Week 2 - Busy

Well, well, well, this week has been full of events! Monday was a Big deal for everyone here at CMOP. It was the annual site visit by the National Science Foundation (they fund CMOP!). This day was literally the longest day ever! It was packed-full of presentations, information-sessions...etc,etc. However it gave us (interns) an opportunity to witness what really goes into having a science organization and how important it is to have a road map when you are being funded by a large foundation.

Wednesday was our first Furse class. Basically this class is supposed to teach us (from what I understand so far) about the importance of knowing how Tribal governments govern some of the natural resources. I find this class fascinating because before this class I had absolutely no idea that the Native tribes were considered a government separate from the U.S. I had no idea that some of the Europeans that came to America were in no condition to battle the Natives for the land and settled with treaties. AND....I had no idea that these treaties are the supreme law of the land. Fascinating! Another thing that intrigued me was that our teacher, the Honorable Elizabeth Furse (once a U.S House Rep. from OR), carries the U.S. Constitution in her purse - just in case she needs to whip it out during a discussion! I'm definitely going to keep one in mine as well haha!

So Thursday we (interns) went on a little field trip to Portland on the Max and took the tram to OHSU's main campus. On the tram we were able to see a nice overview of the area and I believe the mountain we were able to see was Mt. Hood. Afterwards, there were grad. students awaiting our arrival to take us on a tour of their campus. Then we went back to downtown area and had lunch in the area before heading to the OAEP forum.
Today (Friday...TGIF) we had another brown bag seminar and our guest was Valerie Palmer. Her work kind of ties together environmental science with human health. Currently she works with an organization that studies techniques that would make a crop (that is grown in different parts of the world and is mainly consumed by disadvantaged poor people) less toxic and damaging to human health. It's amazing to get to know the kinds of things that people do in these fields and how they can truly make a difference and try to make the world a better place.

This week has really got me starting to think about my future and what exactly (in detail) what I really want to do with my degree. I know that so far that I want to program software, but that alone is not enough to decide a career. Programming intertwines with other fields as well. Sooo, I have to ask myself, "Who or what do I want to program for?"

So to end up, I'll talk a bit about my project and how it is coming so far. On Monday I met up with all my mentors to discuss the "road map" of my project. It gave me a better understanding as to how I should approach the task. One main challenge for me (so far) is actually understanding the data that I will quality control. Looking at oxygen levels, fluorescence, cdom, and basically everything the LOBO monitors is entirely new to me. However, once a week, I am supposed to meet up with my senior and frontline mentor to sort of discuss the data I am observing, understand why certain data have certain patterns, and to recognize when data is absolutely bad. I also had just been introduced to using databases (postgres & pgAdminIII) which is cool because next semester is when I'll start taking database courses. I can't wait to start programming though...that's when the real fun starts!