Some Major Life Updates

I have neglected this blog far too long, and it’s time for a little life update before I can hopefully post more frequently again. The reason for the radio silence is that I finished up my last year at UCSB, much of which was dedicated to writing my Senior Thesis about the same research I have been doing since my second year, as well as taking all the necessary classes to graduate. Many of the classes were very writing-heavy, and my senior thesis was almost 16,000 words when I submitted it. This meant that what little free time I did have was spent doing anything but writing.

I was pretty lonely for most of fall quarter last year (September – December) – most of my friends were studying abroad, and I had moved into a different co-op house that was apartment style instead of one big house. I had such a radically different sleep schedule than my other housemates – I generally go to bed around 10-11 and wake up around 7. My housemates, however, would wake up anywhere from 11-4 and go to bed at hours I can’t even imagine. I barely ever saw any of them – on the plus side, it’s easy to share the small kitchen because it’s extremely rare that we need to use it at the same time. On the other hand, I felt like I was almost living alone. On the plus side, someone who I lived with last year had also moved into the same co-op but in a different apartment, and the two of us started hanging out more.

Much of my fall quarter was also shaped by the identity/career crisis I faced once I got back from New Zealand. The dilemma of choosing where I would end up after graduation and what kinds of jobs I could start my career sent me searching on job boards and talking with career advisors. At the same time, all I wanted to do was go back to New Zealand, and so finally I decided I would go there for a year first and then start an actual adult job afterwards. Making that decision took a lot of the uncertainty away that was causing significant stress. I also decided that after my year in New Zealand, I would plan to move to New Mexico, Colorado, or Arizona.

It has been one of my goals to take an aerial silks class for many years, and because I decided not to return to the capoeira group in Santa Barbara for a variety of reasons, I signed up for a class. I really enjoyed it, and was decently good at it, although looking pretty and elegant while doing it is much more of a challenge for me. In winter quarter my class schedule prevented me from signing up for a silks class, so I signed up for a Lyra (aerial hoop) class instead, and ended up enjoying it almost more than silks (some of the bruises I ended up with were impressive). In spring quarter I couldn’t decide whether to take silks or lyra, so I took both.

During winter quarter my roommate from fall quarter studied abroad and Summer moved in for the quarter – it was so nice to have someone to talk to and share food with. Other friends, like Noah, also returned, and I began to rebuild a community that continued on through spring quarter.

I also played Eb Clarinet in the UCSB Wind Ensemble all three quarters, which had been another longstanding goal of mine for my time at university. I really enjoyed it, and had a lot of fun also introducing some of the pieces at the concerts. You can see the concerts on YouTube by clicking on these links:

Fall Quarter Concert

Winter Quarter Concert

Spring Quarter Concert

I also squeezed in some camping and backpacking trips where I could, notably, a trip to Santa Rosa Island in November with Excursion Club, a couple weekend trips with friends, backpacking with my mom and sister over spring break, and a trip to the Carrizo Plains in April.

I also spent Thanksgiving in Texas with the extended family, and Christmas in Germany with the other side of the family. I also took a trip up to Copenhagen to visit Fiona.

I did my best to keep some fun in my life, but realistically, most of my time was spent attending class, reading and writing for my classes, and writing my thesis. (Hence the neglected blog – any free time I had I was definitely not willing to spend writing).

All my hard work paid off though, and my Senior Thesis, titled “Ectos, Oaks, and Drought: Examining the Effects of Fungal Communities on Drought Stressed Quercus lobata Seedlings” was recognized as one of the two best senior theses in the Environmental Studies program this year. In June, I graduated with highest honors and distinction in the major, which are recognitions for having maintained a very high GPA in all my classes over the 4 years.

Graduation was very fun but hectic – Annika and Brian and Tovia came down, as did my friends from high school Sofie and Sean. Sofie took some very nice grad pictures of me and Summer, which I could not be more happy about and thankful for. The graduation itself was hot – scorching sun and no wind or clouds. That day, I also moved houses, and took the bus to Flagstaff, Arizona for the Peaks Hike.

Even after submitting my thesis and graduating, am still not done with my work in the lab. I am determined to write a first-author published paper about my research, and so I spent the summer working mainly on that. I finally got back the genetic information about what fungi were on the roots of my trees, and spent a large portion of the summer working on getting that data into a manageable format – it’s huge amounts of data that a normal computer cannot handle and even a powerful computer can take hours to run the code necessary for processing it. In the end, though, I was successful, and have a dataset I can work with from my own computer. If you had asked me a couple years ago if I was at all interested in working with bioinformatics at all I would have told you “absolutely not”. But my love for mushrooms has carried me this far, and even if all I do these days is coding, I’m still technically working with mushrooms and that keeps me going.

In addition to working fulltime in the lab, I also moved into a new house, the first non-co-op house I’ve lived in in Isla Vista since my first year. We were 6 girls in a 3-bed 1-bath house, which worked out much better than you might imagine. It was such a great place to live over the summer, and I really enjoyed doing puzzles with them and watching the occasional movie. I also took some fun trips, the highlight being a weekend trip to Yosemite – it was a lot of driving for not all that much time there, but I had never been to Yosemite and it was so beautiful, and the group I pulled together was great.

Much of the summer was also spent preparing for my move back to New Zealand, from buying flights and insurance to finding a house and applying to (and being rejected from) various jobs. I have a house, I have some friends, and I will keep working remotely on my work in the lab for a couple weeks at least so I don’t need to worry about a job right away. Saying goodbye to my parents and then getting on the plane felt so surreal – now that I’ve been in New Zealand for almost two weeks it’s finally setting in that I actually live here now.