Upon reflecting on this experience, I have come to some conclusions about my time here that I am confident will stay with me throughout the rest of my academic career and beyond. For one, research is amazing. Before this, I had not had the opportunity to carry out my own self-directed research project, but I loved every moment of it despite encountering various setbacks and frustrations throughout the process. This was greatly validating for me. I have never considered any other career path besides becoming a marine biologist, so it was incredibly encouraging to know that I actually enjoy doing research. In addition, I have learned so much about what research entails as well as marine biology in general. This knowledge will undoubtedly prove invaluable as I move forward as a biology student and researcher. Finally, I have made connections that I suspect will last long beyond the end of this program. The first of these connections is to my mentor, Dr. Kelly Sutherland. Kelly was a great mentor; the perfect balance of allowing for self-direction and providing guidance when necessary. I think that Kelly is as excited about my project as I am and we have decided to move forward with writing a manuscript for publication, which is indescribably exciting! I have also made connections with some of the other faculty members here at OIMB. These faculty members, such as Dr. Richard Emlet and Dr. Maya Watts, challenged me and pushed me to do the best research project that I could possibly do and for that I am especially thankful. These connections to researchers in the marine biology field will prove to be useful in the future as I move into my professional career. Outside of research related connections, I have also developed friendships with the other REU interns that I hope will continue. All the people in my cohort are excellent people, scientists, and friends.
I spent this last week putting together a list of things that I needed to get done in preparation for writing a manuscript. Most of this involved contextualizing my results in the existing literature to provide a more complete picture of what my results mean. To accomplish this goal, I spent some time re-reading papers that I had found earlier in the summer and thinking about how my results further or counter the arguments made in those papers. I also did more research based on some open questions that were left at the end of my project. In addition to contextualization, I worked on creating some supplemental plots of how the ctenes change in terms of size and Reynolds number based on feathering. I’m also working on converting the mean density of my organisms to an approximate sinking speed using Stokes law. While I see the benefit in adding these supplements to my project, I still have some troubleshooting to do before I can go about completing them. There is still a fair amount of work to be done on my project, but I think it will be manageable and I will still be working on it throughout the coming months. I hope to have a first draft of my manuscript done by the time I return to school in September and hopefully a publication isn’t long off.
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AuthorMy name is Wyatt Heimbichner Goebel and I am a marine biology major at Western Washington University. I love biology, specifically marine mammal ecology and biomechanics. I’m always up for conversations about music, poetry, and weird biology facts. Archives
August 2018
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