It’s been
brought to my attention that nowhere on my blog have I actually explained what
my job is—or, because “differential settling and recruitment between barnacle
species due to intra- and interspecific competition” sounds obscure and
specific, but it’s a broader topic than you might think, which tells you a lot
about marine biologists—nowhere and never have I explained what I actually do
all day. So with that, I give you—task-of-the-day highlights from this week.
Monday:
In
preparation for starting some area analysis using ImageJ, go through all of the
photo files and make sure that 1) they’re all accurately named; 2) there are
clean copies of all of them in a separate folder, that I haven’t scribbled all
over in Paint yet; 3) they’re accurately named in a way that will still make
sense to me a month from now. You’d be amazed how much labeling is involved in
science, seriously. I have labeled slides, beakers, test tubes, photos, foil
tins, plastic bags, live samples, definitely my own hand a few times by mistake, and I’m only stopping this list because it’s
starting to stress me out. I have developed my own opinions on labeling
strategies (use abbreviations for months, not numerical values; dashes are
superior to underscores; avoid grease pencils at all costs, because I am a
messy person). While I was interning at the Marine Science Center this past
summer, I once turned around on the van ride home to see another intern very
intently using a label-maker machine in the backseat. I think I came into
science believing that packing and cleaning and labeling and feeding the
experiment were grunt-work tasks that you grew out of. This is not the case.
Tuesday:
Spent a
while sitting in the Garda Naturalization and Immigration Bureau. Being a
researcher instead of a student means I get a special authorization to work in
the country, rather than a student Visa—so I get to jump through all the fun
hoops that people permanently immigrating here do. I also experienced a minor
heart attack while getting fingerprinted, when the machine let out a really
ominous noise of the “fingerprint of an internationally wanted criminal
detected” variety. Turns out that my fingerprint was just too small for the
machine to read; I have ridiculously small hands.
Tuesday
was also the last date to request an absentee ballot for the upcoming election
in several states! I’ve posted about this on my other social media channels,
but you absolutely can still vote if you’re studying abroad or co-oping
internationally. If you haven’t requested your ballot yet, check your state’s
requirements, because there still may be time to do it. And if you requested it
but it hasn’t arrived, you can use the Federal Write-in Absentee Ballot! The
Overseas Vote Foundation has some really helpful links and explanations to
guide you through the process.
Scoured
the ImageJ software manual and played with the program tools for a few hours,
trying to remember how to do a certain calculation on some photos. I figured
out how to do this calculation a couple of weeks ago, and thought “oh, this was
so much simpler than I thought it would be. I’ll totally remember how to do
it—no need to write it down.”
Whoops.
Wednesday:
It’s the
two-month anniversary of my arrival in Ireland! My body celebrated by bringing
back the virus I’ve been fighting for approximately one month and twenty-one
days. I worked from home doing some tinkering with ImageJ before I slept for
about ten hours.
Thursday:
Were you
expecting excitement and variety? That’s hilarious. Continuing to pound away at
ImageJ.
Friday:
See above,
but this time with more sleepiness. I stayed up last night to watch the live
stream of a lecture on GMOs given by a Nobel Laureate at Northeastern. It was
awesome. It also ended at 1 in the morning my time.
So after
this week, have I fully figured out and feel totally competent with the
software? Absolutely not. I have a new problem: I have to hold down the Shift
key in order to do a certain very important part of the image analysis process,
but every time I hold it down for more than four seconds, a little box pops up
asking whether I want to turn on a keyboard shortcut. And, because I am the
queen technophobe of technophobes, I’ll probably spend a good part of next week
figuring that one out.
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