Goals for Summer 2020

My current career goals are to become a geologist and do data analysis. The internship that I received this summer is very similar to what I am striving to do in the future. I am getting the chance to try out this career path and will know by the end of the summer if I need to make adjustments to my current goals. Dr. Curt Storlazzi, my supervisor, has already expressed how if this internship goes well, he would be willing to write a letter of recommendation. I will be able to use my experiences in this internship to further my career through my resume, and an additional letter of recommendation could help me stand out when looking for future jobs. This is the first time I am entering the career field of my dreams, and I plan to make the most of it.

Through this summer internship, I hope that I can improve upon my communication skills and my time management skills. Working remotely comes with it's own set of challenges, which I have become familiar with from having the last quarter at UCSC online. It becomes much more difficult to communicate with your coworkers and since we cannot talk in person, it makes interactions feel so much more formal. I hope to improve upon my communication skills and to become proficient at writing emails in a professional and efficient manner. Currently, it takes me a while to write even the simplest of emails because I get stressed about how I have phrased the email. By the end of this internship I hope to be more confident in my emails and not waste time fussing over them. Being at home, it can be very difficult to avoid distractions. In order to stay on task and continue to make progress on the projects I am working on, I plan to write down and plan out the tasks I need to complete for the day. With my internship at USGS, I will not be required to be making frequent progress reports and so it will be up to me to manage myself.

How Covid-19 changed my summer plans (creative exercise)

GeoScience Career Panel Reflection

The two stories that resonated with me the most at last Friday’s career panel were from Ellen T. Gray and Scott Hardage. Ellen spoke about how she attended a program specifically for scientific journalism after graduating with an Earth Sciences degree. She is now a science writer for NASA. Writing articles about new scientific research is not a career I would have previously considered, but after hearing Ellen speak, I am thinking more about it. It is easy to feel like I would have a limited amount of career paths that I could follow post-graduation, but that is not the truth. The variety among the panelists career paths prove that. I’ve known that I want to become a geologist since my Junior year in high school, and so I could relate to Scott talking about how he knew that he wanted to pursue a career with The Nature Conservancy. While it is nice to feel so sure about what I would like to do professionally, Scott has inspired me to start researching specific companies I could work at. It was also refreshing to hear from someone who did not go to graduate school as I do not plan to attend graduate school myself. Before hearing Scott talk, I was getting worried that I would have to attend a graduate school in order to have a career in earth science. While I currently do not plan on attending a graduate school, this panel has made me more open minded to the possibility of continuing my education.

Final Reflection