Week 10 Last week of Internship

I can’t believe 10 weeks of internship flew by so fast. I’m already onto week 10. This week should be fairly relaxing for me, since I finished my project last week (week 9). Technically, I’m not completely done with my project, since I have an extra +190 DNA sequences to analyze and summarize. However, I won’t be able to get these DNA sequences data until after a few more weeks (after my internship), so I can only write my paper and start my powerpoint presentation with my data I’ve collected so far.

I’m starting to take writing papers and presentations very seriously after my internship. It is weird to think that a researcher needs to have good writing skills and need to make good presentations. It makes sense though, because after all the hard work of researching again and again to get a tiny bit of data to analyze, the only possible way for others to understand and appreciate the research work is by presentations or papers. I’m not a very good writer nor am I a good presenter, so this week is not only boring but extremely challenging. My principal investigator and mentor looked over my presentation many times, and their expectation for my paper is close to a scientific published paper. All the training of scientific writing classes paid off, but I still have a lot of improvement to make.

Overall, I’m very glad to be a part of OHSU CMOP. I was not at all familiar with oceanographic or environmental science research until I joined research. The material I’ve learnt really help me become a more environmentally cautious person, such as do not eat a crab if its female etc. I won’t know about those type of knowledge until I have been on a cruise sampling trip with my mentor and NOAA. I’m very glad I’m able to volunteer at OHSU CMOP in the Fall after my internship, I’m very excited to be contributing to the Mesodinium rubrum blooms research and be able to help out. Once I’m back in the Fall, I’m exciting to attempt some new M. rubrum cultures so we will be able to study the Columbia River M. rubrum by not just analyzing their DNA, but studying their physical morphology and their living routine. By doing that, we could probably have a better understanding of how they can form large biomasses of bloom, and what harm or good they could be contributing to the CRE.