Week 12

I have been working very hard to complete all of my work without falling too far behind while keeping up with all of the activities that I love so much. My family has been very patient with me. We are making it work. I will be graduating in the spring!!! Let me just enjoy that for a few seconds... That means that I'll be transferring to ASU next fall. ASU is way more expensive than PC. There were a handful of scholarships due the week after midterms this semester. I was notified on the 12th that I GOT ONE! I'm so excited and honored to have been awarded the All Arizona scholarship. I will be representing PC as the All USA nominee. The scholarship will help me by paying for 64 credits at ASU. I don't think that it's a stretch to say that it is going to be life changing. Shout out to STEAM Club and Phi Theta Kappa. I'm pretty sure that I just raved about how awesome and meaningful your events were on my application. I'm so grateful to have the support and opportunity that I have at PC. My time here has been precious to me in a way that I hadn't anticipated.
For research this week, I went on a hike at Oak Creek Canyon. It was beautiful. I was so worried about everything that I needed to get done that I almost didn't go. I'm so glad that I did.

Week 11

STEAM Day was this week! I've been working with the STEAM Committee for months leading up to this event, so I was extremely excited. It came together great. It's one of my favorite events that we've ever had. Nearly every table  that I visited had information on available internships. The Department of Environmental Quality was there! I'd love to intern with them. The STEAM Club has been working on the music bench since nearly the beginning of the semester in preparation for the event. It came out great! We still have some finishing things. We couldn't have done it without James Peterson from the Chemistry Department.

I also did some SEM on 28 day plastics that I first treated with a specific detergent. From just these pictures it does appear to remove the biofilm more effectively than alcohol alone. There is still small amounts of biofilm on the plastics. It's become problematic for our FTIR because out spectra includes the biological material, and we are only interested in the plastic. We can't use detergent on an FTIR sample though. It works for SEM.

Week 10

The symposium was this week! Oh my goodness, I swear I wore no more than a 1 inch shoe, and I ended up with 6 blisters on my feet. I haven't had issues with the shoes before, but I haven't tried to walk a half mile in them either. The campus is so big. I always joke with people that after being at ASU Tempe I understand how skateboarding can be a valuable life skill. I don't know how anyone wears anything but tennis shoes there. I wanted to wear something a little more professional, but I have seen the error of my ways. I only had to walk one way on top of that. I managed to find a ride back to the parking garage.
The symposium itself was good. There were interesting projects and helpful talks related to careers. I did Much better this time around on the lightning talk. It was good overall. I wish that I had more time to look through some of the other posters. I only made it through less than half.