We had another fun-filled weekend last week. Saturday, we go to go to White Rock Park. At this park, there was cliff jumping, rope swings, and zip lines. Jenny and I did the rope swing about 4 times because we wanted to perfect our form. This ended up biting us in the butt later because we ended up being so sore that it was hard to move the next day. Garret also proposed to his girlfriend while we were there, and it was special to be able to share the moments after with them. Seeing them so happy really lifted everyone’s day. This week Reece and I finalized our PowerPoint presentation, manuscript, and our poster. We practiced for our presentation on Wednesday and got a lot of helpful feedback. Friday was our final presentation and I felt like it went great.

I cannot believe that I am almost done writing my last blog post! This internship has been such an amazing experience for me, and I will never forget it. I ended up learning so much and gaining a lot more confidence in my abilities. I was not expecting that I was going to be in more of a teaching/leading role, but I am glad that I was able to. Teaching someone else techniques really solidified to me that I am more capable than I originally thought. I am also more comfortable being in a leadership position than I was before. The most important skill that I gained from this experience was the ability to come up with a research project and see it all the way through to the end. Being able to report on results of a project I conduct is a first for me and was very rewarding. I also met some incredible people and made friendships that I'll have the rest of my life. I am going to miss my fellow REEU interns so much and hopefully I will get to see some of them again soon! This internship really made me excited to go on to graduate school and continue doing research. I really hope that I'll be able to go to graduate school and eventually work for a government agency such as NOAA doing coastal research.

Goodbye for now!

-Taylor