Melanie Kadake's blog

 This week was the very last week of the internship. All week I worked on my final report paper and my Final Presentation. Thursday and Friday were the days we all presented our presentations. We all did great.

This internship was a great experience all around. 

On Monday, I worked on my presentation to present it on Tuesday.
 On Tuesday, all the interns in Tebo, Haygood, and Simons Labs did their practice talks in our lab meeting.
On Wednesday, I got to used a Petrographic Microscope to look at the same samples I looked at with the OLM. It was very interesting to see the different colors in the thin sections.
On Thursday and Friday, I worked more on my Presentaion, adding some suggestions from my practice talk at the lab meeting.

This week is BIG for the community of Hydaburg. We have culture camp and then totem pole raisings on the weekend. Culture Camp is where we all get to learn and teach about our culture. This week my Mentor Wendy and I did a class at the culture camp. We brought the kids down to the the mouth of the Hydaburg River, picked up about 50 lbs of garbage, looked at some macroinvertebrates, and told them why it is good to have a clean environment.

This week my mentor Wendy, Sean, and I all went out to Soda Bay to collect more samples, GPS mapped where we got our samples and took pictures of where we got out samples. We also did tests on our sample sites. I had a great time. This time we walked down the river instead of walking through a clear cut. It was much easier and faster then walking through the clear cut.

This week I worked on my presentation most of the time. On Wednesday we had a SEM session at Portland State University. There we looked at some Soda Bay samples and some of my mentor Wendys samples from Yellowstone. On Thursday, Jared and I did our presentations. All of the interns and Vanessa went to OHSU and got a tour of the whole school. That was very interesting.

At Yellowstone we collected from two spots, Purple Pool and Queens Laundry. Our main focus was Purple Pool where we collected from the vents and some outflows. We got both water samples and rock samples. After we went there we hiked about 3 miles to Queens Laundry and 3 miles back. On the trail we seen a HUGE bison. We had to go around him and go off the trail. Both sites were awesome. I had  great experience at Yellowstone.

On Monday, I worked with the OLM with different samples and later I put the images I got from the OLM together.
On Tuesday, I took more pictures with the OLM. Then at twelve-thirty Jared and I went to get more pictures with the SEM. We got back around one-thirty and I continued to work with my pictures. At three-thirty I went to lab meeting where they talked about ship worms.

On Monday, I came in and worked with the OLM and the pictures I had got of the Soda Bay samples. Around twelve I met up with Wendy and looke at some other Soda Bay samples that I will take to the SEM *scanning electron microscope* Class. At one, Vanessa brought me to the Science and Health School for the SEM Class. At the class they taught me how to use the SEM, how it works, and they also talked about how they want to get this microscope in the high schools.

On Monday, I started off the day with getting my OHSU ID as an intern for CMOP and meeting the new interns that just arrived. After getting my ID I went back to the lab and looked at slides of samples from Soda Bay on the microscope. As i was doing that i characterized each sample and noted it in my lab book. At three o' clock I attended a safety training along with all the ohter interns.
On Tuesday, I looked at more slides of samples from Soda Bay and characterizing them in my lab book.

This is the beginning of the next chapter in my life. I just graduated high school and got this great opprotunity to do this internship with Wendy Smythe. Well, At first i got a chance to go with wendy to a river nine miles out of my home town Hydaburg, Alaska called Soda Bay. I really had no i dea what we were doing but it was something to do in the small Village of Hydaburg. So we drove out to the trail, hiked down to the mouth of the river and collected samples. Then she went and did her thing with the samples and i went on with my regular high school life.