The past 6 months have absolutely flown by. Unfortunately, this means my time at bioCEED has come to an end.
Over the past 2 months I have settled back into “normal” life back in Australia. My work within bioCEED has been focusing on getting microbiology and lichen ready to be published. This has involved proof-reading, editing and coordinating with the authors of those sections.
The past 2 months has involved a lot of web development. I have pretty much no experience in this department. Most of the web development revolved around simplifying and tidying up the old website as many parts where cluttered, didn’t work or did not serve a purpose. There were many days that were quite frustrating as I would be trying to accomplish a very small basic task, such as changing the size of the font, that would take many hours. Even though it was frustrating at times I did enjoy teaching myself new skills. I started working more closely with Anne, the other intern. This made the work more enjoyable as we could easily bounce ideas off of each other and had someone to talk to about small changes to the website.
This internship gave me some light in how an organisation and the academia world operates. I thoroughly enjoyed being a part of the team even though I am on the other side of the world. It was very interesting observing how not only bioCEED but UNIS as well adapted to the transition of moving everything online post-COVID.
bioCEED to some degree changed my opinion of what and how a biologist can contribute to society. Previously, I would have thought that a biologist would be in the field, in a classroom teaching or working with conservation, etc. However, my time at bioCEED widened my views. The work of a biologist can be quite broad and the skills you learn in a classroom can be applied to a wider range of situations.
Thanks for the good times and memories 🙂
