Keep Trudging On

I am working on finishing my essays for the Governor's School Application. I'm writing the chief essay on Veternary Science, and how things are continuously expanding. It has to be a two page paper, double spaced. I found two papers on new programs that people are doing in different research institues in the US and think that I am going to try and incorportate some of the ideas they share in the article to write a paper.

Interview One Complete

Today when I checked my email, I found that Megan had already emailed me back with the answers to my questions. She not only answered my questions, but also sent me a list of schools that have good marine mammal programs and a list of other institutions that I should think about contacting. This interview was a big help, and I am confident that it will be very beneficial to my project.

YEAH!!! I Got An Interview!!!!

When I checked my email this morning, I realized that I got an email form the Dolphin Research Center! A women named Megan Mertsock agreed to do an email interview with me. This is great! Finally, I feel like I am making REAL progress. I'm going to email her my questions sometime today.

Working Towards an Interview

Right now, I'm at the point in my project where I have to start interviewing people who have some experience with this sort of thing. So I decided to send an email to the Dolphin Research Center, telling them how helpful their site was towards my project right so far and asked if it was posible for me to interview someone there with this kind of experience. I have high hopes for this, and hopefully it will answer some of the questions that I really need to know to move forward. Also, I am working on finishing my application for the Governor's School. I feel like I'm in a good place with my project right now and will be moving towards real progress very soon.

Pennsylvania Governor School of Excellence for Agricultural Sciences

One thing that I have tried to work on a lot recently is the Pennsylvania Governor School of Excellence for Agricultural Sciences. This year it is being held at Penn State. It has a lot to do with science, the environment, and animals, and this could be a big help in applying for college. So right now I am trying to complete the application form. This is something that would look really good on an application and resume. This will also help my gaduation project. I don't know how to explain it, but my project is different from everyone else's because it is something that will actually take time to work out, it won't be finished in two trimesters. It is an actual career, and doing something real like this would be a huge help.

What's the point?

The point of my project has not changed. It is still is to find the best course of action for my career plan. I think I'm done with the proposal but Mrs. Savido still has to get back to me to tell me what I need to add and what she thinks of it. Today I fixed my webliography and went over my proposal. Finally, my next step is to find out who I can contact.

The Good and The Bad

So far, the woman that I tried to contact has still not replied to my email, so I'm still trying to find more people to contact. On the positive side, I am taking a pole on the left hand side of the screen to find out what people think about Marine Biology. This isn't of any direct help to me, but at the time being, I think it is interesting to find out what other people know. So if you have a chance, read the question and choose one of the four options beneath it. I appreciate it.

What's Next?

I'm at a point in my project where I'm not really sure what to do next. I did pretty much as much as I possibly can with my proposal. I did email one woman that I found on the Sea Grant: Marine Careers website, I have not yet recieved a response. I am now trying to look for other people from some of my websites that I might possibly contact and try to ask them a few questions. Other than that I really can't do much with this because my project is long term. A lot of the things that we are being asked to do are about right now. My project is something that wouldn't unfold for months and years down the line. Besides reading more and looking for "expert" I really am at a bit of a stand still in my project.

Possible Interview???

After all of my research so far, I am trying to start contacting people. So I thought that a good place to start is with a Marine Biologist named Janice Sessing, that I found on the Sea Grant: Marine Careers website. So right now I am hoping that she gets it and is able to reply. Other then that, I am still working on my proposal and am really not sure of what I should do next. I'm still working on it though, and hoping to get a response soon.

Internships and Volunteer Experience

Below are just a few links that have a lot of information regarding internships and other ways to get experience:
http://www.marineland.net/internship.php#nogo
http://www.whalecenter.org/intern.htm
http://www.dolphins.org/help_volunteer.php
http://www.vanaqua.org/education/aquafacts/marinemammaltrainer.html

Places to Look. . .

One of the places that looks really cool for an internship or even a job, is the Living Seas in Epcot, which is part of Disney World in Florida. They have a really neat program that would be really cool to look into, and possibly contact.

http://disney.go.com/disneyhand/environmentality/animals/ls_research.html

Good Advice

I got some really good advice from my mentor yesterday at my internship. She was talking about how hard it was to get a job in this line of work. Even with a Bachelors Degree and a lot of experience, you would have a hard time. She also mentioned that you have to look in the right spot. If you want to go into Marine Biology, you have to be willing to move to the coast. If you want to work with water animals, you have to move to where water animals are. Now a day, people need at least a Masters Degree and a lot of work and volunteer experience. That’s where a lot of people lose their edge. Going for a Master Degree or a PhD means more than ten years in college, and eventually you are going to realize that “Wait, I’ve been in school all of this time, I need to get a job.”Graduating from high school I will be eighteen, ten years after that, I will be almost thirty. That is the point when people get rooted to where they are (marriage, children, etc). One option many people make is going back to school to get their education degree, because you spent all of this time in college, and you can’t find a job in it, so you might as well teach what you’ve learned. What's cool about that is you can do your own research during that time and get your students to help you with the actual field research. So really what I’ve learned that I have to do next is look for schools that have the resources that will give me some sort of edge in the career field. That’s one of the things she said was the most difficult, looking around and actually finding out what you need to know from the people who have the resources and expertise to answer me fully. She even said she would look back for me into the different places that she was looking at when she was looking for a job to help me find people that I can email and/or interview. This is great, she has been a huge help.

New Foundation Questions

After I started going back to my sites and actually collecting the information they had, I came up with a lot of new foundation questions to go along with the things I was finding. Here is my new list:

1. What is Marine Biology?
2. How does one become a marine biologist?(high school prep)
3 How does one become a marine biologist?(college prep)
4. What advice do people in the field give students?
5. How is marine biology studied?
6. What is marine mammalogy?
7. What skills are necessary to study marine biology?
8. What is the history of marine biology?
9. What schools have good biology and marine biology programs?
10. What sorts of place hire marine biologists/mammalogist?

Did You Know. . . ?

-Oceans are 2.5+ miles deep, and contain 99.5% of Earth’s livable habitat
-Marine animals are one of the most understudied areas of research in the world
-Marine mammal science (marine mammalogy) is a smaller, more distinct area of marine biology
-Marine biology focuses on marine organisms and their relationship to their environment.
-Marine mammal science focuses on one or more specific marine mammals
-Marine biology has only been studied for about the last 35 years, with the development of technology
-Aristotle was the first to record marine life
-Scientists believe that aside from the thousands of marine species already discovered, over a thousand are believed to have not been discovered yet
-Many species of fish can change their sex
-The blue whale is the largest animal ever to live on earth, it had a heart the size of a car and blood vessels large enough for a full grown trout to swim through

Progress So Far . . .

Right now I am still working on my proposal, but Mrs. Savido keeps telling us that we have to have our "End" goal in mind. Well, if I do my project right, it won't have an official end. What I need to do now is figure who I want to interview and how I will do that. I have finally come up with a good way to sort my information out. I made a table with all of my information, and I am actually very happy with it.

Organization

I still can't think of a really good way to organize all of my information. Right now I think that I am going to go straight to putting all of the information into a table, and work out from there. After that, putting a PowerPoint will hopefully suffice for now.

The Proposal

Right now, I'm at a point in my proposal, where I think that I have everything, I checked it all offon a list, but I still feel like I am forgetting something. I asked Mrs. Savido to read it, and hopefully she will be able to point me in the right direction. The problem with my project is that we are supposed to be looking to what our final project will eventually become. As I said, the problem with my project is that it is not something that will actually have a final point that I can say, "Yes, I'm finished!" My final product would be a career, and that is something far past the scope of this class. Far past even graduating. So, for me it is a bit dofficult to plan out my steps, when a lot of this stuff takes time to actually work itself out.

Organizing Information

I think that I am almost done with my proposal. I just need to work through the process of organizing my information in a way that I can display it effectively. Right now I'm leaning towards a PowerPoint, but even still I feel like I am missing a step into making something of a "final product." Diagram, table, I don't know what will work the most effectively. "How to Organize a Career Plan " is what I could really use right now.

Proposal

Today is the first day that I started putting together my proposal. I don't think this will be to hard at all. Basically all I have to do is explain in a paper what the objective is, and how I plan to go about reaching that goal. I jsut need to organize my information in a way that I can effectively turn it into a paper with as little hassle as possible.

Even More Great Information

Today I did even more research. Moslty, I devoted my time to reading the articles that I was able to find on the Internet. I found a lot of awesome information and the DRC website and I found another awesome site called the Southwest Fisheries Science Center. The Q and A section answered alot of my questons and will shortly be added to my Resources List. I am extremely lucky that I am able to find some much information so easily. Next, I have to work on using the information that I find and putting it into the outline for my actual project topic.

http://swfsc.noaa.gov/textblock.aspx?id=54

Old Links

Today, what I did was go through all of my links and checked to see which ones would actually still be of relevence to my topic. I was lucky, because I only got rid of one link and I was able to replace it in no time. I found a site that was called the Dolphin Research Center. What's great about it though, is the fact that it talks about all types of animals and careers with them. This one will be much more beneficial to me then the other one was. After that I graded all of my links on a scale from one to ten. I am now pretty confident that I will find some good information from all of them. My next step is to find out which links answer which questions best.

Colleges and Universities

Right now I am trying to finid out which colleges and universities in the United States have good Biology and Marine Biology programs. On every single website that I have found, they say that you should NOT specialize in anyhitng to early. In the long run, as long as you have a degree in some general area of science, it will not matter later on. I personally want to major in Biology, possibly with a minor in Marine Biology or Zoology. Marine Biology is such a huge area of study, I don't want to get too specific too fast. Right now I am looking all over the internet to see what I can find so far I have found that University of California in San Diego, Hawaii Pacific, Duke, and CMU all have really great biology programs. After I get more information I will try to contact some of these places to see if they have any good information for me about their school's Biology or Marine Department. Actually, now that I think about it, I know Dr. Carrie Doonan who is a professor at CMU in the Biology Department, I would be able to contact her easily.

http://www.biology.duke.edu/undergrad/Contacts.html
http://www.cmu.edu/bio/undergraduate/studentlife/index.shtml

Yahoo Answers

When I was looking for some more information about colleges and universities today, I found a really good link to a question someone left on Yahoo Answers. The person asked if you could be a zoologist that specializes in Marine Animals. All of the answers that people left are actually really helpful and give a lot of good ideas about what to major in and so forth.

http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20080804083218AAEsBYT

"What is Marine Biology?" Picture

I'm happy to say that I finished my PhotoShop picture that best shows what Marine Biology is. If you look at the bottom of my Blog, you will see my photo. All of the animals that are in the picture are placed accurately in their habitat. For example, there is a jawfish hiding behind the "b" in biology, and that basically symbolizes that jawfish are not very aggressive animals, so they spend a lot of time hiding, away for more agressive animals. Another example, is the cleaner shrimp and the drangon wrasse near the "o" in biology. It is the cleaner shrimp's job to take dead skin and bacteria off of fish. In this, the cleaner shrimp gets a free meal and the wrasse gets cleaned off. This is called a symbiotic relationship.

???Questions???

Essential Question:
What is the best course of action for me as an 11th grader to take in order to have a career in Marine Biology?
Foundation Questions:
1. What is marine biology?
2. How does one become a marine biologist?
3. How is marine biology studied?
4. What is marine mammalogy?
5. Why study marine biology?
6. What is the history of marine biology?
7. What schools have good programs in biology and marine biology?

Central Question

I think that I finally have a central question that I am comfortable with.
How can I go from right now in 11th grade to having a career in Marine Biology?

This is my question and I think that I will be able to create something of a Career Plan out of it.

I'll try to document my internship, research and get to work on what eventually will be my final product.

Week 4

I am really happy with what I have been able to achieve so far, especially since it took me so long to come up with a topic. Lately, I have been dedicating all of my class time to refining my list of links. I think that I have a really good list that will help me a lot. One site that I found actually gave me a speech that a professor gave to a bunch of high school students, that pretty much explained how when students think about working with marine mammals, they think that all they will be doing is swimming with dolphins. He explains that this is not true. He set straight all of the misconceptions about working with marine mammals. I am hoping that his ideas along with all of my other information will help me to put together a near perfect Career Plan. I have finished my terms and links list, so my next step is to finish my Webliography.

Webliography

Today i tried to put some finishing touches on finding websites and terms-to-know. hopefully tomorrow i will actually be able to start the webliography.

Websites

today i was able to find even more great websites of aquariums and other places that will be great help.

Progress!

YEAH!! I MADE SOME REAL PROGRESS TODAY!!! =)

Marine Mammalogy

today i found alot of great web sites that will narrow my project's focus. i was thinking that marine mammalogy is the specific field of marine biology that i would like to get into. i still want to use the idea of creating a career plan for myself. in the end i hope to have found more out about marine biology/mammalogy, what schools are best to attend for majors in biology and marine biology, what kinds of places hire people with these degrees, and possibly where i could get hired if i followed through on this plan.

Marine Biology

I think that i have finally came to a decision for my project, marine biology. i think i'm going to do something that will end up being like a career plan for me. for example, the bases of marine biology, history, etc. and the then move in to what are some of the colleges that offer degrees in marine biology, and what are some of the places that hire marine biologist. it is ridiclous that i didn't come to this comclusion earlier, i mean i have an awesome internship with people who would be extremely valuable resources in any number of directions that i could follow up on in my project. although it may seem really corny, i think that it would be alot of fun to work omewhere like Sea World or Discovery Cove. now, i need to find out more specifically what i want to actually have as a final project.

Book to Movie

I was thinking about this topic for a while now, and I was thinking that maybe I could work off of the book to movie idea. I though that maybe I could look into how the message or point of a book is changed when it is turned into a movie. How the underlying principles that made a book so interesting are often taken away when it is turned into a film. The only problem with this is that this is more of a philisophical question, based more on opinion than anything else, and that could make it very difficult to do any research.

Animal Intelligence

Right now, i think that i may be leaning towards a project having to do with animal intelligence. I did a lot of research on the topic today, and i found a bunch of stuff that i didn't know. I even found a person that i may be able to contact. I found a like to a page on the Parade magazine Pets Page, and found a discussion board were you can email a women named Dr. Karen Haligan who is a vet. I think that asking her a few questions about animal intelligence might help me out some. Hopefully, this will help me actually settle on a topic. Yet who knows, tomorrow i might just have a completely different topic.

Random Research

I am still trying to determine what I want to do with my Grad Project. I kind of narrowed down the list, but not really. Right now I'm thinking that I might want to do: Books turned into movies, animal intelligence, swimming, marine animals, and a few others. I want to do something within one of these topics, but I can't find any reliable sources on the internet on most of them, because the areas I would like to look at are up to interpretation. Making it extremely difficult not only to do research, but to also to think of some kind of action I could do within one of these areas.

Research and More Grad Ideas

I started thinking that I like to read and I like movies, so it might be cool to try doing some kind of comparison between movies and book, and how they change going from one to the other. Also, I started doing some research on animal minds, and found a good article on National Geographic

http://als.lib.wi.us/bookmovies.html

http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2008/03/animal-minds/virginia-morell-text/3.

The more I thuink about it, the more I would like to look and books and movies. I still can't think of a way that I would be able to do something active for any of my topics though.

More Grad Projects Ideas

I was thinking during this weekend that it might be interesting to something having to do with marine life, swimming, women in the military, how forms of entertainment (movies, books, tv, games) affect us, rock music, men vs. women in sports, how has swimming developed over time? how pieces of fiction influence the world around us, comparing events in movies to events in real life or analysis of animal intelligence. I really like all of these topics, but I feel like my real problem, is how can I turn all of these topics into something that I can actively do out in the community? All of these topics I have no doubt would make an interesting Research Paper, but wht can I do to get first hand information from people in the community? So my problem now, is what do i pick as my topic, and how can I turn that into something I can get information from people in the community?

Grad Project Topics

I have no idea what to do this project on. I'm hoping to do something with animals and/or swimming. Maybe how the study of marine animals can help swimmers improve.

September 4, 2008

Today, I started my blog. It didn't take that long, until we had to reply to a post that Mrs. Savido wrote. After blogging, I plan to start looking at topics for my Graduation Projects. This is probably going to be difficult, because I'm interested in so many things. In fact, this is probably going to be the hardest part of the entire project.

September 3, 2008

Yesterday was the first day for me in Research. We had to read an article called "For Some, the Blogging Never Stops," then answer questions about it. I didn't know how addicting people found blogging, but I guess that it is a good way for people to just express themselves, and not really worry about the people reading it.