This past week felt like the end of school before summer break: the last week of true work, tying up loose ends, and taking finals. For us, the final test was a symposium consisting of short five-minute presentations and a poster session. I wrangled together as much as of the field data from this summer as I could and commanded it to inform me of the goings-on’s of the underwater world we had been working in this summer in Willapa Bay, Washington. Essentially what it told me was that my hypothesis may be supported, but we need much more data samples before any real conclusions can be made. A bit of a sassy response, but I’ll take it. To quantify just how badly we needed more samples, one of the statistical tests we ran came out with a power value of 0.09 (on a scale of 0-1, 1 being the goal). As a pretty universal rule of science, the more samples the better. However, I was not aiming to end this summer with publication-ready results. For the size of this project, that goal takes years (i.e. graduate school).

My poster: Habitat use of oyster aquaculture by fish and crab

In addition to the importance of replicates, I also have some take-away tips on presentations. The first is to practice in front of peers. It may seem obvious, but the value of my practice presentations in front of my friends and mentor last week were not fully evident to me until after the symposium was over. Not only was I able to shake out some nerves and gain confidence in my presentation, I was able to receive feedback on my speaking skills and the content itself of the presentation. My second tip is: if you are making a poster, find a way to project it on a TV or projector screen. This will allow you to better notice little errors such as spacing and typos that are much less noticeable on a small computer screen.

As I said in the beginning of this blog post, this past week felt like the last week of school before finals. Now, with one week left in the internship and the symposium in the books, it feels like the true last week of school that we used to have in grade school. The week in which tests are done and the weight they held over us has been lifted, and summer break is about to start. Although of course we are all about to go back to school or move on to other jobs, I will definitely be making the most out of my last week here at Hatfield in both the workplace and with the friends I’ve made here.