Rachel recently used the analogy (METAPHOR? KY SCHOOLS TAUGHT ME THINGS I SWEAR) that life can be a feel like a circus act of spinning plates in the air. All the tasks and goals we balance in grad school are different plates, and we also want to keep ourselves and our relationships healthy and spinning. This blog is about our life, but as scientists our work is a large part of the equation. The amount of focus we can dedicate to Sweet Tea, Science waxes and wanes as the number of plates we have in the air changes. We’ve learned over the years to be gentle with ourselves and each other during times when the STS plate needs to be ignored a bit. Our lives are ramping up in exciting ways as we both near the end of the PhD chapter that’s kept our plates and heads spinning for the last 5+ years. (Y’all, Rachel is SO close to being my Dr. Bestie!! ::hearteyes::)
Continue reading “This Blog is also about Our Work (#actuallivingscientist)”Tag: Life Update
Sunshine Blogger Award Q&A
The Sunshine Blogger Award is an accolade given by one blogger to another in recognition for work that they find creative, inspiring and positive. We are tickled and humbled to be nominated and have been enjoying peeping all of the other recipients in this network!
The rules of the award are:
- Thank blogger(s) who nominated you in the blog post and link back to their blog.
- Answer the 11 questions the blogger asked you.
- Nominate 11 new blogs to receive the award and write them 11 new questions.
- List the rules and display the Sunshine Blogger Award logo in your post and/or on your blog.
Last week Sweet Tea, Science was nominated for the Sunshine Blogger Award by the fabulous Science Femina!
Tess, the woman behind The Science Femina, is a California native working and pursuing a graduate degree in Chemistry at California State University, Fresno. Her experiences partnering with countless outreach organizations to promote diversity in STEM translate nicely to super helpful blog posts. We love that she is writing about her experiences in order to guide and motivate future generations. Some of our favorite posts include: From JC to UC to MS Degree and You Can’t Do It All And 4 Things I’m Doing Instead. Also be sure to check her out on Twitter and Instagram.
The Science Femina asked us the following questions: 
How did you come up with the title of your blog?
We wanted a name to tie together our southern roots and our love for all things science. We both grew up in the woods of Kentucky and met in undergrad at Western Kentucky University. Also alliteration is something we highly value. We used to have separate blogs (Always a Scientist and Practical Ecologist) but we found working together on a single project was more enjoyable because it gave us an excuse to spend more time together and explore what we could create as a team! Continue reading “Sunshine Blogger Award Q&A”
Catching Up with STS – Meridith Edition
HELLO FRIENDS! It has been a long, tough year since Rachel and I have posted here on Sweet Tea, Science. We’ve tried to keep up with people via Twitter (Mer’s, Rach’s, and the STS accounts) and Instagram (again we all have one!) but we started feeling that blogging itch once more, so we’re back. We wanted to start with updates on our academic and personal lives, because this blog is about the science journeys of two actual living people. We’ve had some highs and lows. Some heart-breaking tragedies and some magical love-filled unions.
Summer 2017
This time last year I was enjoying the perks of summer in Colorado while exploring the in’s and out’s of working in an industry setting. I’ve had many summer adventures/internships/travels, but any work I’ve done has been 100% within the realm of academia. However, via a connection made through my advisor at the big statistics conference (Joint Statistical Meeting or JSM), I landed an internship at an environmental consulting agency. The further along I get in my studies the more certain I am I’d like to explore career options outside of academia; so this was an amazing opportunity.
I worked with Neptune & Co., a small but growing environmental consulting company focusing on environmental decision making though quality assurance, data science, and risk assessment. As an intern, I helped the other statisticians working on a project modelling the future (millions of years future!) risks and impacts of nuclear waste storage around the US. I loved being able to learn about an important issue from experts in various fields while applying what I’ve been learning over the past few years in my PhD studies.
We focused on the biotic impact portion of the models and worked to use what precious few data are available to create some distributions for variable such as: plant root shape,root depth, burrow depths, etc. All of these factors can potentially bring up buried contaminants if the burrows or roots venture too deep. It’s important to represent these as distributions (e.g. a Normal distribution LINK) rather than a point estimate (e.g. a mean or median) because it allows for more representation of uncertainty in the model.
Also we did lots of hiking and took adorable photos!
Continue reading “Catching Up with STS – Meridith Edition”
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