{"id":1099,"date":"2014-05-14T12:09:19","date_gmt":"2014-05-14T17:09:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.acu.edu\/biologyresearch\/?p=1099"},"modified":"2014-05-14T12:09:19","modified_gmt":"2014-05-14T17:09:19","slug":"reflections-on-20132014","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.acu.edu\/biologyresearch\/2014\/05\/14\/reflections-on-20132014\/","title":{"rendered":"Reflections on 2013\/2014"},"content":{"rendered":"

It\u2019s hard to believe the school year has finally come to an end\u2014and even harder to believe that I began working on my summer research project about a year ago (oh, how the time flies). At the beginning of the summer, we were designing primers, and now we\u2019re in the process of identifying specimens using SNP haplotyping. While we haven\u2019t made as much progress as we initially envisioned (due to technical difficulties, among other things), we still identified quite a few and have made quite a dent in this continuing project (which we look forward to working on more). If nothing else, analysis of our soil collections suggested edaphic specialization in Mentzelia monoensis<\/i>, which was a really exciting result to share with the world.<\/p>\n

This semester I was not able to spend as much time in the lab, but I did present a 15-minute oral presentation at 3 different conferences. In January, we (Dr. Brokaw, Christian Hofsommer, and I) presented our work in Austin at the conference for the Society for Integrative and Comparative Biology. It was scary presenting my work in front of an audience\u2014but it helped me to realize that I am fully capable of presenting information to a scientific community. In March, I\u00a0 (in addition to several other biology and English students) presented at Alpha Chi\u2019s National Conference in St. Louis\u2014which was quite different from the Evolution and the SICB conferences. This conference focused primarily on undergraduate research and had presentations in over 26 different categories! So, it was really a unique experience to be exposed to so many different disciplines. I shared my work to an audience (that included my wonderful friends!) during the Organismal and Ecological Biology section. Elisa Wyrick (who researches British Literature) and I won best presentations in our categories\u2014which came as quite a surprise! Finally, I presented my work for the last time at the ACU Undergraduate Research Festival at the beginning of April. By the end, it felt like I had come a full circle–presenting my research to my teachers and peers. Additionally, we (Dr. Brokaw, Christian Hofsommer, and I) are working on a publication, so stay tuned for more on that!
\nUltimately, I feel I learned quite a lot during this past year. Slowly (but surely), I\u2019m morphing into a scientist: I\u2019ve learned to think more critically, ask more questions, and take more risks. And, as I\u2019ve mentioned before, I\u2019ve learning that failure is part of the process. Things don\u2019t always turn out the way we\u2019d like them to\u2014not to mention everyone messes up from time to time. I definitely didn\u2019t envision the primers or the specimen from different herbaria to give us difficulties, but unfortunately they did, and we had to troubleshoot around them. Despite these challenges, I\u2019ve developed more independence and confidence in my research abilities as well as myself. I never could have imagined I would be able to explain my ideas to a room full of people\u2014yet here I am on the other side.<\/p>\n

A year later and I have presented at 3 national conferences, conducted field work, experimented with new methodology (primer design, allele-specific PCR, etc.), and won an award for my presentation (this one I still can\u2019t believe)\u2014not to mention I made many new friends! It\u2019s difficult to articulate really just how much I have benefitted from this entire process, and I am so grateful for the opportunities research has given me (and many others) during my time at ACU. Unfortunately, this summer I will not be continuing my M. monoensis <\/i>work, but instead I will be researching molecular and cell biology at Pepperdine! It\u2019s a bit intimidating to be moving into a new lab with new people, ideas, and methodology\u2014but ultimately, I know my experiences at ACU have well prepared me for this new adventure. Also, during the fall I will be working as a research tutor\u2014which I honestly couldn\u2019t be more excited about. It will be truly awesome to teach other students about research and share my passion with them.<\/p>\n

\n
\n
\"All<\/dt>\n
All of the ACU Alpha Chi leadership attending the conference in St. Louis!<\/dd>\n<\/dl>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It\u2019s hard to believe the school year has finally come to an end\u2014and even harder to believe that I began working on my summer research project about a year ago (oh, how the time flies). At the beginning of the … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9356,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[55130],"tags":[55730,55729,55715,55724,55721,55734],"class_list":["post-1099","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-brokaw-lab","tag-biogeography","tag-conservation-biology","tag-dna","tag-molecular-biology","tag-plant-biology","tag-polyploidy"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.acu.edu\/biologyresearch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1099","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.acu.edu\/biologyresearch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.acu.edu\/biologyresearch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.acu.edu\/biologyresearch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9356"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.acu.edu\/biologyresearch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1099"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.acu.edu\/biologyresearch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1099\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1102,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.acu.edu\/biologyresearch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1099\/revisions\/1102"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.acu.edu\/biologyresearch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1099"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.acu.edu\/biologyresearch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1099"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.acu.edu\/biologyresearch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1099"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}