasis on saving for retirement. I'll re-evaluate the situation in 2018.

Activism
Carbon offsets
DONE. We've been paying a monthly fee based on our calculated carbon emissions from 2016. I am guessing 2017 would be comparable for us so I think we'll continue at the same rates for 2018.

Switch to electricity from renewable sources
DONE. 

Organizations we'll newly support with monthly contributions:
-Wikimedia 
-ProPublica 
-GiveDirectly
-Southern Poverty Law Center
DONE! 

In terms of broad expectations for the year, I wrote:

I am less optimistic about 2017 than I have been...maybe ever. I am deeply concerned about Trump becoming president tomorrow and I honestly expect the world and its people to be in worse shape at the end of 2017 than now. I expect my family (immediate and extended) to weather this year due to our position of privilege (employed, mostly urban, socially connected, highly educated, white), but even still I expect our lives to be diminished.

I am afraid I hit the nail on the head. My immediate family is doing fine, but the world feels much less safe with the insanity of nuclear brinksmanship from two insecure leaders, no new gun control measures despite escalating casualties in mass shootings, and the mainstreaming of white supremacists. We continue to ignore the paths for action on climate change, despite suffering extensive damages from hurricanes, flooding, droughts, and fires exacerbated by our inaction. Measures making the dysfunctional health care system we have even worse and tax changes that will disproportionately benefit the incredibly wealthy and wreck the federal budget make me less optimistic for a thriving future of broadly shared prosperity in our country. I am sad for our country and the world.

I expect some big changes again in 2018, particularly with my career. As usual, I'll share more in a separate post after the new year.

Farewell, 2017!

Looking back on 2012

I set out an ambitious list of goals for 2012. How did I do?

Academic/Career
Get something published in 2012.
YES! Both papers that were submitted at the end of 2011 were accepted in 2012. And as a bonus, another paper just got accepted with minor revisions! Only one of these is a chapter in my dissertation, but I've got publications! Woo hoo!

Submit Best Project for publication
Not even close. Best Project is going to be two manuscripts. One of them has been the source of much frustration and the other isn't written yet. Argh.

Conceptualize my dream job(s).
Not really, but I did start applying- to a grand total of two. I'm out of the running on one of them already. At this point, I don't think I have time to sit around imagining my dream job and I just need to apply to anything that seems doable.

Give a talk at the big ecology conference and present at at least one other conference. 
YES! I presented at two conferences and had a blast. I still love conferences.

Do an outreach project. 
YES! Unfortunately, that's all I can say.

Update my webpage once a month.
Not quite. Looks like I updated it 5 times this year. I made sure to do it when I had big updates, so I didn't completely neglect it.

Fitness
Do a sprint distance triathlon and one other race.
I did the tri, but not another race. My mom and cousin did a triathlon too (first time for both), and hopefully we'll make it something of a tradition.

Exercise 4x or more per week. 
In the first half of 2012, I averaged 2.25 times per week, and since then I've averaged about 2.3 times per week. This counts conferences and holidays and being sick, so I think that's not too shabby. It also doesn't include dancing or my bicycle commuting.

Do yoga once a week. Revised! Goal: 30 minutes of yoga per week and pushups (following the level 1 plan here) if I don't do some other kind of exercise.
So I kinda sucked at this. I've wanted to do more yoga since becoming pregnant, but not even close to once a week. Pushups? My wrists just aren't cut out for it. Fail.

Go dancing at least 12 times. 
YES! 13! I went 13 times! My high school self would be so disappointed in me that I dance so infrequently. Oh well.

Home
Learn and perfect an easy, delicious vegetarian lasagna recipe. 
No, but I did find a great recipe for mushroom quiche. I should try harder with the lasagna but I have no desire to make lasagna when it's hot outside so that limits the times in the year when I can pursue this worthy goal.

No more ugly houseplants.
I bought myself some pretty ceramic pots, so that helped. This is on ongoing process.

Get the dog to walk better. 
She has improved some, but still isn't great.

Visit at least half of the places on our must-see list for Big City. 
Wow, not even close. I think we might have done 3 or 4 things on our list.

Offset our carbon emissions. 
No...

Blogging
Blog at least once a week.
Not really. I made 59 posts this year including this one, so that averages more than once a week but I had many weeks where I didn't blog at all.

Label my posts and keep them labeled.
Yep. I think I've caught up on unlabeled posts from earlier field work and I've been labeling new ones.

Metagoals
Review goals quarterly. 
How about bi-annually? I only reviewed them in June (Academic, Fitness, and others) and now. I just kept procrastinating in March and September until it was June and December.

Make weekly agendas for myself. 
Yes. Each week I send an email to a friend of mine reporting on last week's goals and the goals for the upcoming week. I keep the electronic list somewhere that I can easily refer to it to keep me focused. I've recently modified this to break my goals down into tasks for each day, which makes the big things seem more manageable. 

Overall I worked many fewer hours this year than last year (2239 hours instead of 2750), but that still works out to 43 hours/week across all 52 weeks of the year. No field work in 2012- makes a big difference! I was still able to make good progress towards my career goals (i.e. dissertation) and do plenty of fun things too. Oh, and make a baby-- that was an unwritten goal for 2012 :-)

Well 2012, it's been fun. Tomorrow I'll to write about what I've got in store for 2013!

So. many. projects.

After the frustration with the student I wasn't doing a very good job of supervising, Jon asked if I have a list of all of the projects I'm involved in. He suggested that I list everything and regularly review the status of each project. I thought about doing something more complicated than that at the beginning of the summer using some kind of goal tracking software, but I never found the right thing for me. So, now I've got an uncomplicated list of all of my projects and major sub-projects in Google Docs. This includes some outreach and side-projects (things that aren't part of my dissertation). Each week (or so), I look at each project and record the status (e.g. waiting for someone else, what I have to do, etc) and then I color code it based on whether or not it is something I need to be working on this week.

If you include job hunting as a project, I have 13 projects. Thirteen! Thankfully, two of them just finished since I first made the list. That brings it down to 11. Five more are waiting for other things to happen or are otherwise on the back burner. That means there's 6 projects that I need to do at least something for this week, even if it just means emailing someone else to ask what's up on their end.

Three of those 6 projects are dissertation chapters. I have to finish my dissertation.

Reviewing my goals: Academic

One of my goals for 2012 was to review my goals quarterly. This is important, because I've learned that I forget goals! Thank goodness for written language. I've been meaning to sit down and write this blog post since, oh, March? Eek. Anyways, better late than never. I'm going to break this up into a few posts. Let's start with the big goals.


How am I doing on those academic/career goals?


Get something published in 2012. I am happy to report good progress on this front! Sam and I have a little note in press as of this week, and we're about to submit revisions to a journal for the paper I started way back when (2.5 years ago). AND, we submitted my interdisciplinary project, which wasn't even on my radar screen when I wrote these goals. That one has been submitted, rejected, and resubmitted already. Fingers crossed.

Submit Best Project for publication. I'm working on it. It's going to be two papers, not just one. Sam says I have to submit the first one by mid-August. I've written most of the methods (all except the stats) and I'm tackling a draft of the introduction, one paragraph at a time. The analysis is the hardest part of this process. 

Conceptualize my dream job(s). I'm not sure I have a dream job, although I did see a couple of jobs I was excited about. I think I could be happy doing many different jobs. I have a dream destination. Actually, two. If I could land a postdoc in RFC for a couple of years, and then get a job in Jon's Hometown, that would be awesome. That's my dream career path.

Give a talk at the big ecology conference and present at at least one other conference. Yes! I'm presenting at the Big One and presented at a different conference earlier this year. I intend to give a fabulous presentation for all 6 people that attend at the crappiest time ever assigned.

Do an outreach project. My outreach plan is unbloggable because it's awesome.

Update my webpage once a month. Hmm, I did great at this until April, at which point I think I forgot that it was supposed to be a monthly thing. I should be sure to do a good job in June! I'm also thinking of getting my own domain since I'm thinking about finishing.


Overall I think I'm making good progress on my academic goals. It really makes me feel good to have 3 manuscripts in various stages of resubmission/in press. Too bad only 1 of those is going to be in my dissertation.

February madness

There are so many things happening and so many things I need to do in the next week!
-write and submit two conference abstracts (first one due tomorrow. still analyzing data. eep!)
-write and submit a small grant proposal
-plan and launch major outreach project
-prepare and give a talk at SFC
Meanwhile, in my personal life:
-I've spent several days in the last two weeks away from Big City working with my friend Theo on the analyses for these abstracts.
-my friend and former labmate Mariyah will be in town for a week and is staying with us
-I simply MUST finish a photo book of our wedding before my groupon expires!
And now, back to the abstract.

Looking forward to 2012

I regret not defining my goals on the blog last year. I fully intended to, but time slipped away from me as I got a grant in early January and then busted my butt to be in the field just 3 weeks later. I thought about it when I was in the field, but then it just felt silly to be writing about my 2011 resolutions in March- or later. I probably should have done it anyways.

Looking back at posts I've written about goals has really inspired me. I reviewed 2007, 2008, and 2009, part of 2010, and defined goals for 2008, 2009, and 2010. I've had several good goals in the past that I want to revive/continue this year, as well as some new ones.

Academic/Career
Get something published in 2012. I've got two things submitted right now. Hopefully they'll both stick this time and get accepted without major revisions (please?). I seriously need to have something that can be cited as Anirak et al. (2012). I choose not to be discouraged by the fact that I don't have anything yet because being down on myself won't help anything.

Submit Best Project for publication. My last project I started is probably also my best. This is my #1 priority this spring, because getting something published on this is probably going to help my career more than anything else.

Conceptualize my dream job(s). Speaking of my career, I'm not going to be a professional student forever. Someday in the not too distant future I'll be "on the market", and I'd like to have a better idea of my goals. I've got a collection of job announcements from ECOLOG that have caught my eye over the years, but I should revisit and reflect on what aspects are appealing and what my strengths and weaknesses would be. I should also answer these queries I made up for myself a couple of years ago.

Give a talk at the big ecology conference and present at at least one other conference. I can definitely do this. I'm not sure what the second conference will be, but there are possibilities.

Do an outreach project. I've got a plan for something awesome, but I don't think I can blog about it because it might just be that. awesome.

Update my webpage once a month. I should just schedule a couple of hours once a month to work on it. I have photos I want to share, videos to upload, stuff like that.

Fitness
Do a sprint distance triathlon and one other race. I loved the triathlon I did last summer, and I think it would be fun to do another race that involves some kind of obstacle course. I'd sign up for lots of these except they are expensive. We'll see what the budget allows.

Exercise 4x or more per week. If I commit to doing a triathlon, then I've got the incentive of trying to improve my time to motivate me to exercise. I've also found that if I just tell myself I have to go to the gym every day that I'm on campus, it helps get me there. It works best for me to go in the middle of the day because I'm not much of a morning person, but if I wait until the end of the day then I just want to go home (and it's slightly in the wrong direction from home). Going in the middle of the day gives me a mental break, and then I go back to my office feeling good about exercising. The one day a week that I'm at the museum it's harder to exercise, and I often don't on the weekends unless I take the dog for a run.

Do yoga once a week. I was super excited when I learned that there are tons of free yoga video podcasts on itunes. I've never taken a class- maybe I should try to do a few? I did yoga fairly often in Ukenzagapia and I'd like to get back in the habit.
 
Go dancing at least 12 times. I love dancing, and there's no shortage of opportunities here. I've even got a couple of dancing friends now who I can carpool with. There's no reason I shouldn't be able to get out once a month to go dancing.

Home
Learn and perfect an easy, delicious vegetarian lasagna recipe. For some reason I just never think to make lasagna, but it's an easy food that non-vegetarians can also enjoy that I could bring to gatherings. Suggestions welcome! I also want to learn a good mushroom quiche recipe. I've got a great spinach quiche recipe from my mother-in-law, but I'd like to switch it up sometimes with the quiche.

No more ugly houseplants. I hate to throw away plants. I really do. But I'm tired of having ugly plants in my house, and that goes for their pots too. I'm going to figure out what size nice pots I need to get, and buy some pretty ceramic ones. Ugly plants/pots are going in the garbage, to someone else, or to my office.

Get the dog to walk better. Our dog is really wonderful at most things (she sleeps in, doesn't chew things she isn't supposed to, doesn't steal food, doesn't beg, rarely barks, stuff like that). Walking on the leash is not one of her strong suits. She often pulls and it's kind of annoying, especially since she's big enough to pull me off balance (though not Jon).

Visit at least half of the places on our must-see list for Big City. Jon and I made a list of things we want to do before we leave this place. If I finish in summer 2013, we've got a year and a half left (assuming I get a job/postdoc somewhere else). It's time to do all of those fun things we've been putting off!

Offset our carbon emissions. This was my goal for 2010. I only did it for half of 2010, and didn't do it at all in 2011. I think this is far more important now that we own a car. I probably need to find a way to do it automatically every month based on an estimate of our annual emissions. Does anyone else do this?

Blogging
Blog at least once a week. I have plenty of interesting things to write about. This shouldn't be difficult.

Label my posts and keep them labeled. When I was in the field I did email posting so I have dozens of unlabeled posts. I need to stop email posting now that I have fast internet, and go back and label all of those posts.

Metagoals
Review goals quarterly. I want to revisit my goals and comment on my progress about every 3 months. I think this will help keep me on track.

Make weekly agendas for myself. I want to have more clear work goals each week and cooking schedules at home. I think taking a couple of hours each week to plan these kinds of things will keep me from wasting time trying to decide what to do.

I think this is a record number of goals for me! I'm excited about all of them and I don't think that any of them are unreasonable. I'll keep you posted on my progress- quarterly.

Happy New Year!

Kids do and publish science

A class of 8-10 year old students in the UK designed an experiment to understand bumblebee vision. The paper was published in Biology Letters, and you can read an article about it, the paper itself, and more commentary on it for free.

The main scientist involved in the project, Beau Lotto from the University College London, has a webpage like I've never seen. This group is really, seriously sharing science in creative and novel ways (check out their Street Science and Flight of the bumblebee cubes). Kudos to them! What an inspiration!

The "Blackawton bees" project really sets a new bar for teaching science by doing science, and I expect we'll see more articles published by elementary and secondary school students in the near future. What do you think?

Making connections

Small Friendly College has a program in Ukenzagapia right now, led by one of my professors whom I know well. I've been trying for weeks now to figure out when I can see them, as our paths will unfortunately only cross briefly while I'm here in the city. I finally got a response and it looks like I'll get to have dinner with them tomorrow! I might also tag along for some of their other activities, depending on my schedule.

While standing in line at customs upon arrival, I met a woman who is leading a group of Canadian students and we exchanged cards* and a brief conversation. I just got an email from her, and she wants me to come talk to her students about my research. I'm not sure what exactly she wants me to talk about, but I think this is her first program to Ukenzagapia and maybe she's struggling a bit to fill the schedule!

The other day I was at a government office getting one of my permits, and an Ukenzagpian who I met briefly in Nyota recognized me and asked me to pass a message on to someone I know in Nyota. Somehow, that little encounter really makes me feel connected here. I'm knowing people all over the place!

*This means I remembered to bring my cheap grad student business cards, and I've already handed out two!

Gift recommendation help?

My brother in law is looking for a "marine biology kit" for a ten year old. My go-to place for all nature-related book/kits/supplies is Acorn Naturalists. I love Acorn Naturalists. It's like someone took everything that I think is awesome and put it all in one place.

Anywho, a marine biology kit is a tough one. I couldn't find one from AN that wasn't designed for a classroom, which makes me think it might not exist. Readers (I'm especially asking working through the blue and my friend whose grad student office looks at the ocean), do you have any suggestions?

I'm wondering if maybe the child would like a good book about oceans (maybe this one?) along with some magnets, rubbings plates, or a thematic card game.

Ok, upon browsing their kit section, I did just find three different tidepool kits from Acorn Naturalists, but they're all somewhat location specific (all to the west coast) and I'm not sure where the child lives.

What do you think?

Presentation report

I think our presentation went well. I was seated next to the promient scientist giving the keynote. The talk was awesome. We talked right after. Of course ours wasn't as awesome (few decades less experience I think), but we did get people interested.

Where did this weekend go? It hardly felt like a weekend. At least this is a short week. I sure do have a lot to get done though!

Co-presenter anxiety

This weekend I'm giving a presentation with another person in my interdisciplinary cohort about the project we've been working on. It's going to be a large, mixed audience- some prominent scientists but mostly non-scientists who are enthusiasts about what we studied in our project. We're slated to present between two senior scientists, to an audience of about 100 people. It's a little intimidating.

Getting this presentation ready has taken more of my week than I expected it to, and my co-presenter is making me kinda anxious. I'm pretty sure we'll be great and people will love us, but he keeps bringing up all of the unknowns (What will the room be like? How big will our screen be? What if they mistake us for experts? What if someone asks us a question we can't answer?). I'm just trying to go with the flow. Our presentation is nearly final now, and we're practicing tomorrow evening. He's bringing his girlfriend over tonight and so we'll practice the presentation after dinner. I just want to have fun with this presentation and convince all these laypeople of the greatness of our project.

Featuring my research

Last week someone from UBC contacted me because they're writing a
piece about me for a newsletter. It's kind of a follow-up to the award
I got from them last year. I just read the rough draft and it's
pretty good but I'm concerned about the details of my research. See,
they're pitching the (arguably) most exciting part of my project, but
I haven't really begun that part yet. The stuff I'm actually doing
this summer is part of the bigger picture, but not very exciting to
write about (at least not compared to what they think I'm doing). To
what extent should I exact the details of my project and narrative?

They've also given me a "label" that I'm not sure I'm qualified to
have. Let's say they called me "Karina the Katydid Capturer" but I
haven't caught any katydids yet. Do I suggest something less catchy
but also more fitting?

take ugly pictures

Last week I spent a day working at the museum for a change of scene. While I was there, Leo introduced me to a visiting scientist who has similar research interests. He also used to be in charge of one of the organizations that funded me last year*. We chatted for a while about my research and possible funding sources. He said that taking photos was important for broadly publicizing my research and writing articles for general audiences. His parting words of advice were, "Take ugly pictures. Illegal fires, bushmeat, whatever you see. Make sure you document the bad stuff, too."

*He said funding rates are going to be much lower this year from that organization because it was all funded from endowment income, and their endowment tanked (not surprisingly). Ouch.

science communication

My final assignment last semester was a proposal for developing and assessing a community outreach program for my research in Ukenzagapia. In the process of writing the proposal, I realized a theme that came up time and time again last semester: things can go horribly wrong when the general public doesn't understand what scientists are doing.

Over the course of the semester, I saw several examples of situations that got ugly because scientists didn't communicate soon enough or clearly enough the goals and/or methods of their work with members of the community. This probably also has to do with framing, which Kent Holsinger has written about on his blog Uncommon Ground.

As part of my interdisciplinary fellowship, we learned about two cases in the Big City area where concerned and vociferous citizens brought projects to a grinding halt. The first case involved citizens who opposed ecological restoration projects, and the second was a hazardous waste treatment plan that didn't involve the local community soon enough. I think both cases were failure of scientists to effectively communicate their work. Illustrating the importance of science communication wasn't a goal of the course at all, but it turned out to be an unintended theme.

Now I see opportunities for science communication everywhere. For example, they should've had at least one entire lecture in my animal ethics class about research communication with non-scientific audiences. For heaven's sake, most of the biomedical researchers in that class may have to live in fear of violent animal rights activists for the rest of their professional lives if scientists don't speak up about what they do and direct at least part of the dialogue.

In the most unfortunate science miscommunication event, a grad student from UBC is caught up in a mess of accusations about her/his research. UBC lawyers are involved, and I'm hoping that it doesn't get out of control. The worst part about this situation is, I think, that the grad student and the accuser actually have common interests. In any case, the student is now on the defensive and so is the university.

It's very important for me both personally and professionally that Ukenzagapians as well as U.S. taxpayers understand what I do and why my research is significant. But in order for me to communicate that clearly, I've got to be sure I thoroughly understand it myself. Preparing for my prelims gives me an opportunity to construct my proposal around meaningful questions and practice communicating what I do. If only I could tell you here!

science outreach and mentoring

I love talking about science and sharing the process of becoming a scientist. That's why I created this blog. I've also had some opportunities for non-anonymous science outreach/mentoring in the past few weeks that I want to share because they were so awesome.

Right before Thanksgiving, I talked to my friend's 6th grade science class on speakerphone about bacteria. I'm no bacteria expert, but I did do a summer internship that involved bacteria. I was their call-in scientist! My friend told the students a little bit about my bacteria research and the students prepared questions in advance that they wanted to ask me. I spent about 20 minutes on the phone answering their questions. Some of their questions were related to my research, but many of them were about being a scientist in general and I talked about some of the traveling I've done. This was an urban public school, so the odds are good I'm the first scientist they've ever talked to. My friend said that it was awesome to see her 31 students squirming in their seats with excitement and talking about bugs. One of her hard-working students told her later, "Miss X, I think now I want to be a scientist when I grow up." Pretty big payoff for 20 minutes on the phone.

Last week Sam asked me to come talk to his introductory bio class. I went with another student from my program (a minority woman) and we just told our stories of how we got to where we are now and answered questions. I was pretty nervous for this and I think I should've thought more about how to describe my path (starting with "I've always loved nature..." didn't seem to strike a chord with these city kids), but Sam said the students loved our visit. It was exciting to answer their questions, and there was a Latina woman who asked the best questions about grad school. She already knew all about applying to REU programs! Here's hoping she stays in science.

Today I met with a student from my first semester of teaching. She contacted me a few weeks ago to ask if I would write her a letter of recommendation for summer internships. I mentioned this student in a post from fall 2007 and she's taking some of the advice that I gave them about applying for internships! She's interested in a different field of science, but at this point that's not terribly important. She's applying to REU-type programs all over the country, and I hope she gets into one of them! If she doesn't, she plans to stay here and do research in a lab at UBC.

Soon (maybe tomorrow?) I'll have a post about science communication. It seems to have been a theme for me this semester.