Work, Work, Work, Work, Work

The title of this blog, in homage to the Super Bowl halftime show performance by Rihanna, doesn't accurately describe my week. In fact, this has been a quieter week than usual, but that doesn't mean that I have been slacking. This week, I needed to run a few statistical analyses at the lab, put together some figures, write and edit two separate manuscripts, and practice and prepare for my upcoming research seminar. I know it sounds like a lot, but it really wasn't.

What's this? An upcoming research seminar? I have mentioned this seminar previously, but graduate students here are expected to present one research seminar to the department prior to their thesis or dissertation defenses. While some graduate students use the seminar as a way to prepare for their defense talk, others choose to present their current work and save their defense for other sections of their research. This seminar is an opportunity for the faculty, graduate students, and anyone else who'd like to attend to hear about work that goes on in our department, and then the audience is given time to ask questions about the research. The research seminar is also one of the last major milestones in the program, regardless of which degree path a student is taking, which is why students often give this talk one year before they graduate or within their graduation year. 

Since many of the students and faculty in the department know that I work on microplastics, and since microplastics are a big topic in the media, one of my goals is to present how we sample these microscopic particles. Many other members of the department could say that they swam along a transect (a set distance, usually marked by a line in the field), or counted the number of individuals in a specific area, and the audience would have a clear understanding of how they conducted their study. I get the fun opportunity to really show everyone how we collect our and process our samples, as there are very few students that have done sediment sampling and even fewer that have used some of the analysis machines that I've talked about previously (like Raman).

While I still have two weeks to prepare, I am working almost daily on making small changes to this talk to make it more comprehensive, less wordy, and definitely shorter, as I am currently worried about the length of my presentation. Today's picture is a quick snapshot of me explaining why I collected more than 400 sediment samples for this work, while also showing what it looks like to collect those samples. 

Stay tuned for more updates!

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