Reflections

As promised, it's high time I post a final reflection on my internship experience this summer. Where do I even begin. Following Michael's suggestions, I'll review the goals I set out at the beginning:

Part 1:Continue working to write up and edit the matlab code. Successfully deal with the glitches and whatever else comes up.

Yep, I feel fairly competent using matlab and can navigate sac and feel comfortable using unix machines. I'm amazed at how much computer knowledge I was able to gain over the summer. And from the sound of it, I'm ahead of the game for grad school as many students come in with little or no knowledge of this stuff.

Part2: Interpret the results. Are the correlated areas really tremor? Does the tremor found in Heather's method match up with Oliver's results?

Well, we didn't find tremor but the experience was definitely rewarding. And I feel like I've really contributed to scientific research, even if our results are so far inconclusive.  The codes I helped developed will be used to continue to search for tremor. I'm excited to see what comes out of all the research in the end.

Part3: Successfully contribute to a field experiment which has yet to be determined. If we get funding soon enough, we might be able to deploy an array of instruments somewhere along the NMSZ, if not, it will be something a bit different.

While small, this field experience was an excellent chance to explore a new area of geophysics, magnetics! It was great to be able to follow this from beginning to end, to work with Chuck and a couple of grad students, and to learn about magnetic surveys.

Overall: Become more familiar with data processing and the whole experience. Get a better idea if this is something I'd like to do as a future career. Have some fun, and get to know some new people and a new city.

I'm still not sure where I'll be headed in the future. I'd like to take a year off and travel the world (doing something somewhere and paid for somehow...still figuring that one out) and after that, who knows? I'm still mulling over my options. I'm extremely grateful to Heather, Oliver, and Chuck who I worked with this summer, as well as everyone else at CERI. I feel like I do have a much better understanding of how scientific research works and have learned quite a bit about tremor, despite the fact that it remains elusive in New Madrid. I've got my poster started but still have a ways to go on that. I'm excited to present my results at AGU, albeit a bit nervous also as it will be my first time. And heck, I think it's pretty neat that we can see the wind and trains on our seismograms, even if it isn't tremor!

 So, that's all for now. I'm looking forward to seeing everone and their beautiful posters at AGU!