summer internship diaries
ive been here for almost 4 days now and i thought it would be nice to keep a running diary to look back on this time in my life. i guess thats the purpose of any diary though, right? first impressions have been great. the campus is beautiful and im lowkey getting gilmore girls vibes. everyone ive met has been really nice and its been awesome to be around people with similar interests and goals as me. the first meeting my cohort had altogether (10 of us), the co-director told us that he doesn't want any kind of imposter syndrome because we were all hand-selected and deserve to be here. that was really reassuring. adjusting to being 2600 miles away from home has been hard in some ways. the time zone change is definitely kicking my ass. i also fell asleep on the phone last night with tanner, which we rarely do. i miss him so much. i also miss my dad. im grateful he has been so open about how proud of me he is for putting myself out there. right now im waiting in the intern office for my mentor to arrive. im not sure what ill be doing today but hopefully well talk a bit more about my project. i have been reading papers because i really want to start strong in case i start to flag towards the end. after all this is 2 months, more like a marathon than a sprint. we still have to narrow things down, but my topics are biochemical and morphological traits in eelgrass over time, as well as biomass/percent cover of macroalgae in the nearby harbor. theres a wastewater treatment plant so the groundwater has been very high in nutrients. ive never done anything with isotopes before so im kind of nervous but excited. its also very heavy data analysis and it seems like all the other interns have taken stats but me so i feel like im behind unfortunately. i know if i put my head down and do the work like i usually do, ill do great. honestly, i think im going to struggle more with the social aspects of the program, but hopefully that changes.
