Nine months out of the college bubble (Matt Grobis)

Hi all!

As the one-year anniversary of me graduating approaches, I've had some time to reflect on my college experience and the ways it has - and hasn't - prepared me for graduate-level research.

1. Grades matter, but experiences matter more
Study for your classes. Good grades should obviously be a priority. But view your classes as the skeleton of your college experience; they are a base that you need to care for, but you need to add some flesh to it, too. From an academic perspective, your undergrad classes rarely come up in conversations in grad school... it's all about the work you did in the lab or field. Much more important to graduate committees (and your future self) are your experiences with research: what techniques did you learn, how was the experience different than what you expected, how did you overcome problems you encountered, how did it affect your perspective on science? There's a difference between loving X and loving doing X, and unfortunately a lot of people figure this out once they've already committed a few years to doing X, be it graduate school research, a particular field, etc. Get your hands dirty and figure that out now! If you realize it's not for you, you can redirect your energy to finding something that does make you happy. 

2. Try things out
Say "yes" to more opportunities you receive. Get out of your comfort zone. Second semester senior year, I had the opportunity to volunteer for bird banding - taking mist-netted birds (birds that were caught by flying into a thin, big net strung between two poles or trees) and giving them color rings so they can be identified later. The grad student who sent the e-mail needed the extra help, and in exchange we would learn how to band and handle birds. This was when I knew I'd be working with birds in Germany for the following year, so I said yes (even though the work started around 5am). Even the little bit I learned about how to properly hold birds, distinguish male vs. female characteristics, and identify potential signs of illness came in handy when i started doing research with birds. I also took a graduate-level statistical modeling class my final semester and, while I definitely didn't master all of the complex R coding we did, being exposed to that stuff really changed my perspective on modeling in science.  

And from a personal standpoint, I abide by the life philosophy that you should try everything at least once (except probably heroin and that sort of stuff). Attend a meeting for a random club, go to a play or performance you might not have given a chance to otherwise, call up a friend you haven't talked to in a while. The worst that can happen is exactly what would happen if you don't do it: nothing. And the best that can happen is that you discover something you really like, meet a new friend, or have a memorable time.

3. Accept that it's ok to fail
While #1 and #2 are really important from a career perspective, I would say that this is the most important from a personal standpoint. When I began my Fulbright year at the Max Planck Institute for Ornithology, I was anxious to make the most of it. I was on the waitlist for ten weeks, so I felt incredibly lucky to have this opportunity at all. I became involved in three separate research projects: formulating and carrying out an independent project on social foraging in wild great tits, helping a graduate student in a project on sleep and predation risk in wild great tits, and recording and analyzing mate-pair vocalizations in captive ravens. I became essentially buried in work, and the grad school applications, bio GRE, NSF-GRFP funding application, and furniture shopping for a new apartment added layer after layer of stress to my life. I made two crucial mistakes: underestimating how much time fieldwork takes to prepare for and carry out, and overestimating how much I can get done in one day. November was pretty miserable, and it was made so much harder because I wasn't used to things not going well.

Research is hard in that you have to make thousands of little decisions every day, many of them on things you're trying for the first time. For example, I needed to replace the normal feeders in the plots with new feeders at the start of the foraging experiment. Which plots to choose? Well, I suppose I should film the current feeders to see which areas have lots of birds at them. What about cameras that are in pretty open areas, where anyone walking by could see and maybe steal them? Ok, I'll park the car a little down the path to not disturb the birds and I'll wait to see if anyone walks the path. Then, how do I decide between a plot that has lots of birds that aren't great tits vs. one that has mainly great tits but not as many? Well, think about what's most important in the experiment and go from there. Ok, now I need to clean and paint the poles the feeders go on. I've never painted anything in my life and I don't know where to get alcohol or paint. Ok, e-mail around, find the name of a store to go to. Drive there, ask around using a German dictionary to help, buy the stuff. No idea if this works well or not, or what size paint container to buy. Let's try something that looks promising. Ok, paint the poles using my best guess on how to do it. Then: the feeders need to be filled and constructed, then transported to the plots, then carried to the places, then secured. Will any birds visit? Well, let's put a handful of sunflower seeds on top and hang some fat balls around the feeder to attract birds. Ok, the feeders sometimes don't dispense food because the cold makes the peanut powder clump together. Well, let's visit the feeders every day to un-clump the powder for that day. So, as you can tell, there are so many decisions that you can't even anticipate before you begin. It's easy to focus on all the little mistakes you make (which can add up to big mistakes) and think you're not fit for academia. But really, you need to accept that mistakes happen and remember all the good decisions you make as well.

As for how things have turned out for me, I've found a much better work balance and have accepted my limits (for now). This doesn't mean I've given up or am any less ambitious... I would say this means I'm smarter about my goals. But it took failing pretty hard, stepping on a lot of people's toes and overworking myself and losing sleep, to learn this. So, don't be afraid to try something and fail! Failure is a much better teacher than success, I believe. 

-Matt

p.s. this inforgraphic about how high schools frequently underprepare students for college work is relevant and quite interesting. Thanks to Alex Campbell for sending it to me! http://www.collegeathome.com/blog/2013/01/17/unprepared-for-college/

How to Get Into Grad School for Bio (Matt Grobis)

Hello all,

At this point in the year, with grad applications closing and the waiting process beginning (or continuing for some of us), this post might not seem all that relevant to the seniors who have hopefully figured out how to apply for graduate schools. This post may seem early for juniors who are interested in grad school but figure they have time before they apply. Maybe the occasional freshman or sophomore who stumbles across this blog will think that grad school is so far in the distance it's not even worth thinking about right now. However, the following advice I'll share is to help you figure out what about biology interests you, a good thing to know for grad school or not, but will also help you get in if you want to go there. Also, some of these points have applications for grant writing and collaborations for those of us who have already sent our applications in and are nervously checking admissions websites too many times a day (or is that just me?).

1. Skim articles

There's a lot of research going on out there. The awesome thing about biology is how diverse it is: on one end of the size spectrum, we have DNA sequences and neurotransmitters; on the other, we have global ecological processes and evolutionary time scales. A surprisingly small number of people research cute mammals; fascinating biological questions can frequently be more easily answered by looking at fish, invertebrates, plants, fungi, microbes, and/or viruses. Even with the organism and field of interest set, the amount of radically different questions you can ask is astonishing.

If you're a freshman or sophomore, most of the literature (the body of scientific articles on the web and in textbooks) might seem pretty dense. Pick up Scientific American or browse online journals (e.g. the Journal of Young Investigators, www.jyi.org). What interests you? Are you gung ho about curing diseases? Are mangrove trees the coolest and weirdest thing? Are all the most interesting animals the ones that have been dead for millions of years? Figure out what your general interests are and read as much as you can.

2. E-mail a professor at your university to help with their research

Browse faculty web pages to see what kind of research is going on at your school. If you find something that seems pretty cool, send them an e-mail. Here's the format I always use when sending "hello" e-mails:

Dear Dr. ______,

My name is _____. I am a (your year in school) in (your major) and am very interested in (specific area within the general area the professor researches). I would like to help with (specific project the lab is working on) and am able to dedicate ___ hours a week to the project. Would you be free to meet with me sometime this week?

Best,

(Your name)

Details are crucial. Professors get lots of e-mails from students and a lot of them say, "I'd like to help out in the lab." This tells the professor nothing about your interests and makes them have to take more time out of their day to dig and find out what you're interested in before helping you get into a project. Make it easy for them! My advisor, Dr. Alison Bell, studies three-spine stickleback personality. Saying "I'm interested in animal personality" in an e-mail to her is like going up to someone at a party and saying, "I like rock music." In both cases, the answer is technically okay but... you could do so much better! Be specific. Most professors' websites list the projects they're working on, so find one that sounds cool and mention it in the e-mail. You might be redirected to a graduate student, which is fine. The point is to start helping out with actual research.

You'd be amazed at how things change when you actually start doing research. Dr. Cheeseman, the former head of IB Honors, once said that finding the research you like the most is all about finding the research you dislike the least. :-) Everyone loves the big results that get published and advance our understanding of science. To find that big result, though, many hours were spent hunched over a microscope late at night in a windowless room, monotonously counting the number of ants in Petri dishes in scorching weather, and/or fiddling with statistical programs and Excel. In every case, the amount of failure before that result probably led to some very frustrating days. If you don't like research, I don't blame you! And yet, in the middle of all that, you sometimes get a result that, if you're lucky, no one in the world but you knows yet. When you publish that result and people around the world read about it, they have you to thank for discovering it. That's prestige! Of course, don't get a big head if you happen to find a cool result... all we're doing is discovering patterns that already exist in nature. Yet, you get to live with the fact that you contributed to one of humanity's biggest drives: our desire to understand how the world around us works.

3. Do consistent work

Back to reality. If you've made it this far, you're probably helping a graduate student with his or her project. Sure, this part of research might not be that exciting (but remember that last paragraph!). Stick with it, though. Look at yourself from the professor's perspective. Your professor wants you to do well. They're where they are at in life right now because one of their professor's kindness however many years ago. However, there are lots of students who want to be famous researchers one day. 1-10 students e-mail your professor every month asking to do research with them (minor side note: it took me three tries over the course of two years before I got to work in the Bell lab!). Your professor wants students to do well (and of course help with the lab), but a lot of students will drop out once they realize the research doesn't interest them, they become too busy, etc. If you stick around, you're showing the professor that you're investing in the lab for, right now, minimal return. If you're with the lab for longer than a semester, you'll start to get sweeter deals thrown your way. This means authoring a poster at a research conference, being included on a paper, or eventually getting a project of your own. Keep it up! Even if you don't get published by the time you graduate, your professor won't forget how much you've invested into the lab. For someone who's writing you a letter of recommendation, that's pretty important!

4. Read!

Once you start doing research, ask your graduate student or professor for articles that pertain to what you're doing. This will put your work in context and save you a lot of time in looking for/through articles. Talk to a grad student or post-doc (preferably not your professor... they're busy people!) if you don't understand something in an article.

Outside of lab, set aside a little time every week to read an article on your own. It can seem intimidating to think how you can contribute to science when everyone seems so smart. Well, the best thing to do is just read as much as you can. Push through it, even if you don't understand everything. When I started reading scientific articles, it would take over an hour to chew through a few pages. The authors always referenced so much that I'd never heard of, or had perhaps heard once in a class but wasn't sure I knew all that well. I kept it up, though, and over time the concepts had popped up frequently enough that I'd learned a good number of them. When I first started reading behavioral literature, for example, I had a hard time remembering what the word "latency" (similar to "delay," usually before the onset of a behavior) meant. Every few behavioral articles I read, though, the authors mentioned latency to shoal, or latency to approach a novel stimulus, or latency to eat. Slowly but surely, I felt like I learned another language.

You'll find some articles a lot easier to read than others. The articles that come easiest to you probably cover topics you'd be interested doing research in! Check out what else the authors have written. If you come across a cool section in the article, look up the articles the authors cite and read those too. Over time, you'll get ideas for projects you think would be pretty cool. Look for gaps in the literature you could potentially fill with some of your own research. These gaps are usually manifested with the phrases, "...is not well-documented," "... poorly understood," or "... yet to be shown." Future Directions sections of articles are goldmines for potential research.

5. Do your own project

Once you've found something that looks pretty cool, run it by your graduate student. There might be a way for him or her to help you with your own project, or for you to use the research you've already helped with. Once he/she gives you the green light, bring it up to your professor. If you've shown that you're committed to the lab, the professor should be willing to set aside some resources for you. Be thankful! Hammer out a protocol (reading articles is also good for getting ideas on this), check it with a few people, and then start! Even if you don't get significant results, the experience of doing your own project will prove invaluable for later. Again... if you find that you liked working for someone else but you're getting lost or don't like doing independent work... that's completely fine. Industry research is less independent than academia (i.e. someone's probably telling you what to do) but usually pays a lot better :-)

6. Start looking for researchers to work with

By now, you're probably a junior or senior and have a decent idea if you're interested in graduate school. Before you run off to Harvard's faculty page to find a potential advisor, remember that in graduate school you'll be spending most of your day in your lab space working with your professor and the other students in the lab. Getting into an Ivy League school will look great for your CV, sure, but if you're working with someone whose work doesn't really interest you, or you just don't get along with anybody around you, you're in for a miserable 5-7 years (if you don't change your mind and drop before then). Consider your potential advisor as a potential parent. Is this person so busy that he or she can't devote time to you? Is the lab so big you're lucky if you ever see your advisor? It's easy to brush those things aside for the thought of working in a prestigious university or a big-name researcher's lab, but when you're in year 3 of your studies and desperately running experiments and preparing for upcoming preliminary examinations, you don't want to be left on your own.

7. Introduce yourself via e-mail

This is a crucial step a lot of applicants to graduate school skip. Place yourself in the head of a professor at a lab who gets an e-mail from graduate admissions about Applicant A who has applied to work in your lab. You've never heard of Applicant A. Maybe he's qualified enough to get into the university. But what if he's a total psycho? What if you let him into the lab and he just creates problems with everyone around him and hinders, instead of helps, the lab's research? Applying to someone's lab without contacting them first is like asking someone who doesn't know you on a date through one of their friends. Sure, it could work out... but probably not. Here's a template I adhered to when sending out my e-mails:

Dear Dr. _____,

My name is _____. I am a (your year) at (your university) studying (your major. Throw in 'honors' here if you've got it). I work with (head of your lab), researching (what you've been doing). I am very interested in (specific project the professor you're e-mailing is working on), specifically (specific details. Referencing papers the professor has published will look awesome here and shows that you're serious about this).

I was curious if you are taking on graduate students for the following year. I am currently applying for the NSF-GRFP and have included my CV and transcript for your convenience.

Best,

(your name)

I'll explain the bit about the NSF-GRFP in a bit. Anyway, be specific. You want them to be able to perfectly visualize you working in the lab and how awesome that would be. Some professors won't respond to your e-mail... that's fine, just move on. Some will say right away that they don't have openings for grad students. Oh well. Some, though, will e-mail you back fairly soon and will want to hear more about your ideas for a project. You have your foot in the door! Keep pushing. Read more articles, and feel out what the professor thinks is reasonable. One professor I e-mailed wanted me to have essentially an entire proposal by our next e-mail. Another took the approach of "so you're interested in this general topic. Here are some ideas about potential projects based on what resources the lab has. What do you think?" and had a bigger hand in helping me get to our final agreement. If you're not camera shy, I'd recommend requesting a Skype interview. Don't dress up, but look presentable. Come with plenty of questions about the lab (how big is it? Can the professor meet with you one hour per week? What resources does the lab have? Does the lab collaborate with anyone else at the university?). Remember, a good connection with a lab is a two-way street; maybe the lab isn't right for you! Attaching a face to the applicant, and really talking through your ideas in real time, can make the professor much more interested in getting you into his/her lab.

8. Apply to the graduate school and apply for funding

Science majors are pretty lucky when it comes to grad school. Humanities majors have to pay for the knowledge they acquire in these extra years of schooling, while science majors usually don't have to pay. There are a few reasons for this. In grad school, a huge chunk of your time will be spent doing research, and usually that research contributes to the lab and helps your advisor. When advisors write grants, they include asking for money for graduate students. Sometimes an advisor can pay for you to work in their lab, which is great. Other times, the university will let you be a TA for a class and will consider that as your payment.

But, sometimes an advisor would love to have you work with them but he/she doesn't have money. Or, the university doesn't let you be a TA (*cough cough* the Ivies). Or, even better, you don't want to be a TA and instead just want to focus on your research (and get out 1-2 years earlier). In any case, you should apply for external funding. Not only does it give you the possibility of coming into grad school with lots of money and the ability to focus on the research that interests you, it shows potential advisors that you have initiative and want to pull your own weight. The NSF-GRFP and EPA STAR fellowships are two big ones to keep an eye out for.

9. E-mail other potential advisors, apply

Self-explanatory. Don't put all your eggs in one basket! Applying to 4-6 schools is usually a good idea.

10. (Optional) Consider one-year alternative programs

Do you have to go to grad school right away? One great option to consider is the Fulbright, a one-year scholarship to do research or teach English in any non-US country in the world. The Fulbright has to be done with a "local" university, research institution, or NGO. Here's more information on that: http://us.fulbrightonline.org/home.html. The application process is similar to graduate school. You e-mail researchers you're interested in working with (though navigating web pages in another language can get tricky!). Tell them that you're applying for a scholarship that would pay for essentially everything. Over half of your e-mails won't get responses. That's fine, you wouldn't want to work with them anyway. Be nice to those who do respond... they're taking a chance! Be humble, upfront, and enthusiastic. Talk about the research you would like to do, how it fits with what they do, and hopefully you'll come to an agreement on a cool project. This advisor has to write a letter of affiliation for you, essentially saying, "This person and I have talked, it would be great for him/her to come here, he/she just needs the money." Then... apply for the Fulbright. If you're interested, e-mail David Schug (dschug@illinois.edu) or Laura Hastings (lhasting@ad.uiuc.edu) for more information.

11. Wait unbearably long for decisions to come back. Keep reading.

Self-explanatory. In March or April, if the decisions that come back aren't exactly what you wanted, consider looking at job boards like the Texas A&M board (http://wfsc.tamu.edu/jobboard/) to work as a field assistant for someone. You'll get experience, money, a better idea on what you're interested in, and hopefully get to travel somewhere cool. Then... reapply to grad programs! Or try something else.

It's been a very long process and I haven't even gotten into graduate school yet, haha. Maybe all this advice will actually lead you astray and into academic disaster. Hopefully not. If you're earnest, upfront, and motivated, there's little doubt you will do well.

-Matt

Edit: It turns out I got into grad school the day after writing this. Woo hoo! Hopefully that adds a little legitimacy to everything I said.

Tattoos in Academia (Matt Grobis)

Hi all,

A few science majors and I have been wondering about tattoos in academia. Is any tattoo a taboo for the workplace? Are some fields more accepting than others? Should all tattoos be easily concealable? I asked the Bell lab during lab meeting today and got some interesting answers.

Think about the dress code
Do you want to one day work in a laboratory where everyone wears collared shirts? Do people at conferences wear ties all and dress shoes all five days? Do people sometimes wear their field clothing to lab? You can extend this thinking to predict how people will view a visible tattoo. Ecologists generally don't care. One graduate student mentioned an entomology professor at an eastern university who has both arms completely covered with ink. If you want to do medical research, on the other hand, you might want to think twice about a wrist, forearm, neck, etc. tattoo.

Think about the type of research

If the work you do concerns potentially very ill patients, some of whom may be in serious pain, you want to be as strictly professional as possible. This means no visible tattoos. Also, will the tattoo get in the way of the research you want to do? If you are an anthropologist traveling across the world, will a tattoo interfere with communicating and being trusted by the people you research? If you're a biologist wanting to do fieldwork in a conservative country, will that forearm tattoo be worth having your sleeves always rolled down, regardless of the weather?

Think about where you want to do research
Want to work at a private university? Think carefully: private institutions can discriminate applicants based on criteria they set. A Christian university, for example, can preferentially hire a less-qualified Christian applicant than a more-qualified non-Christian one. Public universities, on the other hand, are obligated to weigh all applicants equally. That means a candidate with a skull tattoo on his face will legally have to be considered as equally as a visually-conservative candidate. Getting a face tattoo, though, should bring up some red flags on these other points, though, so don't get too excited about getting 56 stars tattooed on your face.

Think about the tattoo

While the design you get on yourself is (or should be!) primarily for yourself, you might want to think twice if a skull and crossbones, or a bleeding heart, are the right images to be flaunting in a workplace. Some jobs don't care. A job where you're competing with others for grants and need to be taken seriously at conferences and lectures probably will care. In all contexts, a discrete tattoo is probably better than a bold one, and an easily-concealable tattoo is best.

I've taken care to make sure these guidelines pertain to visible tattoos. If the ink you get won't ever see the fluorescent lighting of the office you work in, go ahead and be bold. The pre-graduate route in undergrad is all about investing in the future. Yet, you could get hit by a car next week. Have you done everything you've wanted? Maybe you're worried that you won't like your tattoo when you're older. If you make sure you choose something that holds meaning to you now and will hold meaning to you later, don't forget that an older you is still you. If something means a lot to you and getting a tattoo commemorates that, you should go for it.

To finish off, I want to share some pictures I found after googling "science tattoo ideas." All photos are taken from http://oddstuffmagazine.com/tattoo-ideas-for-science-lovers.html.

-Matt

Preparing for the Next Step (Matt Grobis)

Hi all!

With a fresh new class of IBHers learning how to transfer nematodes, reading their first scientific articles, and beginning to truly stretch the science part of their brains, I've been reflecting a lot on the past three years. It's hard to comprehend how much I've changed from a freshman excited but naive about biology to someone who discusses articles every week with friends (Fridays at noon at the Courtyard Cafe! Come!), presented a poster at a conference, is working on a senior thesis, and is preparing for graduate schools. I changed from an English major to someone whose 2011 has entirely consisted of biology. I'm finally reaching the point that when friends ask me random questions about biology, I can come up with an answer that isn't, "Check Wikipedia."

Entering senior year and looking at what's ahead, I feel... prepared. Completely. I'm nervous and occasionally doubt myself, but when I look at what IB Honors has given me, it's like taking a deep breath and closing your eyes for a moment. It's a building block I can push off from. Thinking of the current IBH students and alumni, I'm so inspired to do something with this world. IBHers have gone to receive Marshall scholarships, go to Harvard grad school, research primate conservation, give talks at conferences, found conservation RSOs, work at NASA, double major with engineering/anthropology/humanities, and so much more. I look up to the younger IBHers who start research as sophomores and are already geniuses. And I look up to the members of my class, who despite finishing the IBH core still find time to see each other several times a week.

Without going into too much detail, I'm currently applying for two fairly prestigious scholarships, the type that involve interviews at U of I and plenty of essay drafts. It's stressful, especially when seeing the accomplishments of past scholars. The last U of I student to receive a Gates scholarship (full ride for Cambridge graduate school) had a 4.0 in bio-engineering and seven publications by the time he graduated. Looking at his application, I turned to one of the academic advisors in the National and International Scholars Office and shook my head. "I have no chance," I said. She scolded me and said, "You're just as qualified as he is; you just don't know it yet." Heavy words, for sure. And now, staring at the scribbled comments on the fourth draft of my essays, wondering if they encourage every applicant even if they know they won't make it, wondering if I can do this, wondering if I should get my hopes up, glancing at the clock and thinking of the work for tomorrow, the immediate work versus the shot for my future....

It's stressful stuff, definitely. But at every step there's bits of encouragement. My potential advisor e-mailed me on Thursday and told me to send him my application before I submit it so he can make it better. After several months of revising my Fulbright application, I'm finally done and can help my friends with theirs. Every time I walk into my behavioral ecology class, I get that familiar rush that learning about animal behavior gives me. This feels right. I want to learn everything I can about it!

Outside of grad school applications, I'm considering non-profit conservation work. I did a work exchange for a few days in Costa Rica last semester, where I spent four hours a day composting, hacking Heliconia leaves with a machete, or digging dirt trails in exchange for a place to sleep at night. If a meal or two was thrown into the mix, I would very gladly spend a year or two volunteering with conservation. College is all about preparation for the future. Reaching the future and being able to draw from that preparation is an amazing feeling.

So, current and potential IB Honors students: hang in there! Keep working hard, push through orgo and engineering physics. When you reach the other side, you'll look at what you've gone through and feel amazing. The world is ahead of us... we just have to run through the darkness to claim it.

-Matt

Greetings from Ireland!

Greetings from Dublin, Ireland! It’s getting near the end of the summer (already!), so I thought it past time to fill you all in on my experiences abroad.

I’ve spent the duration of this summer at the University College Dublin (UCD) through a program known as CoBiD-UREKA. It’s a research-based program which accepts students from around the world for a 10 week, all expense-paid research internships. They tend to pick students who are about to enter their senior year – so current juniors, I’d look to see if they’re offering it again next summer!

This year the program accepted 11 students: 3 from Ireland, 6 scattered around the USA, 1 from Brazil, and 1 from Colombia. While we all arrived at UCD not knowing a single person, we quickly forged friendships and have had an amazing time together! Of course, a lot of our time Mon-Fri is spent working on our research projects. These projects span a wide range of topics, including plant genomics, limnology, paleobotany, vertebrate palaeontology, soil ecology, ecological modelling (that’s mine!), and BioControl. We’ve all gained valuable research experience, whether it was designing your own protocol for studying the setae of earthworms, going electrofishing to survey the fish of a certain region, creating a model of ocean currents, designing primers to study plant DNA, putting nylons (yep, women’s tights!) on plants to act as dust and study the effects, or creating pterosaur wing models and using a wind tunnel to test their aerodynamics.

My own research project has focused on the study of deep-sea chitons and habitat connectivity. We’re especially interested in the dispersal of these chitons, which mainly takes place during their free-floating larval life stage. We’ve been using Argo oceanography data and a program called Matlab to map out the ocean currents of the Central Indo-Pacific near our populations of interest. With this data, we have been able to model larval transport, to determine where larvae from our source populations would disperse to. Through this project we’ve determined how far the larvae are able to travel before metamorphosing into adults, allowing us to better understand the dynamics of chiton metapopulations – something which is heavily understudied as of yet.

Of course, it wasn’t ALL about the research! We’ve had the weekends to ourselves, and we’ve made the most of it. We’ve traveled throughout the country to see many famous and beautiful places, such as the Aran Islands, the Cliffs of Moher, the Blarney Castle, the Giant’s Causeway, and Killarney National Park (amongst many others). And of course, we’ve spent endless amounts of time exploring all that Dublin has to offer. Between the beautiful botanic gardens, the Dublin Zoo, the massive Phoenix Park, the theatre, the nearby markets, the gorgeous shoreline, the nightlife, and of course the friends, it has been a trip to never forget!

Dubliners tend to be friendly people in general, which was a big help in getting around the city at first. Even on our first bus ride, someone happily told us which stop we’d need to get off at, as well as narrated all of the local sites we were passing! Today Dublin is a fairly worldly city, so while it’s not as typically “Irish” as most of the other cities are, it’s still a great place to explore. It also has some killer Indian restaurants! And of course there’s also a great nightlife!

And for anyone who has seen the movies Once or P.S. I Love You (yep sappy romances but of course we all had to watch them after being here!)… yep we’ve been to a lot of those sites! Even more lovely in person than they appear in the movies!

This whole summer has just flown by, just like it has for Josie! I’m leaving a week from today, and it seems way too soon! There’s so much more I could still do and see here, my ten weeks was not enough to encompass it all. It’ll be a bittersweet homecoming, as all trips are. I’ll be glad to see my friends and share my experiences, but it will be hard parting from my new-found friends. Still, thanks to the wonders of the internet, we’ll all still be in close contact for years to come!

And if anyone wants a look at pictures - http://irishescapades2009.shutterfly.com/.

Cheers,
Katie
IBH class of 2010

Rainy 4th of July (Matt Grobis)

Greetings from rainy Vernon Hills, Illinois!

This is the first post in a blog that'll span the rest of this year and hopefully far into the future. My name is Matt Grobis; I'm going to be a sophomore next year ('09-'10) at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. I'm entering the IB Honors program and can't wait to start!

I was an English major but decided I prefer biology early my freshman year. I saw the IB Honors posters in the Natural History Building and was interested so I contacted Dr. Cheeseman, the head of the program. We met a few days later and talked for over an hour about IB Honors and what I could do to prepare for it. Several months later, in February, I interviewed for the program and was accepted!

There's plenty to be excited about IBH. IB is "integrative" biology, which focuses to connect different areas of biology from the molecular to the ecological level, showing the very interconnectedness of nature itself. The IBH core does this in three steps, starting at the smallest aspect, molecules, and proceeding to enormous concepts like evolution. IBH classes have around 15 people, which allows for greater professor-student and even student-student interaction. I like big lectures, but I think smaller classes are better for grappling with ideas instead of just memorizing them. And I can't really comment on this, but according to the website, the IBH professors are pretty good too. Awesome.

IBH is going to be a lot of work but I'm looking forward to being surrounded by students who love biology. In a school of nearly 40,000 people, it's easy to feel lost in the crowd. Finding one's niche, though, really helps to make sense of it all. I'm not sure what I want to do with biology in the future, but being in the midst of biology professors and other passionate students, hopefully I'll get a better idea about how I can translate this excitement I have for the subject into something that can benefit the world.

-Matt Grobis

p.s: Happy 4th of July!!

p.p.s: I'm not trying to be a spokesperson for IB Honors, so if you want to get the full picture on everything the program has to offer, the classes, etc., look at these links:
Classes, specifics on major: http://sib.illinois.edu/honors.htm
FAQ: http://www.life.illinois.edu/ibhonors/FAQ/FAQ.html