Ah HA!!! Finally first. Only took 10 weeks

Great job on presentations everyone! Thank you everyone for a great summer. While there were many frustrating times during the completion of the project, the presentations yesterday hit home what we accomplished!

The first half of the week was stressful as you all know. Many late nights going over the presentation and practicing. Most of the time I looked like a crazy person talking to myself but it was well worth it in the end. Today and tomorrow I will be figuring out what I will do next week for my mentor - I am staying another week to fulfill my 10 weeks as I missed the first week. I will most likely be designing a template for the CeNCOOS newsletter using Adobe in-design.

Desmond finally beat me to first! I was not nervous to present my work at the symposium and i was actually looking forward to it. Up until I heard everyone's presentations and realized the bar had been set very very high. I am super proud of everyone. I am finishing the week off by moving all my things over to a place where my mentor can access it long after I leave. I feel like I couldn't make a meaningful contribution here when I first arrived, but as I pack up my desk, I feel like I may have. While I only did the busy work most people wouldn't have wanted to do, I got to contribute to some very exciting, cutting edge stuff and I'm anxiously awaiting the results to the training images I created. Thank you all for the support and for being so kind to my wife while we've been here. Baby Cedar is a thousand times smarter for getting to listen to all your presentations.

It seems rather appropriate that my last-ever Confluence update would be five hours late, doesn't it?

The last couple of days have been filled with scrambling to finish all the Matlabbing I needed to do and practicing my speech until it became muscle memory. I'm not sure if the rest of you could tell from my incessant fidgeting and worrying yesterday (ha), but I was very nervous. In the end, though, I was really pleased with how it went! I looked briefly through the recording my dad made of my speech (because of course he videotaped the blue jeans recording, even though I told him they were also recording) and I am pretty sure I didn't stand still for the entire 15 minutes, but I didn't panic and choke on stage so I am happy with that performance. The people watching appeared engaged, and the questions I got at the end made me think that people actually got something out of my presentation and thought that my project was interesting. I'm glad, because I thought my project was interesting and I wanted that to come across. I got a lot of compliments on my presentation by other MBARI employees afterwards and even if they were just out of politeness, I really appreciated them. There were a lot of people in the audience that I really admired, so I'm glad they enjoyed it!

Now, I get to go back to working with my data for the next week! It's almost worth missing the first week to get this week now, because now I've gotten everything figured out and I have all my data, so I can spend the next week doing more detailed analyses. I'm really, really sad that everyone else is going to leave, but I'm glad for the opportunity to stay for another week. Now I get to do all the things I skipped over because of the time crunch, and hopefully some other new and cool stuff too! Of course, all the stuff I skipped is hard stuff so it's not going to be a simple week, but hopefully I can answer some of the things I had to leave unanswered for my presentation.

Final confluence shoutouts, not just from the last week: to Desmond, for organizing the thank you gifts for George and Linda, to Jen for organizing the t-shirts (I'm excited to pick mine up tonight!), to Nick for teaching me basic Matlab signal processing (I should've given you an explicit thank you in my presentation, you were so helpful), and to Alaina for reminding me to breathe yesterday.

And with that, my final Confluence essay concludes. Thanks for a great summer.

Crazy final week! Presentation prep was scary and stressful but all went well enough. Seeing everybody's presentations was great! Everybody had such interesting projects, and I learned a lot from the talks. 

I have two tasks left to do: the reports and cleaning up the code so whoever works on this next doesn't bash their head through the drywall trying to figure it out. The latter I'm almost done with. Hopefully my project does get continued! It would be cool to have started something that actually gets used around here. 

 I'm not very good at reports, though, so this last day is a proper struggle. There isn't any good way to make any sort of edits if you dare have a figure anywhere in your entire document...

Anyways, I hope you all have a wonderful remainder of the summer! I'm heading out to Colorado in a week to climb on some actual rock for the first time since May, which I'm very excited about. I wish you all the best, it was a pleasure interning with you!

Wow, what a week this has been...

Things have been interesting, to say the least, in these final days of the internship.

Unfortunately, I was not allowed the opportunity to deliver my presentation at the symposium, and, as of this time, do not know whether my mentor has reviewed it. However, the feedback I've received from those who I did have a chance to show it to has been overwhelmingly positive.

For those interested, in my presentation: I describe myself and my unique background; my tie in to marine science; the value of effective science communication; MBARI's current state of disseminating information to the public, as described in Chris Scholin's Directors Dialogue; behaviors and knowledge of the general public; the process in developing a possible solution for communicating info to the public (the Story Map website), including opportunities in current social media trends and incorporation into lesson plans via EARTH; and, ending on a great quote about how "science isn't finished until it is communicated."

On another note, I attended a lunchtime seminar yesterday at the aquarium, featuring the aquarium's Teen Conservation Leaders Social Media Team. Wow, what an impressive group of teens...they delivered an absolutely AMAZING presentation about their work utilizing social media avenues, especially Snapchat and Instagram. It was a perfect demonstration of highlighting successful strategies for disseminating information to teens and young adults (whom, research shows, have interests in pursuing STEM careers)!

And so, to conclude this last Confluence report...I've had numerous, invaluable takeaways from this summer that I'm beyond thankful for. The information, insights, and connections I've gained through this experience has already opened new and exciting doors; moving forward, I'm eager for what's to come!

Wishing everyone the best, thank you for everything!

P.S. Glad y'all like the shirt designs!