Life update
For those of you who have been wondering where the heck I've been and what I've been doing for the past year and a half, here's the rundown.
I graduated in April with a bachelor of science in environmental science and a bachelor of arts in classical civilization. I've been working since last September as a research assistant for one of my old professors using GIS and remote sensing software (think Google Earth). We're working on a project in which we're studying land uses in the Great Plains. The hypothesis behind the project is that there is much more natural land still left in the plains than people commonly believe. So what I do is I look at aerial photographs of 400 sample areas and make digital maps of the different land uses that I see (forests, farms, grassland, etc). That will allow the researchers to calculate the total areas of these different types of land use and compare farmed vs. non-farmed land.
In January, I'm going to start an internship at the Michigan Tech Research Institute. I'll be doing the same general stuff as I do in my job now, but I'll get a lot more variation in the projects I work on. I'm not sure exactly what they all entail, but I know I'll be helping out on a project for NASA, which sounds really prestigious and cool. :)
I'm taking this year off just to work and save money, and next fall I'll be starting grad school at U-M studying conservation biology.
Other than work, I'm just hanging out with friends when I can. Trying to stay in the college scene even though I'm not taking classes right now. It helps that my sister is still an undergrad, so I can go crash at her place when I don't feel like driving home at night. :)
Hope everyone has been doing well!
I graduated in April with a bachelor of science in environmental science and a bachelor of arts in classical civilization. I've been working since last September as a research assistant for one of my old professors using GIS and remote sensing software (think Google Earth). We're working on a project in which we're studying land uses in the Great Plains. The hypothesis behind the project is that there is much more natural land still left in the plains than people commonly believe. So what I do is I look at aerial photographs of 400 sample areas and make digital maps of the different land uses that I see (forests, farms, grassland, etc). That will allow the researchers to calculate the total areas of these different types of land use and compare farmed vs. non-farmed land.
In January, I'm going to start an internship at the Michigan Tech Research Institute. I'll be doing the same general stuff as I do in my job now, but I'll get a lot more variation in the projects I work on. I'm not sure exactly what they all entail, but I know I'll be helping out on a project for NASA, which sounds really prestigious and cool. :)
I'm taking this year off just to work and save money, and next fall I'll be starting grad school at U-M studying conservation biology.
Other than work, I'm just hanging out with friends when I can. Trying to stay in the college scene even though I'm not taking classes right now. It helps that my sister is still an undergrad, so I can go crash at her place when I don't feel like driving home at night. :)
Hope everyone has been doing well!