As Anna shared last week, we have experienced many obstacles leading up to week six in the Outer Banks, but now we are finally in the swing of things. This week, we have truly been able to dive into our capstone research in several aspects and test our ability to work as a team.
The first test we faced this week was holding our second meeting with the Community Advisory Board (CAB). Throughout the semester, we will be meeting with the CAB to discuss our progress on our capstone project and receive much appreciated feedback that is directly from community members. This was our first presentation as a team, so we had to find a way to delegate the work and still come together to make it cohesive.
Wednesday was also a challenging day for us. We spent several hours discussing the interviews that were conducted for last year’s capstone project picking out key concepts that each interviewee mentioned. As a team, we had to analyze the list of hundreds of concepts we found and condense the list down to 25. You can only imagine how difficult that could be. We had meaningful discussions and listened to each other’s thoughts and ideas and created a new concept list we all agreed upon.
After talking about Buxton Woods so much, on Friday, we got our first chance to go and begin our data collection for the capstone. We were faced with the challenge of deciphering vague descriptions from 1988 of where this sample plot was located, so we would be able to begin our sampling. Thanks to a few people’s strong orienteering skills, we were able to locate the old conduits fairly quickly. The rest of the day we were in smaller teams to complete our data collection. It was a learning process of trying to find the most efficient methods of sampling and working together to try and do so. Overall, this was another successful day of collaboration as we continue to learn how we can work together.
Photo credit to Emmy 🙂
This week has shown us ways we work well together and other areas that will need improvement to have a successful semester inside and outside of the classroom. As I reflect on everything we have done so far, I feel optimistic and hopeful for the rest of the semester. Even though we all have backgrounds in the environmental field, every person brings something unique to the table and is eager to learn from one another. I feel lucky to be a part of this cohort and am excited to see what we will accomplish as a team.
BONUS CONTENT!!
