A Week of Firsts

This week was all about completing new tasks and learning new skills. While most of these items were not related to our research projects, I got to contact European companies to get information about water quality devices, talk with an ocean engineer to talk technical details of research equipment, and I got to put together travel plans and itineraries for my first flights-required research conference (CERF 2025 mentioned in last week's blog). I also spent time completing more firsts in ArcGIS, which prompted me to start writing a guide for myself and [hopefully] future students on how to accomplish tasks in the software. Unfortunately, the user guide and help manuals that come with the program are not as user-friendly as I'd like, so my hope is that this guide can support new ArcGIS learners in my lab. The final first this week belongs to our undergraduate who sent me her first version of her research poster. She will be presenting her research in a few weeks at the USM Undergraduate Research Symposium and she has been working hard all semester to analyze her data and compile it for this research talk. She has a lot to be proud of, especially since many students don't give their first research presentation - oral or poster - until graduate school.

Next week is a short week, since we have Friday off, but I'm hoping to have some research updates to share. Stay tuned!