My First Graduate Experience

I had the incredible privilege this July to visit Juneau, Alaska, which is where I will be doing my graduate research next summer. Being invited to go out to Alaska by my advisor, Dr. Lybrand, was a dream come true. While she and I had previously discussed my different research opportunities through her lab, I never thought that I would be able to lay my eyes on the study area before the summer of 2020. I learned so much in the few days that I spent in Juneau, that it has left me hungry for more knowledge and research experience which I know will come with the start of fall quarter in September.

The four days that I was in Alaska consisted of two days of field research, where we scouted for areas to dig new soil pits, and two days of lab. During the field work days, we spent a majority of the time hiking off trail in the Juneau wilderness, up steep mountain side slopes, and through thickets of devil's club plants. We were trying to dig representative soil pits for the different rock outcrops in the region from which the soil had formed (we were mostly within the taku outcrop). In the lab I worked with an undergraduate student named Ben, who was there doing summer research from University of Wisconsin. We did a lot of bulk soil processing and categorizing. This consisted of taking air dried samples of soil, crushing up part of the sample, and then dividing it into separate bags for various analysis processes.

To finish this post I have some pictures that I took while I was in Juneau, mostly from the field work that we did.

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Thank you for following along with me, more posts on research as well as my GTA blog page will come up as I start the fall quarter!