Throughout my week in Olympic National Park in Washington State during the Partners in the Park program, I was constantly bombarded with ethereal scenery and breathtaking panoramas. The Park offered every landscape and terrain a person could desire.  From exploring the coastline of the Pacific Ocean, to hiking through the lush, moss covered Hoh Rainforest, to watching the sun silently set on the Olympic mountain chain, the opportunities and sights were endless. As incredible as the sights were, they were not the most memorable aspect of the trip. The other students from schools all over the United States made the week what it was.

“How do you catch a bat?”  “In a mist net.”  “What’s a mist net?”

Native Americans, Mormons, insects, tourists, animals, and, yes, bats have gathered around Pipe Spring in Utah throughout its existence.  Currently, the preserved Mormon settlement around the spring has been designated as a national monument and serves as a tourist attraction.  Whether it was Benn the Paiute Native American turned Park Ranger’s traditional Memorial Day performance that stopped tourists in their tracks or the continuum of stars that shone around the monument’s small body of water after the visitor center had closed and our student group returned at nightfall to catch bats, this was a poignant place.

When I decided to be a chemical engineer, never in a million years did I think I would become an expert at dissecting frog and cow eyes. However, after only a month in Professor Rebecca Carrier’s Advanced Drug Delivery Research Laboratory, that’s exactly what I had become. I know that may seem gross – and it was for the first dozen or so – but it was also for a great scientific cause. We needed to dissect those eyes in order to isolate the retina, the cornerstone of our research project.

The ability to research effectively is an asset to potential employees in essentially any field.  In 2010, as a third-year history and international affairs major, I knew that I wanted to graduate with University Honors upon completing a junior/senior honors research project.  This would provide me with the opportunity to dedicate at least two semesters to a topic of my choice and the chance to conduct archival research, something I had always wanted to experience.  In particular, I wanted to try my hand at the National Archives in Washington, D.C. as many of my history classmates had taken the initiative to do.  I just needed a topic, the time and the finances to make it happen.

The honors book club is a group for students that is run by students. We meet once a week on Tuesday nights at 7:30 and discuss whatever we are reading over snacks. Love it, hate it, not really “your thing”, we don’t care. We just enjoy discussing literature. I think that my favorite part of book club is that we don’t read the books I want to read – we read whatever the group wants to read, and this means that I read books I would have never chosen off the shelf on my own.

Since I was young I’ve always had a love for the outdoors, but I never dreamt that I would get the chance to explore the Grand Canyon. Even after I applied and got accepted to the Partners in the Parks program I wasn’t sure which park I would go to. In the end I decided to try something completely new, and with the help of the honors program I was able to venture to the other side of the country, and go west of New York for the first time in my life.

Zion National Park is one of the few remaining nationally preserved and protected natural environments left in the United States.  Through the years the government has poured money into the national parks to keep them almost identical to the states they were found.  This past May, I and several other honors students from across the nation embarked on a fantastic adventure through the park and gained insight into its history and current maintenance.

On March 26, 2011, six Northeastern University Cultural Anthropology undergraduates (including myself) hopped into a ZipCar and drove up to the exotic locale of Rindge, New Hampshire. Though we weren’t embarking on a far-off field study, we were excited nonetheless to be presenting papers of our original research at the 2011 Northeastern Anthropological Association Conference, held at Franklin Pierce University.

In early February, with the help of the Honors Travel Grant, I was able to travel to Las Vegas, Nevada for MAGIC, one of the largest trade show events in the fashion industry. For the most part, a trade show is where buyers and sellers of clothing, accessories, shoes, and other related products come together to facilitate business and develop new trends. Within MAGIC, there are several different trade shows going on at once. For example, there is WWDMagic (women’s wear), S.L.A.T.E. (street and action brands), and FNPlatform (shoes), just to name a few.

In January, I traveled to San Diego, CA for the 40th Society of Critical Care Medicine (SCCM) Conference. SCCM is the largest multiprofessional organization dedicated to ensuring excellence and consistency in the practice of critical care. At this four-day conference, well known experts in the various fields of the critical care presented ground-breaking research and new advances made in this area of medicine.