Tales from the 2006 Interns
Below are excerpts from the travel journals of four of the ten local interns chosen for Pinhead Institute’s 2006 Internship Program, which sends high school juniors and seniors to work with mentors in science institutions throughout the world. Brooke Hunger is currently a senior at Ridgway High School. Brooke and Telluride High School senior Paloma Wodehouse spent their summer working in Costa Rica at INBIO, an international biodiversity research center and two of Costa Rica’s National Parks. Harley Hollenbeck, is currently a senior at Ouray High School. He spent six weeks this summer in Bochum, Germany at the Ruhr-Universitaet working with Dr. Mark Tuckerman, a professor of Math and Chemistry at New York University and a participant in the Telluride Science Research Center. Chris Anderson spent two months this summer working with Dr. Conrad Labandeira, a paleoentomologist at the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History in Washington DC. Chris is currently a senior at Norwood High School, and hopes to continue his work in paleontology in college and graduate school. Dr. Labandeira enthusiastically invited Chris back to his lab next summer.
Brooke Hunger: My trip began on June 12, 2006 when I left the Montrose airport at around eight in the morning and headed for Costa Rica. Paloma, from Telluride, who I had only met once before, was also doing an Internship the same time I was. Nine hours later we arrived in San Jose, Costa Rica where our mentor Vanessa met us along with another volunteer from Spain named Maria. Both of them spoke very decent English, and were very kind. We were taken to the INBio Research Center near San Jose where we spent the next four days. The first night there we were told about some of the bugs, mainly the cockroaches, and within a minute Maria bent over and a huge cockroach was crawling on her back! I swiped it off and killed it. After Maria saw it she told me “that’s one of the smaller ones.”
Read more about Brooke's adventures...
Paloma Wodehouse: There was one saying I found myself repeating again and again throughout my entire trip in Costa Rica: “Now I have experienced everything.” This saying covered the good, the bad, and the ugly. Seeing bright green glowing plankton in the ocean one night that illuminated the waves was a really good experience. Finding a hummingbird caught in a giant spider’s web was a bad experience. The monstrous condition my legs were in after being attacked by the largest mosquitoes and having their bites turn into actual blisters was literally an ugly experience. To be honest though, the good experiences were so amazing and breathtaking that they made the bad and the ugly ones virtually unnoticeable.
Paloma's experiences in Costa Rica continue...
Harley Hollenbeck: A month and a half later, here I sit . . . by the computer that has taught me Linux, C++... on the desk where I have manipulated and solved hundreds of equations . . . at the university where I was so graciously educated . . . at in a country that I knew nothing about (well, continent for that matter). It’s rather sweet, ah! As I look back, I remember my first weeks of mental exhaustion, as I fought to overcome scientific, linguistic, and environmental challenges of an internship at Ruhr Universitat in Bochum, Germany.
Read about all of Harley's adventures in Germany...
Chris Anderson: Wow, where to start? A lot has happened in the week since I have arrived in Washington, DC. I arrived last week amidst a flooded DC; luckily, though, the day my plane left was the day that it stopped the record breaking downpour. Soon after arriving I met my host for the next two months, Mr. Ned Slagle. Ned is an old friend of my grandfather’s who was gracious enough to allow me to stay with him for the duration of my internship.
On Friday I met my mentor, Dr. Conrad Labandeira, a paleoentomologist who specializes in the evolution of plant and insect interactions. After meeting Dr. Labandeira I was given a desk and told about the first project that I'm going to be working on: researching Paleozoic plant-insect relations from the Carboniferous Period. This means that I get to spend the next couple of weeks sifting through various plant fossils from the Carboniferous age under a microscope and try to identify signs of insect herbivory. It's not the most glorious work, but I'm still enjoying it quite a bit because of the fact that I'm handling these fossils in the Smithsonian, of all places. It still boggles my mind to think that I'm actually interning at the Smithsonian.
More about Chris' exciting times in Washington, DC and at the Smithsonian...