I’m excited to go back to work this week, but I will never forget the experiences I have had in this program and all of the very special people I have met on this journey!!!

I’d really like to thank all the graduate students one last time. They really did a lot to help out and I really enjoyed reading all of Paul’s encouraging emailsJ. I hope to keep in contact with everyone I met because in one short month, I learned a lot and I feel that I have formed some great bonds!!

I went to lunch and returned to the geography lab where I began working on creating histograms using the conductivity data. Paul helped me to create the histograms. T returned to the Geology lab for Dr. Becker’s assistance interpreting the data. We decided to normalize the data with the following equation: (maximum conductivity-actual conductivity)/ (maximum conductivity-minimum conductivity). We then created another histogram. We experimented with different boundaries for our bins to see if we could create a normal distribution. We took the log of the normalized conductivity and created another histogram. After creating the histogram, we went back to the data in our maps.

I created another field in the attribute table to show the change in conductivity. Because we decided that we were looking at log normal data, we used a geometric classification to display conductivity change. We looked through a lot of data trying to find where we might find good areas to search for groundwater. I wish there was more time to continue looking into the data.

The work that I did would not have been possible without the help of Dr. Becker and Wes. I learned a lot of different ways to look at and analyze data and I’m very grateful to them for all their help!!!

Overall the program was an amazing experience. We got exposed to lots of technologies and programs (new to me, not to all), got to play with some remarkable toys, got hands on experience with how research works, learned from some wise teachers and many patient and helpful grad students, met some excellent folk and all around had a good time while also learning some skills that would be really hard to get elsewhere. Also we got to hang out in Hawaii so there’s that…

Today my brother and I drove up highway 1 today to have lunch on a beach (nowhere close to as pretty as Kauai), and ended up watching harbor seals playing in an eddy, a dead pelican float out to sea and then back into a lagoon and then back out to sea, and a flock of birds diving – rather ungracefully – into the water to catch fish. I ended checking out the place we went on google maps and found that there were a lot of geocaches in the area where we were: bummer.

The most important part of my day included investigating a warehouse/art space with my brother and finding the place where taco trucks sleep.

So yesterday was my official last day of the program as I hung out with and took Kate and Avery around LA and to the airpot.  I gotta say, this program was great and I’m grateful I met everyone, never thought I’d miss them, but I already do haha.  This was a great program, I learned so much.  I thank the prof’s and the grad assistants for everything from our frustrations to the help I received.  This was a great experience.