This summer I wanted to use the time away from home to set challenges for myself and see how many I could complete. Setting goals always seemed like a great way to work on self-improvement. So right from the start I set three goals for myself:

1. I wanted to run at least 3 times a week and get to the point where I enjoyed running.
2. I wanted to read for pleasure more.
3. I wanted to avoid the late night work sesh’s that stem from an unhealthy amount of procrastinating that has haunted me my entire college career.

So before we dive into this week’s work update, I’ll update everyone on my personal summer goals.

1. In the first week and a half I ran 4 times! That was more miles run in those 10 days than in the last 5 years, I was quite proud of myself. Unfortunately (or fortunately if you really hate running), that feeling of pride was not strong enough to stop me from giving up running completely when a group of interns roped me in to joining the local pool with them. The only sport I’ve ever done has been swimming and I’m quite awkward on land. After 11 years of competitive swimming, I’d like to think land sports just aren’t my thing. So I happily made a quick goal switcharoo to swimming at least 4 times a week instead of running. With a good group of supportive swimmers we’ve been able to motivate each other to hit that goal just about every week. All I can hope is that by the end I can still beat the 14 year old swimmers that I coach back home. Goal #1 = Kind of complete?
2. Well… I’ve read a bunch of research articles, papers and two textbooks. Learning is pleasure, right? Goal #2 = to be determined.
3. The past two weeks have been a grind to research and finish my final presentation and poster. While I didn’t procrastinate necessarily, I did burn the midnight oil. It’s just something about the quiet peacefulness of 4 am in the Hatfield library that really just lets the thoughts flow out clearly. Working in the ODFW cubicle staring into the corner of a wall is honestly driving me insane. It’s a quite a bummer I can’t do the out of project work out of the office. Oh well, the late nights will have to continue for now. A successful presentation and poster later and Goal #3 = half way finished, I think?

This leads into the next section of the blog… Presentation and posters! Presenting on our work over the summer felt like it snuck up on us. In reality this whole summer seemed to just slip away. I knew from experience that this 10 week program was going to go quick. But knowing and experiencing are always two different things. Walking home the other day felt like it was the first week and we had just signed our ODFW paperwork.

In case you weren’t at the Sea Grant final presentations, I presented on the importance of community engagement for research scientists. I modeled the presentation mostly on background research rather than on the Oregon Marine Reserves, as they are currently transitioning towards an engagement model rather than a pure outreach model.

With just a few days until I present, I was very much looking forward to getting feedback from my mentor. In true fashion she gave me some feedback in ways that seemed as blunt as possible. Which, after getting over myself I realized how important it was. The advice that stuck out the most was that I needed to explain the topics as if I was “explaining it to my friend at the bar.” She wanted me to pretend there was a barrier of noise between myself (the message sender) and my mate (message receiver). In order to get my message across effectively I had to be clear and say it as quickly as possible to avoid getting, literally in this case, drowned out by the noise. In reality noise could refer to literal noise, visual distractions, extra words, other conversations, etc. This noise distracts and takes away from the message you are trying to convey. I had always recognized noise, but always in terms of designing a campaign message. For some reason it never occurred to me that the same idea could be applied while giving a presentation. Kelsey also encouraged me to get out of my comfort zone and use PowerPoint to aid the presentation, instead of being the presentation. I took out as many words as I could and replaced them with easy to understand graphics and pictures.

This forced myself to be able to confidently explain the topic without the use of notes or cue words. Practicing this resulted in a few 3 am nights in the library practicing to my audience of wheelie chairs. But once I got it down, it felt sooo goooood. It was so much harder, but I felt my presentation skills improve loads. S/o to my mentor Kelsey for the top pro tips.

Of course we can’t forget to talk about the one event that was so incredible that it just eclipsed the whole week. An event that felt spiritual, as if you could feel it throughout your entire body. An event that mentally and physically puts you in a state of awe. An event that, should you be lucky enough to be in the right place at the right time for, you would be a fool to miss out on. An event that I know that I will spin never ending yarns to my grand children about. An event that I hope goes down in history as a moment where we put away the sadness and strife of the current state of the environment and politics and replaced it with joy and wonder. Obviously we’re talking about the pre-final Sea Grant presentation cinnamon bun trip! 5 Sea Grants interns, 5 cinnamon buns and 5 full happy stomachs, what more could you ask for?! Granted they weren’t the best cinnamon buns of all time, but boy were they still so good. Really overshadowed just about every other event that occurred recently.