Last Seen Blogs
Photo
Amazing drawings by Sarita. Pictured on the right is the outside of the thank you card for Emily, and on the left is one for Henry. She drew the Oceans group on our research cruise, including all of the interns plus Henry and Raphe in the middle, all of the instruments, the Flat Earth Society flag, and even phytoplankton and kelp!
0 notes
Text
8/11/17
Yesterday was our very last day, so we went skydiving! I went with some of my closest SARP friends (Lexi, Tyler, Dallas, and Sean) and we had an absolute blast. We jumped from 13,000 feet altitude, and it was next to the ocean. Post research stress was a perfect time, because we were all just ready to jump out of a plane. After skydiving, we went to a sushi restaurant (where I got sesame chicken because I’m not a fan of sushi), then met up with Henry at Trestles beach. He brought 4 surfboards, which was great because we all got to surf together, and it was Sean and Dallas’s first time. That was my third time surfing and I finally stood up! It was a great last day full of activity, and then we headed home to say our goodbyes to everyone. It was hard to say goodbye, and the most difficult were the Oceans group (especially Lexi, Tyler, and Henry) and a few from WAS. I’d love to think that I could see some of them again someday. The nice thing is that Lexi lives in Pennsylvania and we can definitely hang out this year, and we’re making plans to go see Tyler at his school in Flagstaff, Arizona, and visit the Grand Canyon! Also, Phillip and Avery are in Maryland, so hopefully I can hang out with them at some point. Regardless, it was still hard to see them all go. My flight was at 11:30am west coast time, and I didn’t get home until around 2am east coast time. It was an exhausting day, and I’m pretty sad to have left. But I’m excited to get to see some hometown friends and family and everyone back at school.
0 notes
Photo
After all presentations were over, there was pizza and a final party at the WAS house. Every SARPian, professor, and mentor was there so it was really nice to get to get to hang out and relieve built up stress. Also, while WAS was practicing in the meeting room at UCI, Henry took us back to the houses for lunch. He stopped quickly at their house and said he had been wanting to rearrange the letters of “SISTER” to “RESIST” all summer, which I thought was hilarious
0 notes
Photo
Great pic that captures my awkwardness and relief as I finally got to my questions slide
0 notes
Text
8/9/17
After an insane few weeks of crunch time, I am finally done with my final SARP presentation. TIC-TAC and Oceans presented yesterday, and then today is Land and WAS. I felt better about my presentation than any I’ve done before, but I still don’t feel very confident about it. Everyone told me I did really well and didn’t look nervous or anything, but I’ll see after we get back the video recordings. Since our group and TIC-TAC were officially done yesterday, we threw a party at the Oceans house that was really fun. Emily even made a guest appearance with her favorite cocktail for all of us. Later in the night, 10 of us went to a bar in Newport and ended up out on the beach where we had a great time playing some of Henry’s crazy childhood games. I was so thankful to be able to celebrate with the two groups; we all did incredible work this summer.
0 notes
Text
8/7/17
On Friday, Emily Schaller picked up Natasha and me for breakfast at her hotel, then we everyone met in the usual room for our last all group meeting where the remaining people presented background for their projects. After the meeting we went home and worked for the rest of the night.
Yesterday we gave rough practice presentations for Henry so he could give us some really helpful advice regarding organization and the best way to portray our specific projects. In the evening, Lexi, Tyler, Shaina, Henry, and I went to dinner at Shwack Burger (the most California thing I’ve ever seen was that they sold a $600.00 burger + surfboard combo), then to Laguna Beach for the sunset. Everyone is feeling the pressure of impending final presentations as well as the desire to make the most of our time left.
Raphe came to Irvine today, so our group went the usual meeting room at UCI to give more formal practice presentations. I’m not good at public speaking, so I’m feeling pretty nervous and am just trying to look over it as much as I can!
0 notes
Video
0 notes
Photo
Dr. Don Blake made us really good liquid nitrogen ice cream, and also brought the Nobel Prize awarded to his late mentor, Dr. Rowland, for us to see!
0 notes
Video
Our housing complex at UCI was called Arroyo Vista, and this is our backyard where Lexi, Tyler, and I typically worked
0 notes
Text
8/3/17
Yesterday we worked all day trying to finalize our results and put together a presentation. I’m currently trying to figure out the best way to make graphs and heat maps in MatLab for my project; they will map chlorophyll-a concentration, and the result of an algorithm I used to determine the fractional contribution of each phytoplankton size class (microplankton, nanoplankton, and picoplankton) to the total chlorophyll following Cyclone Opal near Hawaii. Around 6, we decided to take a break and join the Land Group mentor David and few students for hiking at Quail Hill. It was less of a hike and more of a pretty walk through fields at sunset, but we had a nice time. Afterwards, Lexi, Tyler, Dallas, and I went out for pizza, then went to the TIC-TAC house to play Secret Hitler. Secret Hitler is a group (10ish people) game in which everyone is secretly assigned to one of 2 teams and you need to try to determine who is on your team and how you guys can win. Everyone gets really into it and it’s a lot of fun!
Today everyone worked on finishing our projects for most of the day again, and the final group dinner was in the evening. After our dramatic Flat Earth Society dinner, WAS felt they needed to go hard too. We were asked to wear black and arrive promptly for induction into Alpha Chi Omega (the sorority house they live in). We made fun of them for copying us with the hand delivered invitations and induction idea, but their dinner was really fun. We were given pink blindfolds at the door and told to hold hands as they directed us single file around the dark living room. They dramatically read an initiation ceremony and had us take an oath, then demanded blood sacrifice from the Oceans Group in the middle of the room where they just gave us back the rubber fish they stole. When we were told to take off our blindfolds, they showed a hilarious satirical sorority promotional video with all of them throughout the internship. Their dinner consisted of really good homemade grilled cheese sandwiches (the tomato pesto and spinach feta ones were amazing) and a salad, then Dr. Blake made liquid nitrogen ice cream for everyone. After dinner, everyone went back home to continue working for the rest of the night.
0 notes