Megan's Incredible Summer

Hey everyone! Sorry I haven't written until now...I have been so busy! I got an REU (Research Experience for Undergraduates) position at the Kellogg Biological Station at Michigan State University (it's actually 2 hours from campus). I really had no idea what to expect, and I was still not getting information about what I was going to do here the day I arrived. So I drove from Boston to Michigan with my mom, stopping in Canada. We got to Michigan, where I have never been before, and I was very scared by all the farmland and being in the middle of nowhere as we drove to this station! I thought I was going to hate it, but now I even want to live on a farm! Also, I showed up and saw that my apartment and the whole station is right on a beautiful lake! And here is a picture of a gorgeous sunset from the dock right behind my apartment! I absolutely love it here. Free room, free board, a stipend, and a free ecology class that I am getting credit for at Richmond! For the first few weeks I really had no idea what I was doing, and my mentor is the head of the whole station so I never really got to see her. But I got to sleep in every day and go kayaking and canoeing with the people I met and it was just awesome. There are about ten undergraduates here for research, six of us supposedly doing research on biofuels, including myself. Michigan State received a huge grant for biofuel research which I can tell you all about when we get back to school since this post is already so long! With a lot of guidance from my mentor, I started doing research on burning in prairies and switchgrass fields. It was pretty awesome in the end, even after all of the hot days bending over and trying to identify plants. Here is the poster I presented last night with all of my findings! The poster session went very well. I also have a huge project due for my class next week so I will continue to be very very busy this weekend! But even with all this work it has still been a lot of fun. Oh and there is also a math-ecology program here and so there are other graduate and undergrad students that came in June who are pretty awesome. We have had some crazy adventures...including going camping 3 hours away and getting my prius stuck in the mud at 11pm...but ya it's basically nerd central and I love it!! Hope you are all doing well :)

you can't really tell they are dancing...but I was blasting my music and everyone had a dance party in the mud haha