Goals for Summer 2020

Some of my goals for this summer are to gain research experience by working alongside USGS professionals, gain better time management skills so I can work most efficiently, and make connections in the geology field to help better my future career in the field. I also want to get more experience in working without a set plan in front of me and being able to make the plan for myself. I would also like to develop more skills in technology because I don’t know how to use some popularly used computer programs. I would also like to develop better reading skills so I can read and understand scientific articles quicker and more efficiently.

I am prepared to develop a better “at home” work ethic and learn how to not get as distracted while working from home. I plan to work in 45 minute sections and give myself a mental break for 10-15 minutes by walking around my house or getting something to eat. This internship will help further my goal of getting a job in the geologic field because I am gaining experience through my research and I get to work alongside USGS researchers where I can learn from them and use these new skills further in my career.

How Covid-19 changed my summer plans

My goal for my junior year in college was to gain more experience in the field of geology, whether it be taking upper division classes I was interested in or going to field study. In fall quarter, I was able to take EART 109, a field geology class where I learned about the techniques used while in the field as well as other important information about the types of outcrops one may see in the field. Before taking this class, I had no experience in the field and had never been camping before. After taking the class, I found a new love for field geology (as well as camping) and wanted to continue taking field-based classes in my last two years.

Though I was not able to take a field class my winter quarter, I was very excited to apply and be accepted to the summer field class. The summer field class is a 2-class series that takes place during spring quarter and the first two months of summer. I was thrilled that I was given the chance to take the class and see geologic formations I may never see again. However, before spring quarter started and after enrollment began, an announcement came out saying that the spring quarter would be entirely online due to COVID-19.

After hearing this news, I was disappointed that I wouldn’t be able to meet with my friends in the class and get the classroom environment. At the beginning of the new spring quarter, our professors told us that they were going to try their hardest to get us out to the field for the summer. But as the quarter continued on and COVID-19 cases grew, the hope for a summer field class became less and less of a possibility. This news saddened me because it had been my goal for my junior year to gain more experience in the field of geology. So, when I received an email about 7 weeks into the quarter talking about summer internships for geology, I took it as a sign that I needed to at least apply. After waiting about two weeks, I got news that I had received an internship working on coral reefs for the USGS. Although my summer plans did not go as I originally anticipated, I am more than thrilled to have an opportunity to grow as a geologist and gain more experience in the field.

Career Panel Reflection

Joseph's story resonated with me the most because he had a large time gap between his undergraduate and his PhD program. This resonated with me the most because I am not quite certain I want a Masters or a PhD and his large time gap between the two reassured me that I can always go back to school later in life if I really want to. What surprised me was that most of the speakers took a gap between their undergrad and grad studies, I did not know that was a common occurrence. I would like to learn more about how to get involved in department research and what different types of research is being conducted in the department. Hearing the stories of our presenters and how a gap year (or many) was common for most of them, I am thinking about maybe taking a gap year after my undergrad.

Final Reflection

During Spring Quarter at UCSC, I had my summer plans taken away from me when I learned that my summer field class was cancelled. Still wanting to gain experience in the field of geology, I was looking for opportunities related to my interests. Near the end of the quarter, I received an email mentioning a summer internship program run by GEOPATHS that had many different internship opportunities I could select from in the application. Eager to learn something related to geology this summer, I applied for the programs that interested me the most. And, at the beginning of summer, I was pleased to receive the email saying I was accepted to work under Curt Storlazzi for the USGS Coral Reef Project.

One of the first assignments for the GEOPATHS program was to list our goals for the summer and what we wanted to gain from the experience. My goals for the program were to gain research experience by working alongside USGS professionals, gain better time management skills so I can work most efficiently, and make connections in the geology field to help better my future career in the field. I also wanted to practice working without a set plan in front of me and begin to make the work plan for myself. This is something that I had practiced on a small scale in school with homework assignments and projects, but none of these lasted as long as an eight week internship. One skill I wanted to better develop was technology because I had never used the ArcMap program before and that was the main program used during my internship.

As my internship began, I was given a spreadsheet with different factors that are known to affect coral health and was assigned to read scientific articles to better educate myself on the topic. We also had to study how these factors affected corals in the seven different regions of our study: American Samoa, the Commonwealth of the Northern Marianas Islands, Guam, Hawaii, Florida, Puerto Rico, and the U.S. Virgin Islands. After reading a countless number of articles related to coral health and the regions we were studying, I felt I got a better understanding of the subject matter of my internship.

At the meeting with our bosses at the beginning of the second week, the other intern, Lexi, and I divided the factors between ourselves to find data on our factors. This week, I found many articles that gave data for the different regions of our study as well as the categories I was assigned: built infrastructure, golf courses, land use, sanitation infrastructure/water treatment plants, coral bleaching, coral disease, corallivore outbreaks, and invasive species. Though I did not find articles for every region in every category, I felt I found a sufficient amount of data to move on to the mapping portion of my internship. However, after meeting with my bosses at the beginning of the third week, I realized that how the data was collected in each of the articles I found was not consistent with how data was collected in other articles and therefore should not be used. I was then tasked by my bosses to find databases to use for data instead of individual articles.

Over the course of finding new data for my factors, I was unable to find database information for corallivore outbreaks and was unable to find a common invasive species or a common coral disease between all seven of our study regions. Because of this, my bosses told me that I could drop the search for this information due to the eight week time frame I had to complete my work. On the fourth week of my internship, after all of the data was collected, one of my bosses, Kristen, taught Lexi and I how to use the bands she created in ArcMap. The bands were how we color coordinated the threat levels of each factor. Every factor we collected data for had its own map and we would then color the bands according to how the factor affected corals in our seven regions. Red was the highest threat to corals while orange, yellow, and green were medium to lower threats. After having Kristen walk us through how to use our data in ArcMap and apply it to the bands, I felt more confident in using ArcMap and whenever a question arose, Kristen would email me back an answer the same day. Doing the same process over and over again for each band as well as each region made me really understand how to use the program.

Once the maps were finished around week seven, with many redos for color changes as well as completed redos of the map to change the order of the data threat level, I moved onto the writing portion of the maps. This section was the easiest because I had been working on each of these maps for almost 3 weeks so I understood them pretty well. I had to find articles to use as references for the color choices of the threat level and only had to find a different article for a paragraph one time. Each paragraph I wrote was sent to my bosses for revisions and after a week of writing, I had the final versions of the maps. Each factor had its own page with the paragraph of text explaining the map on the first half of the page and the map with the color coded bands around each region on the lower half of the page.

Looking back upon my experience working at the USGS on the Coral Reef Project, I wish I had known to not look at individual articles for data because I feel I would then have had more time to find the data I was unable to find in my allotted amount of time. I do, however, believe I have gained better time management skills, more experience working without a set plan, and I have learned to use a new mapping program that is widely used within the geologic field. Though I am sad my initial summer plans were cancelled, I am glad that I made the most of my summer by applying for this opportunity and I have learned invaluable information that I will use the rest of my life.