Losing Passion but Finding it Elsewhere

By the end of the fall semester last year, I was starting to lose interest in my schoolwork. My chemistry classes weren’t making enough of a connection to the environment for me and I wasn’t able to find that connection for myself.

I was glad I chose to go on the J Term trip Sustainable Public Policy in Arizona. Not only was the climate and landscape new and exciting, my education was focusing on the environment again. We traveled around Northern Arizona looking at sustainability through the lens of public policy and economics. As I mentioned in my previous post, we looked at sustainability through the lenses of water, immigration, National Parks, and Native Americans. We did a lot of hiking, for which the weather was perfect, and had the opportunity to explore a lot of the natural world in Arizona and see much of it from a great perspective. As a environmental science student, I had taken Environmental Geology and enjoyed relating what I learned in that course to the sustainability of Arizona’s geology, especially in Jerome, a mining town built into the mountainside where they have had a history of buildings sliding down the hill. I absolutely loved traveling to the National Parks and am keeping the National Park Service (NPS) on my list of potential employers for when I am ready to enter the workforce. Check out my photo blog for more stories about and photos from Arizona!

I also learned about the GeoCorps program between the NPS and Geological Society of America (GSA), while attending the GSA North East Regional conference in March with Z (Dr. Zsuzsanna Balogh-Brunstad), my academic advisor. The conference was at the Mount Washington Resort in New Hampshire and the snow cover was beautiful. Attending the conference with Z was very exciting for me because I had the opportunity to learn much about the environment from another perspective. I learned that geology is very interesting to me, but even more so I learned that the interface between geology and chemistry interests me. This interest was reinforced by my spring semester classes as well. I took Environmental Chemistry but the lab did not fit into my schedule so I took the geochemistry lab class.

I greatly enjoyed both. Environmental Chemistry took our fundamental chemistry knowledge and showed us how it applied to understanding and protecting the environment. The geochemistry lab was great because it showed me the environment from another perspective and also gave me a chance to share some of my chemistry knowledge with others since geology students don’t get as much of a chemistry background. My geochemical research of the Ouleout Creek also showed me that I enjoy the interface between geology and chemistry. This research also reinforces my idea that I really like to work with water since I enjoy this research and as I have mentioned before, I was excited to sign up for the water presentation when we were in Arizona.

This past spring I also started to move away from my traditional chemistry classes in another direction. I took two more political sciences classes with possible applications to the environment. Dr. Sara Rinfret was the Political Science professor who taught the Arizona class and she was my advisor for my summer internship with Roots & Wisdom last year. I decided to take two of her classes this spring, Regulatory Politics and Policy and Public Policy. If you had asked me in high school if I would ever take a political science class willingly I would have said no. I have learned, though, if you put the right spin on something you can find how to make it interesting to you. If there is a way to look at something with an environmental focus, I can develop a passion for it and find motivation through that passion. By the end of the semester, I enjoyed learning about policies and regulations. I now plan to graduate with a minor in political science. I think it is important for people in the science field to understand the public policy process so they can understand how their research can make a difference; it is also important for policy makers to understand the science relevant to the decisions they will be making. With all this knowledge, I went into my summer internship unsure about where I wanted my future to take me but excited to meet professionals in the environmental field and to learn more about working with a federal agency where environmental policies and regulations are very important.

Preliminary Fieldwork

Last Thursday, Dr. Z. and I conducted preliminary fieldwork for my Geochemistry study of the Ouleout Creek. We drove along the whole creek and made some initial observations. Dr. Z. also taught me how to use the multiprobe and how to collect water samples. We collected five samples total and collected data from the probe at four of the sites; the water velocity was too fast at one site to keep the probe safe and take an accurate reading. At each site we also recorded our geographic coordinates and elevation.

I really enjoyed going out into the field and collecting samples even though the weather was cold and rainy. We observed that the creek contains much reddish colored suspended sediment just above the Sydney reservoir and below it down to the mouth of the creek. We sampled in three locations above the reservoir; one sample came from the Ouleout Creek and two came from its main tributaries, the East Handsome and Treadwell Creek. The water was much clearer at these three sites. I will most likely research what could be causing the difference in sediment load and what effect the sediment load could be having on the water chemistry. We won't be going into the field again until the spring.

On Monday, I filtered my samples. I stored the filter paper in petri dishes. The filtered water from each site was separated into three smaller bottles. One bottle was simply refrigerated, one was frozen to preserve the anions, and the last was acidified and stored at room temperature to preserve the cations. The two samples taken below the reservoir took a very long time to filter. Other than the long wait for those samples, I really enjoyed filtering and preserving the samples, especially since the lab work was done independently for a personal research project. I was also proud of myself for realizing the first sample that took a while to filter was taking so much longer than the first two because it had much more sediment in it.

My next steps will be to start researching the geological background of the area. I will analyze my preliminary water samples after conducting some background research and constructing some hypotheses from that research. In the spring, I will develop a more complex sampling site map and hopefully start an investigation with a focused goal.

Daily Star Newspaper Story - Fellowship

Hartwick junior earns EPA fellowship
The local Oneonta Newspaper, the Daily Star posted a shortened version of the story of my fellowship today. This is very exciting! I will have to pick up a copy of the paper today so I can cut out the story and keep it. Again, I am very excited and grateful for this opportunity to work with the EPA!

Hartwick-Hartwick Student Receives Prestigious EPA Fellowship

Hartwick-Hartwick Student Receives Prestigious EPA Fellowship

The above link will bring you to the page on the Hartwick website that contains a news piece about me. The news piece discusses the EPA GRO Fellowship I have been awarded, what it entails, and accomplishments I have so far. The Fellowship is awarded to a maximum of 40 college juniors nationwide each year, provides support for academics and research and requires the student to perform research for their junior and senior year and to complete a summer fellowship with an EPA facility.

My research will be based around the geochemistry of a small creek that is part of the Susquehanna River Shed. My advisor, Dr. Zsuzsanna Balogh-Brunstad informed me yesterday that the U.S. Geological Survey has not done any studies in this creek so my research will be all original research! I am very excited and grateful for this amazing opportunity!