Raven Herron

 Hello from College Park!

This past week has been a blur! From starting my week off on Monday in Garrett County helping with the state FFA Convention to Thursday, where I spent my time in College Park with the other interns, I have experienced a lot! During our trip to College Park, we had two wonderful speakers talk to us about leadership and communication. While I had heard and done some of the same developmental activities in the past, Myles Alexander came prepared with fun team-building activities. One of my favorite things about the trip was getting to problem-solve and experience those team-building activities together through that clinic with Myles. Another leadership speaker, Antonio Silas spoke about the different types of leaders. This is very useful for the future because it can help anyone determine what type of leader they are working for, how to best operate under that leadership, and inversely, how to understand the type of leader that you are and how you best operate. 

The other interns and I traveled to various laboratories and research facilities across campus in order to see the educational institution work that is done and aligns with extension work. Other trip highlights were visiting the insect zoo and working with a water quality lab. 

As an Animal Science major, I am open to learning about animals I don’t interact with much, or at all. Entomology is a massive field, constantly and consistently finding new creatures to adopt into their study. Entomologists focus on more than just “bugs” which can be considered a more generic term for insects, but many also study arachnids, myriapods, crustaceans, and more! I got to see and learn about many animals under the Insect Zoo’s care, but Stella, the tarantula, was my favorite. She has been in hundreds of people's hands and was such a docile soul. 

This is me, holding Stella!

We also got to help a PhD student with her water quality research. She was testing the creek that runs through campus for the presence of E. Coli. We assisted in taking and running samples through a filter to plate and grow E. Coli.

This is an image of me collecting water in the stream that we later filtered in the lab!