Last Day
The last internship I had, by the time the last day rolled around, I could not wait to leave and was literally counting down the hours.
This time around? I don’t want to go.
Sometimes I forget the “real” world isn’t like Clark.
Case in point: Trying to convince my boss that gender and sex are not the same thing. The correct (and Clarkie) thing to do would be to break down population of Alaskan communities by male and female and refer to such breakdowns as sex rather than as gender.
Philosophical Ponderings
Kat, one of the other interns here, posed some interesting questions at lunch on Friday. She wouldn’t allow us to answer with “because I like books” or other “cop outs”, as she called them. Here are my answers:
If you could be fruit, what would you be and why?
I would be a blackberry. Not only because I like blackberries but because they are a misunderstood fruit. Kind of fuzzy, which can be off putting, and their thorns make them hard to harvest. I know that people can find me a little off-standing, particularly in new situations, but it’s just because I’m trying to assess the dynamics of the situation. It’s the same thing with blackberries. If you stick your hand in the bush, you might get stabbed. But, if you’re willing to wait and map out a plan, you get eat some delicious fruit without getting stabbed by thorns.
If you were an urban land-form, what would you be and why?
I would say library because I like books and conversations about books, but you don’t really get to discuss books in a library. You have to be quiet. So instead I would say public transportation. That sounds really terrible but I’m really into alternative means of transportation — trains, subways, biking, walking — and things like the Burke-Gilman Trail.
Definitely just spelled Matanuska-Susitna as Matanuska-Christina.
It’s been a loooooong day.
Proof that you really can have too much information in a map. Some of those points look like ice cream cones, don’t you think?
I was quite excited to find a boat symbol for my map of vessels owned by residents and homeported in a particular community, but I can’t get it to look nice professional. Right now it just looks dumb. So dumb.
Spent the day climbing over rocks, digging in tidal pools in Padilla Bay, and hiking through Deception Pass. This really is the best internship ever.
Who knew sea ice coverage data could be so pretty?
Of course, it’s only beautiful until you have to run the same spatial join on 264 separate files and then convert the 39 numerical outputs for each file into percentages in an Excel file. Repetitive, no?
At the same time, though, I am enjoying what I’m doing. Today was a long day, but I get to hone my GIS skills and learn new things in Stata. I’m also really excited to see what happens with all the data when I finish converting it. Policy implications, anyone?
