Wrapping things up...

At work this week we finished sorting sediment and the other day Steve gave us some results! 5 pages of graphs that we have to figure out what they even mean by using books and resources, after we figure it out they said for practice writing up a scientific paper. So we’re trying to put something together, it is hard though with not that much time left. Also the research is not completely over; AUT is going to continue to get data for each season to compare if the diversity changes over the seasons.

Yesterday we had a huge pizza party that our boss Steve let us invite our other Australearn friends interning here at other places! And it made us marine biologists here feel so important because he gave a speech! It started with how the last interns left a bad taste in his mouth and how WE (Nigeen, Lara, Hannah, Sabrina, Moriah and I) have been excellent!! He thanked us so much for everything we have done and said that the amount of data and work that we have done over the last 2 months is a little less than a PhD. He also said that they were very frantic all day because Clara had to create a poster with everything to present and they will now possibly get a $400,000 dollar GRANT!!!!! He said that without us they wouldn’t have been able to make the tender, he even said if we ever wanted to come back and sort more sediment we would have a real job here! Even Clara who didn’t want to give a speech admits she lovesssss us! I felt so proud of myself that I was part of real science, I still have a lot to learn but I’m getting there one day at a time!

Now that it’s getting towards the end I keep having flashbacks from the first week and how we all just met and everything was so new, things have changed so much since then and everything has been so remarkable! This is not going to be my last visit to New Zealand and it won’t be the last time I see the friends I’ve become so attached to here.