Hrithik Datta

It was hard but I got through it.

posted August 07, 2015

It was hard but I got through it. My partner and I had to complete the last few parts of our project. Polishing. It can apply to all parts of the poster. After putting everything together, we needed to polish it all. Sometimes, it is easy to write your first idea. The first draft of the abstract did not take too long. However, there were so many edits on the abstract that the amount of time we spent editing the abstract was almost five to six times than the time we used to write the first draft. After making everything look nice and reading over the poster three or four times, we printed. However, some of our graphs were so complex that the printer froze when printing. Then we had to change the format of each of the graphs so that it could print. After a few tries it did. Presentation day arrived and I had not rehearsed. I think I did well. I do not think the system in which everyone viewed each others posters was edficient. I was not able to see all the posters. That was a bummer. A more efficient system would have been to have each presenter take a break of about 10 minutes and go to everyone's station and look at the projects. When they came back another pair would go and no groups would be needed. I still had lots of fun and the last day was great. The worst part of the day was leaving. I made such good friends during the summer and I had to leave them. It is okay though.

~All is well that ends well.

Lots of Fun

posted July 15, 2015

The last few weeks have been way more relaxing than the first three. There is no more data collection. Instead most people are working on their projects. My partner and I decided our topic very quickly. Knowing our objective, I used R to get the results. All I have to do now is write an analysis on the results and put all of that into one big poster.

Without data collection, everyday has been much easier and less tense. Working on the project has been a bit difficult, because the results I received were contradicting my hypothesis. However, I kept thinking and I realized what went wrong.

The field trip to Hopkins marine station was quite interesting. Instead of looking at small prokaryotes, I was looking at large multicellular marine life. I am using marine animals for the data in our project. So far, I really like doing this internship.

Hard Work Pays Off

posted July 02, 2015

I never thought geology would be so much fun. Even though data collection can be tedious from time to time, it can be fun. I worked with my partner to get as much data as possible. Using R is also a lot of fun. I picked up R very quickly. Reading papers are also fun and challenging. It also allows me to get an insight into what is going on today in science.

The field trip to the beach was a lot of fun. I got to take a look at a lot of fossils. They are pretty young though. It was only five million years old. I'm not so sure if you consider that old or not. We visited two beaches, which were full of great fossils. This internship has been a lot of fun and I hope it will continue that way.