Wednesday, January 28, 2015

New to S-STEM

This semester I finally decided to go back to school full time (yay!) and, because of my full time status, I can now participate in a few programs that I've had my eye on for a while. One of these programs is the S-STEM internship/scholarship that I'm writing this blog for. I'm super excited about this program because it gives me a chance to work in a lab! This lab experience will help give structure to my experiments, and access to equipment and expert personnel that I simply don't have in my little lab at home.

On Monday this week I had an interview with the lab coordinators. They told me that I will not be assigned to a professor's ongoing research but will have to build an experiment of my own. While I have given a lot of thought about what kinds of questions I want to answer in my own lab, it is a bit daunting to be asked to design one that I will be graded on, instead of just for personal pleasure. 

I just realized my computer could put photos on this blog, duh. So here is a picture of some black solider fly larva. These are one of the major decomposers I find in my compost bin. I downloaded this photo off the internet almost a year ago and now I cant figure how I did that. If I could I would show a photo of the adults because they have a lovely little glass window in their thorax.