Week 8,9,&10 Journal Entry - Winter Quarter

Considering it’s been a few weeks since my last journal entries, I’d like to showcase a few instances of success for the bird-window collision project. The scavenger experiment, headed by Kyle Kusa, was accepted by the Institution for Animal Care and Use Committee (IACUC) around week 7 or 8. This was an excellent motivation for the project because institutional successes pave the road for publication and replication in the future. Liana Rostamian, another intern with the project, set up a beautiful public-facing website that includes a description of the project, resources for those interested, and ways to get involved. This website is https://birdcollisions.sites.ucsc.edu. Sam Eberhard has been another outstanding intern to have had on the team. With a combination of bird knowledge and a general naturalist approach to information, it has been wonderful to have such a great source of information handling the Norris Center’s historical data and taking photos for us. Dr. Natalia Ocampo-Peñuela led me the entire time with understanding how to best approach and create a protocol for IACUC and for future interns to reference when working with her Ecology Conservation research group. In general, the exposure to the academic research method feels even more crystalized in my knowledge. Last week, Dr. Natalia had a fantastic talk at the Natural History Symposium that piqued my interest. The intersection of natural history and social justice is great! Natalia does a fantastic job exploring concepts of both with a crowd of people. The naturalist community affiliated with the Norris Center is very receptive to this kind of material. Dr. Gizelle Hurtado brought a knowledge of organization and research that has been awesome. My favorite conversations have been with Gizelle about certain mammals or naturalizing. Gizelle does a significant amount for the Norris Center and our research project and led the Natural History Symposium with Chris Lay and McKenna. It is wonderful to see such ease at doing so many things simultaneously. Here is where I see room for improvement for myself. The presentation went great! Sometimes I feel so limited in my knowledge and ability to express said knowledge, which disappoints me. It feels affirming to work with people like Kyle, who quickly answer questions and approach individuals with data. Some of the goals I have for myself are to learn more specifically about certain things to focus on. I want to focus on our method for the bird-window collision surveys. I want to focus on finishing my philosophy degree. I want to focus on working with the next set of interns, Natalia and Kyle, to make this quarter as seamless as possible for our project. I am happy with my results so far, but now is the time to push myself even further. This quarter I created a protocol for the survey up to this point, which I am very happy with, but next quarter I want to get all the feedback I can and respond to intern training to make the process even better. Since Natalia expects this research project to go on for a very long time, I will contribute all I can while working on this project for its’ long-term efficiency.

When I consider my personal goals and progress for this quarter, I feel happy. I think that I have done a lot this quarter. I worked on classes, bartended on the weekends, worked on this internship with Natalia, and did fellowships in the Economics department with Dr. Galina Hale and Dr. Grace Steadmon. This quarter has certainly not been easy, but it has been a pleasure to push myself. Sometimes it was easy to become confused about my priorities, which has taught me to think about logical approaches to working on everything. Sometimes I burnt out, so I learned more about what my brain and body need for self-care. Sometimes I lost all my focus and learned that focus comes and goes – caffeine isn’t always a fix. Working with researchers like Natalia, Gizelle, Galina, and Grace has really helped me build a better idea of what research looks like. Deadlines, of course, are crucial. Thorough knowledge is essential. Empathy and understanding of the people you are working with are essential. Casual conversation is important too. All of these things have not only made research fun for me, but something I know that I’ll keep doing.

I get a bit nervous thinking about ecological research or going more into the biological side of research because I have a very social science mind and background so far. One of the groups that I am and will always be interested in, is insects. Birds are so cool too. I’ve never thought about mammals very much, but they are pretty fascinating. I think it’s too hard to pinpoint what things I would continue researching. I do know that working with conservation biologists/ecologists is awesome. I do my best to provide a skill level that can be useful to projects like these. Thinking about the social science part of Environmental Studies, I am continuing my personal research, which I hope to guide my future interests. Briefly tangential, I am hoping to investigate economic geography. Especially as the environment changes, more groups of people will\ leave their homes and migrate, as climate refugees, to new homes. I think money and monetary policy tell a story about the world, with a particular perspective, and I am interested in how people’s money tells the story of climate change. One potential area that could be a good starting point with this kind of research is, historically, the Puerto Rican diaspora into the United States and the long-term impacts on both economies. A modern application of this kind of knowledge could be relevant to the war in Ukraine and understanding how mass groups of refugees change the economic layout of where they move to. For some reason, this idea and group of questions are particularly interesting. I have yet to find many questions biologically that interest me in the same ways.

I am so excited to get some surveys done, next quarter!!