Victor Jann

It’s the morning after our last day at Stanford Earth, so it’s time to go all out sentimental.

posted August 11, 2017

Since our last blog, we only did a little bit of data collection, and most of our time was spent on our projects. As I mentioned before, Alex, Noah, and I were studying the effects of wind on butterfly wing sizes, and through a lot of code and even more of Noel’s help we came up with pretty convincing findings suggesting that wind is a causal factor in determining butterfly wing sizes. Through endless trial, error, and arguments, we finally formatted the most beautiful poster ever:

Since Alex had to leave the internship early for school (God bless his soul), we presented early, and the questions thrown at us were really thought-provoking. To this day, I’m still working to completely work out my project and to answer those questions. In fact, I’m filling another 360 by 180 matrix, and I’m praying that it works.

On our last day, the environment and geology interns gave their presentations, and we finally got to see what they’ve been doing the whole summer. Before it was our turn to present, we had our lunch break. Knowing it was our last meal together, the other interns really took a Pizza My Heart. It was soda-pressing. We had a lot on our plates, so there wasn’t mushroom left. Lastly, Noah and I presented our findings to everyone who made our amazing summer possible, including the legendary Ken Peters.

Looking back at my summer at Stanford, I’m so glad for the opportunity to attend SEYI. For anyone thinking about this program, I highly recommend applying. I’ve learned so much about what it’s like to be a scientist and gotten lots of practice playing cards.

I’d like to thank Noel for being the nicest and most helpful supervisor possible, Jenny for the graham crackers and almost everything else.

To all the other interns who are reading this, thanks and love you all.

Before I check out, I’d like to leave you with an inspiring maxim for all aspiring scientists: “We can add to the bubble of knowledge on Earth.”

Write Title Later

posted July 25, 2017

Hey guys! If you guys have read the other blogs, I hope you know what week it is, because I certainly don’t. Anyways, I’m writing this at 10 p.m., 2 days early. I am so ready for senior year.

Data Collection: It’s more or less the same as before, tediously measuring the length of a butterflies and recording their names and such. The only reason why I refuse to say how many butterflies we’ve done so far is because it might bore you, not because I’m too lazy to check and definitely not because we’re probably the slowest group (Noah we’re catching up).

Pinnacles! The entire trip was amazing, including the drive there when we played “Contact” to pass the time. On the way there, we stopped at some kind of mountains where we shifted through the sedimentary rocks and found a shocking amount of fossils. I even found what we believe is a fossilized leaf!

When we finally got to the Pinnacles campground, I quickly found that I’m embarrassingly bad at Marco Polo and that I’m gifted in the art of swallowing pool water. Then, we roamed the campsite, and Alex found the beautiful and infamous velvet ant and caught it. Later that night Stephanie found a black widow, and we did what you think we did— we put it in a gatorade bottle with the velvet ant.

Also, when someone announced that the red ants were fire ants, I absolutely did NOT make a fire ant bite me and did NOT regret it when the pain from the bite kept me up at night, 4 hours later. But, I might have done so with a harvester ant.

I would like to utilize this opportunity to thank the person who wrongfully misled me into believing that those little suckers were the less painful “fire ants”.

Although I did not sleep well, I was energized the next morning — after I had some coffee. Noah was still sleeping in the tent when Alex, David, and I decided to collapse the tent on him, and somehow he remained asleep. It was a comical sight to watch him groggily stand up, lifting the tent up with him.

This blog is getting lengthy, so I’ll leave it to my fellow interns to talk about how hot and tiring the hike up the mountain was.

We’ve also started our own research project, and Alex, Noah, and I are trying to determine the correlation and maybe causation between the average wind speed of the area and the wing size of butterflies than live in that area. Using R for programming is frustratingly fun, and in fact I couldn’t help but to work on it a bit at home. As I’m writing this, I’m trying to fill a 360 by 360 matrix with data, and well, it’s been two hour and thirty minutes and the code is still running. If the code doesn’t work because of a parenthesis, you won’t be able to see this blog because I’m going to smash this computer.

David, I’m sorry for laughing at you today for how long your blog was. I’m pretty sure mine is longer. Also, did y’all like my title?

Inside Joke 1: I think I speak for the group when I say that we miss Ryan, who left us for the Guatemalans.

Inside Joke 2: I am somehow still not sick of sandwiches and graham crackers.

Writing this at 11 pm...

posted July 06, 2017

Writing this at 11 pm, one day late. Procrastination is apparently not limited to the school year.

When I came to the family and intern orientations, I had no idea what to expect. Eventually, we fell into the comfortable routine of collecting data, activities, guest speakers, and eating graham crackers.

Data Collection: To this moment, Alex and I have entered 908 lines of data, each of which has multiple columns of information. While collecting this data wasn’t exactly exhilarating, but it felt great when we viewed our data using R, programming for statistical analysis.

Speakers: One of my favorite parts of this program is the diverse and mostly fascinating subjects covered by guest speakers. Professors and grad students talked about their research, its implications, and what it is like in the research field. Others talked about moths that live in poop. We also had a speaker who inadvertently sparked a conversation about climate change. In all seriousness, these presentations were as a whole amazing, and I’ve learned a lot, both in the sciences and what it is like to work in the sciences.

Last Friday, we went to Brighton Beach, where we explored the beach fossils and poked sea creatures that we assumed were not toxic. The amount and density of fossils was absolutely mindblowing. Note to future interns: bring extra socks.

I’m looking forward to camping at Pinnacles. Will update.