One Step at a Time

"Never believe that a few caring people can't change the world. For, indeed, that's all who ever have."    ~Margaret Mead

When asked if I could change the world as a young researcher, my first instinct was to say, “No, maybe in a few years…after graduate school and more years of experience.” But my experiences with researching speak otherwise.  Research has always appealed to me because the discoveries never end. There is always another angle, geographic location, cultural influence, etc. can influence a completely different story. And to me, the sharing of those stories through the collection and analysis of data is just the first step toward change. I do research because I want to see it make a tangible transformation in the way we interact with our environment.

Making a Map

When I am asked if I think I can change the world with research and if research is still valuable, I automatically think back to my field work and research in New Zealand. We were assigned a field exercise that required us to map out land use around and vegetation within an estuary. All of us experienced a bit of frustration while doing this, especially the non-ecologists among us (*cough* me *cough*). Many of us became fed up with concentrating on the small details and started discarding them. We started relying on pre-existing data to make our maps instead of using the knowledge gained ourselves in the field. That's when our field leader said,

"How can you expect to make a map of the world if you're never in it?"

Is Research Important?

Do I think  research is important and valuable to us as a society?

The answer to that question is, OF COURSE. 

There will always be something new to find or something that can be improved and made better as well as more efficient. This goes for anything such as technology, the way we view the earth and environmental practices, as well as how we should interact with each other. 

Just a boy throwing some starfish

This week, we were asked whether we, as just-starting-out researchers in an era of abundantly available information, could realistically expect to change the entire world.

As the question clearly suggests, the odds are not in our favor. Few people would look at an undergraduate student researcher in the era of the Internet and smartphones and expect me to have any significant impact on the larger world.

But I can’t help thinking of the starfish parable (cliché, I know, but stick with me). For those of you who aren’t familiar, here it is:

"The more I learn, The more I realize how much I don't know." - Albert Einstein

The first question posed to us this week was "is individual research still necessary in the age of technology?" My answer to that question is YES! Especially from a geological and biological background. There is so much about this world that we still do not know enough about or know about at all and the only way we can begin to discover and learn more about these things is through research. This past weekend when I was going over the things that I have noticed, learned, and discovered I realized how much more complex the phosphorous problem was in the lake than I originally thought. This lead me to what seems to be the reoccurring theme in my career as a young scientist:   

“The more I learn, the more I realize how much I don't know.”

― Albert Einstein 

If I have seen further...

Time: 11:09pm.

Surfing the Internet, scrolling through images of things that are supposed to make your already simple life, well...simpler. They're called "life hacks"; carry all your grocery bags in one trip with a carabiner, velcro your remote to your table so you won't lose it, freeze coffee in ice trays to keep your iced coffee cold without watering it down, use Doritos as fire kindling, remove stems of strawberries by...*ding*

Knowledge is Power

I mentioned in my last post that I wasn't aware that the lake at this point would look so pretty and lacking in algal bloom. There are some spots that are starting to develop that famous green layer, but overall, the lake looks alright. 

An algal bloom that was only visible for a few days