Final days

I can't believe I only have three more days at BIOS.  This fall has flown by, a whirlwind of zoox counts, beach adventures, and beautiful Bermuda days.  The first couple of days this week have been a bit stressful, finishing up my data collection (growth measurements and zooxanthellae counts) and data analysis.  Today is the third day I have redone my graphs....  So that’s frustrating, but finding the best way to present my data is extremely important.  It never ceases to amaze me how I can still be learning so much everyday.  I mastered some new statistics (which has forced me to look at my data differently), I can officially make a presentation in two days (just started my final presentation today!), and I now know the best way to procrastinate: ask every REU to go on separate coffee dates until I am so caffeinated I have to take a snack break (it seems to be working really well for me).  In terms of my results, it looks as though feeding = more zooxs and there is no affect for the environmental conditions.  I DON'T UNDERSTAND!?!?!?! A whiter, more bleached coral should have a lower zoox density. Well apparently not.  Anyway, another set back was the fact that my mini-experiment only shows that we can't use this type of coral to measure spat growth with photo analysis.  The spat grow up, rather than out...aka the data was crazy and it just doesn't make sense.  But I have mastered data processing, analysis and have officially looked at spreadsheets for more hours than I have slept in the last week.  I am really looking forward to showing the REUs, fall students, and the whole BIOS community everything I have accomplished this semester.  Wish me luck!

This is a premature 'throwback thursday" to the first few days of the semester.