ERin O’Connell
Lead Technician
What has been an affirming moment this summer?
“I was thinking, ‘How am I going to break it to the team that we have barely made a dent in the volume of work we have to do?,’ but no one is phased by that. Everyone's very gung-ho and enthusiastic, and whenever I say something like, ‘Okay, we're going to have to do this,’ someone will respond, 'Let's do it! We got this.' Everyone's enthusiasm has been really great. I haven't had to worry about that at all.”
“I’ve enjoyed the repetitiveness of the work actually. Coming right off of my master's degree, constantly thinking about questions and trying to answer and rework and rewrite, it's especially nice to have something that I just go to and it is repetitive and it's pleasant to be outside when there aren't quite so many mosquitoes. I'm just measuring plants today and hanging out and chatting and it's kind of relaxing in a surprising way.”
Do you anticipate doing similar work in the future?
“I like science, I like research, but I also like conservation and outreach and citizen science and—communication, like what you guys are doing! Of course people that have a PhD also do that sort of work, but I've always envisioned that it would be fun to facilitate a citizen science program. For example, I was studying phenology—the timing of when leaves come out and when they fall off in the fall—it's really easy to observe. Anyone off the street can see that now there's leaves when there weren't last week, and the same thing in the fall—colors are changing. It's an easy way to get people hooked into science. I thought it would be fun to work for an organization that does conservation research but also outreach. Like a botanic garden or an arboretum, that balances those two things and has programs for the general public.”
“However, I've been saying, ‘That is what I really want to do,’ but then I really like this research. So the summer is causing me to think a little bit more about where I want to go.”