🖤Andrea’s Adventures🖤 Weekly Blog #5

 🖤Andrea’s Adventures🖤

Start Date: June 17-26

I can’t believe we are halfway through the internship! I’ve had a blast so far and I am so grateful to my mentors Mark, Nathan and Kelly for taking me to fun farm visits, crop scouting adventures and helping me improve my Weed plant identification! They make it like a pop quiz, but without the stress, as we get to learn the different characteristics of different weeds across central Maryland.

We were able to also participate in a campus residency tour at University of Maryland, College Park for two days. Our time on campus was packed with exploration of the campus as well as getting introduced to the various labs on campus conducting research that had connections to the work we have been doing as interns. Walking around campus in the humid heat was a bit intense, but it was fun crossing campus with all the interns! It was fun being together all in one place since we usually are all together in the zoom setting. 

The first day we had some leadership training and activities that were a lot of fun and helped break down what our definition of leadership looks like. I really enjoyed the game we played where we had to collect fake cheese blindfolded and avoid the mouse traps. That game tested our communication skills, but was also fun because we got to compete against each other. We also got to visit the UMD insect zoo - and omg it was so cool! Seeing their collection blew my mind and we even got the opportunity to hold some insects! My favorite insects that I got to hold there were the lubber grasshoppers and I got to hold a 20 year old tarantula named Stella! And I am so thankful to get in contact with the coordinator of the Insect zoo to continue to volunteer and help with outreach for the insect zoo!

The second day we got to do some water sampling from a creek that runs through campus! We also had the opportunity to network with some staff on campus during a fun luncheon! And following the luncheon we got to observe some green spaces on campus that utilized the room of some builds to grow plants. Being able to experience the UMD campus was such a fun experience and I can’t wait to visit again in the future!

We got to visit the UMD Insect Zoo while we had our campus tour! My first time holding a stick bug!

I got to hold the tarantula Stella from the UMD Insect Zoo! Todd- the lead Insect technician was really cool to talk to! 

Here I found a corn earworm moth while we were checking traps with Kelly.