Tomorrow I will be giving my Internship Presentation Of Learning. Attached is the link to that PowerPoint.
https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1Vm1vQM6IBrjlC29zM-YzxqurwaNO8XbbwNjmlELRAEg/edit?usp=sharing
Tomorrow I will be giving my Internship Presentation Of Learning. Attached is the link to that PowerPoint.
https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1Vm1vQM6IBrjlC29zM-YzxqurwaNO8XbbwNjmlELRAEg/edit?usp=sharing
0 Comments
I have learned much from my internship experience. So far, there are a few things that I can take back to school with me personally, and other ideas that I feel our teachers can apply to our everyday work. During this experience, I have really wanted to please my mentors. This has made me create the best work that I am capable of producing. At school, there are times when I am complacent with the work that I have done. I feel I can change this by bringing back the idea that I am doing this work for others as well as myself. Something that our teachers can use from my experience is that very idea that students want to impress those of higher authority. While our school does a great job of creating personal and meaningful connections between student and teacher, I believe that having that separation of authority, while maintaining mutual respect, creates a great work atmosphere where students are eager to get work done.
Today I had a look at some of the other student's internship websites. I looked at Maurice, David, and Chris's websites. They looked great. What I took away from them is that we all feel like we are treated as adults. Also, in the working world, there is always something to be done and we are managing our time to get it done.
Internship VS SchoolThere are many differences and similarities between internship and school. At internship, I am expected to manage my own time throughout the day which is different than the structure that class periods provides. I enjoy this because it lets me work at my own pace even though I know that I am expected to get things done. I am treated very similarly at internship to how I'm treated at school. I believe this is credit to my school because they treat us with great respect as young adults which is how I feel at internship. It's also interesting to feel the focus of one specific subject at internship, for a long period of time, versus the varieties of subjects that school provides. I believe that this will help me at school and be able to focus on projects with more intensity. Overall, I feel that internship is more similar to school than different, and so far I am enjoying it.
The museum is a project in itself. I talked with my mentor, and she explained to me the nature of my internship. Because I am rotating through each department, I am contributing to each of their on going projects which involve their collections. Last week, I worked on the Botany plant collection. I organized the plants by species and learned how to enter the data into the system. I hope in the coming weeks that I will be able to go back to Botany and collect my own plant in the field and enter it into the system. This week, I am working on the Allison collection. As I've explained before, Professor Allison collected several fossils in the 60's and 70's and put it into a collection. This collection hasn't been touched since then, and I am being given the opportunity to clean it, and repair the fossils that have been broken, so that they can be put in the overall collection permanently. These are the projects I have worked on, real work that will be put back into the museum forever. I am excited to see what I will work on in Entomology and Herpetology as well.
Last week, I worked in a small work space in Botany. They had around half of the work space they usually do due to construction. The collection of plants are categorized by species family as shown below. I used a longer rectangular table as my workspace in a smaller room. There were two cabinets of unsorted and unmounted plants in one corner and a desk for one of the other volunteers in another corner. I could tell they were more cramped than usual and this was verified by the occasional complaint of the work space. Below is a picture of the room just outside of my workspace with a bunch of soon to be mounted plants, and a picture of a mounted plant from the 1880's. In Paleontology, I work in a space a bit bigger than the Botany department. There is one rectangular table in the middle of the room with desks all around the perimeter. Everyone has their own light to work with and there are cabinets all around that contain supplies and other safety tools. Unfortunately I do not have pictures of this yet. For now, I have a picture of what a row of collections look like along with a picture of the Allison Collection that I am working on.
This week I am starting in Paleonotlogy. I am working with Nikki, the lead scientist in the department. Today, she showed me their collection and explained to me how the bigger items of their collection are in Chula Vista. She then showed me the Allison collection, a collection that was created by Professor Allison in Baja California during the 1960's. This is what I worked with for the rest of he day. I began cleaning the fossils and putting some of them back together using Elmer's glue, of all things. It was fun doing this but also amazing considering the fact that the fossils are 1.5 to 3 million years old.
Today I wrapped up my time with Botany. Unfortunately, it was only a three day experience. However, I learned a lot from it. Today I learned how to identify the species of a plant using a dichotomous key. From that, I was able to identify my own plant and enter its information into the NAT's system. This information included the species, the genus, a description of where it was discovered geographically (street names snd slope of area), the latitude and longitude of where it was discovered, and a description of the other plants around it. I learned how to properly document this data into a journal as well. After this, I continued to mount plants for the remainder of the day. Again, I enjoyed my time at Botany and appreciated the experience.
The first two days of my internship at The NAT have been great. I started this week in Botany. I have been helping the head scientist of Botany with various tasks. Their collection is going through a bug infestation so we have had to move the collection to a large walk-in freezer that the departments share in order to get rid of the problem. I have also been mounting several species of plants onto paper that includes information on the specific plant. This is done in order to easily store data and to be able to upload the data on the species online for the public. Tomorrow will be my last day in Botany and I will be learning how to enter the data into the system along with whatever else needs to be done!
For my 2016 Internship, I will be interning at the San Diego Natural History Museum in Balboa Park. I will be working with the scientists and doing hands on activities that they, and the other volunteers, do on a daily basis. I will be working in four different departments during the four weeks that I am there. These departments include; Paleontology, Entomology, Botany, and Herpetology.
|
Ethan Stern-EllisI am a Junior at High Tech High International. This is a blog about my experience with my internship at the San Diego Natural History Museum. ArchivesCategories |