Merr received his mission call! He'll be reporting to the MTC this summer to learn Spanish
before leaving to serve the people of Bahia Blanca, Argentina. SO AWESOME!!!!!!!!
Brittney's guess was sooo close.
I look psycho. I was just really really happy.
I won something!
Namely the "People" category in the Geography department photo contest.
With over 40 entrants I was pretty surprised! And real happy, of course.
Alpine slide in Park City. Terrifying and awesome.
Merr and I decided to have some brother/sister bonding time and got our wisdom teeth out together. Surgery is the weirdest thing ever. All I can say is that they put me in a chair, stuck a needle in my arm, I felt my head start to spin, I asked the anesthesiologist how it worked, and then the next thing I knew I was in the car and we were getting frosties at Wendy's. It's weird to think that there was 20 minutes or so of my life that I experienced but have no memory of.
Fun fact: I have no recollection of taking this picture.
Or of the video Ryan took of us somewhere near this point in time.
Before and after:
We enjoyed a weekend full of oxycodone, sleeping more than I ever have in my life, General Conference (which despite the level of narcotic painkillers that were in my bloodstream I was mostly awake and alert for), pudding, yogurt, soup, and everything else under the sun that doesn't require chewing.
Merritt even had some cool daydreams in and out of consciousness that he'd wake up suddenly and tell us about, compliments of the drugs. Things about ferry boats and popcorn and libraries... Needless to say he reacted a little differently to the drugs than I did. And we enjoyed it.
One week later was the crowning event in any undergraduate research assistant's life -
The Fulton Conference of Mentored Student Research.
"The Annual Mary Lou Fulton Mentored Research Conference showcases some of the best student research from the College of Family, Home, and Social Sciences. The mentored learning program encourages undergraduate students to participate in hands-on and practical research under the direction of a faculty member. Students create these posters as an aide in presenting the results of their research to the public, faculty, and their peers."
I had two posters in the conference - one from a class and one for my job. It was so much fun to teach people about what we had learned and were contributing to scientific literature.
Poster #1, outlining our success with the juniper samples we've been working with since November. So far we've gotten back to 900 A.D. (!!!!!!!) with a fantastic interseries correlation of .8 (!!!!!) and a pretty high regional correlation, too. My job rocks.
We got a lot of attention and were talking to people throughout both sessions. We were so stoked when we were awarded second place ($200) from the Charles Redd Center for Western Studies! Lots of tough hours in the lab = really paid off. Calli will be graduating this month and I'm gonna miss her, and the Britney Spears jam sessions, and the Lord of the Rings geek-out moments, and the general tree-ring nerdiness we share.
Poster #2 was a group research project from my Landscape Ecology class. We studied how the spatial characteristics of the Provo River have changed from its channelization in the 1930s to after the recent Provo River Reconstruction Project, which restored the river to its natural meandering shape.
Presenting about this was SO fun, because it was a relevant and relatable subject to anyone from the Provo area. I almost died when we were awarded first place ($300) for our research at the award luncheon. Talk about an amazing day.
Our fantastic group minus one. And Dr. B. I love BYU and my major!
Life is good.
