Goals for Summer 2020

My goals for the summer are to learn more about practical paleoseismology, gain hands-on knowledge of this field, and enhance my skill set. Through this internship, I hope to build my confidence in working with professionals and to not be afraid to apply what I learned throughout my undergrad. I often get intimidated when speaking to a professional, but I know that through the constant communication with my supervisor, I will be able to grow out of this insecurity. Another goal of mine is to enhance my technical skills. I have only used software such as Matlab, GIS, and Excel in a classroom setting, so I am interested in how I can apply my existing knowledge into a lab setting and I would like to get more practice using said programs. I also want to build onto my knowledge by learning new tools, models, and techniques.

I hope to develop problem solving skills and information processing, as these skills are important to have for any job. The work ethic I am prepared to use are professionalism, discipline, teamwork, respectfulness, and reliability. I gained the above skills from previous jobs and I always strive to give my all, to any task I set out to accomplish. This will be my first official internship, so I am excited to see how I will grow as a young professional and where this opportunity will take me. As of now, I do not know what I want to study in graduate school (either GIS or continue with seismology/geophysics), thus I feel that this internship will give me a better sense of what path I want to take for a masters degree.

Participating in this internship will ultimately allow me to apply my education, obtain lab skills that will enhance my preparedness into the professional world, and open up opportunities for personal and professional growth.

GeoScience Career Panel Reflection

What surprised me about last Friday’s career panel was that most of the speakers did not have a planned path to their profession. This was inspiring to hear because they took every opportunity that presented itself and ended up loving the career that came from it. From this, I learned to never be afraid of new opportunities, for new things stem growth. The career panel was also reassuring because I too do not know what my future holds, in terms of graduate school or which profession I want to pursue. Although I connected with all of the career stories in some way, Ellen’s story resonated with me the most. Ellen shared that she earned a MS degree in geology but then decided to explore scientific journalism. I find myself in a similar situation, where I just completed a BS degree in Earth Science, but I found a new passion that I would love to pursue in graduate school and possibly as a career- data science and GIS. Before the career panel, I worried that I invested time and money in the wrong degree, but as Ellen pointed out, every skill and knowledge gained from undergrad will be a valuable asset when applying to a job in a different field or a graduate program. After some much needed reflection, I am determined to pursue a masters degree (In what field? I still do not have the answer to this question but I know now that I have time to figure it out). For now, I will continue to work through my amazing internship, apply for both GIS analyst and staff geologist positions, study for the GRE and the 2021 ASBOG test. During this gap period, I hope to accomplish these goals and gain professional experience. However, I wonder how much time is considered “too long” for a gap period? Would taking years in between undergrad and grad make me an unfit candidate? Overall, the career panel and this internship has given me a lot of insight into the reality of life after college and I feel more confident about my future.

Final Reflection

Reading back on my first reflection, I remember feeling intimidated about working with professionals and anxious about the work I would have to do, as this internship would be my first real research experience. At the same time, I felt excited about the research topic and working with brilliant minds at the USGS’s paleoseismology lab. Fast forward to today, I feel more confident in my abilities and eager to apply what I learned from this internship to a professional job. Since my internship was online, most of the work had to be done independently, which allowed me to gain troubleshooting and time management skills. On a personal scale, I learned that I need to trust in my skills and abandon my recurring thoughts of failure, for I have proven through this internship that I know and can do the work. Interning at the USGS required me to work with Matlab and ArcMap, as well as exposing me to new software such as Kingdom and Illustrator. Although I enjoyed learning these new programs and using them to analyze geophysical data, I wish I would have worked through an external hard drive. This would’ve not only saved gigabytes of memory and storage on my computer, but it also would’ve allowed the CPU to run faster (and perhaps prevented the several computer crashes).

Through my internship, I accomplished all of my goals: improve technical skills, develop problem solving skills, and gain confidence when speaking to professionals. Since some of the work required us to run data through Matlab, I feel that I am adept at writing my own code and debugging- a skill that is invaluable in the professional world. Likewise, I developed problem solving skills by utilizing “Help” pages and navigating through each software’s toolbars. For example, one of the biggest challenges in working remotely is not having access to computers and obtaining software licenses. Since I have a MacBook, I had to install a Windows virtual machine in order to run ArcMap and Kingdom. However, running large files (+20 Gb!) through a virtual machine is prone to computer crashes and CPU overloads. Thus, I figured out how to configure both machines to work more efficiently. In addition, working remotely called for many zoom meetings, and in these meetings, I gained confidence in speaking with professionals. My supervisors are brilliant and have taught me so much these past 2 months, and I realize that they are in their positions because they were not afraid to put themselves out there. I learned that it is important to be professional, but also being yourself and colloquial will make a greater impact in your work relationships.

Working remotely presented various learning opportunities, like teaching yourself new programs and troubleshooting by yourself, and many challenges. Because of the pandemic, Marcos, my co-intern, and I could not use the USGS lab and its high-tech computers. Therefore, some of the data would take almost an entire day to get uploaded into Google Drive and then downloaded onto our personal computers. It was a game of patience, but nonetheless exciting once the data was acquired. The work was divided between us two interns and we normally worked on the same tasks. In the first part of the internship, we read several papers to understand paleoseismology principles and geophysical field techniques. Then, we focused on analyzing sediment cores from marine and lacustrine environments through the use of Matlab, ArcMap, and Kingdom. Landslides serve as an excellent proxy of paleoearthquakes and they are often represented as turbidites in the sedimentary record. Since densities of each core were measured in the lab, my co-intern and I imported that data into Matlab to create a density/core thickness versus depth graph. GIS was also used to create maps of our field sites, Lake Ozette, Washington and Los Osos, California. The last data processing project involved using Kingdom Suite to look at the seismic profile beneath the lake/sea floor. Unfortunately, my computer could not process the Kingdom files, so I virtually assisted with this part of the project. I am currently using Illustrator to compile the photos and CT scans, the density plots, a site map, and seismic profiles of each core. Below is one of the Illustrator files I have finished for core 8 (there are dozens!).

Once all of the data and images are compiled as so, we can correlate the large density spikes to possible turbidites. We found that most density spikes align with visible turbidites in the CT/photos, and in the seismic profile (dark, high amplitude regions) which is excellent and as hypothesized. This will allow us to pinpoint distinct turbidites in one core and see if that layer is present in other cores. As discussed with my supervisors, Marcos and I will continue to work on the project because there is still a lot of work to be done. I am excited to keep learning and to see the final results.