Well, it's been three months since I got off the Healy from our spring research cruise. Sometimes it feels like longer than that!!
What have I been doing since the Healy? First of all, I've been enjoying being back on dry land and spending time with family and friends. I've also been hard at work analyzing the data that we collected during this spring trip, as well as last years spring trip! This project is part of my master's degree at Western Washington University, and I'm getting very close (I hope!) to being finished with my degree. I spent about a month after I got back from our trip in the lab, analyzing samples and collecting a bit more data for my thesis. The next two months have FLOWN by, and I've spent them reading scientific papers, organizing my data and doing some statistical analyses. Definitely not the most exciting part of scientific research, but it must be done!
My goal for the next two months is to furiously write and analyze more data, and hopefully present my thesis to anyone who is interested in attending my thesis presentation! Then, I meet with my committee members and they decide whether or not I've met their expectations. If they think I did a good job, then they will approve my thesis and I can graduate in December!! (And then it's on to a job in the real world...eek!!) I have a lot of hard work ahead of me, but I'm determined to get it all done and meet my deadline.
Thanks for reading my journals while I was on the Healy and asking a bunch of great questions. I've really enjoyed being a part of PolarTrec and working on the Healy. I'm definitely going to miss being a part of the research crew!!