NEON Workshop

Last weekend I spent the whole weekend (Thursday-Sunday) working! Sounds dreadful, right? It was actually pretty awesome! The ESA was organizing a workshop for about 25 college and graduate students. It has been my main project at my internship for the past few weeks, so it was great to see it happen!

We held the conference in Chevy Chase, Maryland (incidentally the first time I've been to Maryland since I was about 8 years old) and it was nice to get out of the downtown part of DC. I saw many trees and forested areas, which was absolutely beautiful since it was fall. Don't get me wrong-the city of DC has tons of trees, just not forests. And being out of downtown was nice for a bit. However, we weren't really out of the metro area, and a few blocks away awaited crazy traffic, huge buildings, and the city atmosphere. :)

The workshop was entitled "The Future of Environmental Decisions" and was designed as an introduction to GIS (geographic information systems), which is a technology used in environmental sciences. Meghan, the other intern, and I actually got to be full participants in the workshop, and I learned a lot (I'm sure Meghan did too)! I hadn't had any GIS experience, and it was nice to have an intro since I must take a GIS class with Dr. Anya next semester, and it's rumored to be a very difficult course. My group explored whether land cover and urbanization had any effect on stream temperatures in the Chesapeake Watershed. We were unable to determine any correlation, mainly due to the fact that we had about 24 hours to put the project together. If you've done GIS, you realize how crazy a time restraint that is! :D

The students who came to the workshop came from all over the US- Florida, Texas, Puerto Rico, Arizona, Virginia, Hawaii, etc. Literally, all over. They were an AWESOME group of people! They made working all weekend a fun experience, and helped me to learn more about GIS.

On Saturday night the students were set free to explore the city! Teresa, Meghan, and I went with a group of students to a Vegan restaurant near Dupont Circle, and the food was incredible! I have no plans to become vegan (or even vegetarian) but the mac and cheese-yes vegan cheese-was wonderful, as were the dumplings, miso soup, and chocolate cupcake. You would NOT know any of it was vegan. Not even the chili-cheese fries. It was definitely a great experience!

Sunday was not the happiest day- I woke up first at 4:45am to see people off on a shuttle, then again at 5:40 and 6:35 (multiple departures). Considering I didn't go to bed til nearly 1am, I was TIRED! I came back to my apartment and slept for a few more hours.

Jen