Yoshi Yajima

he/him
Undergraduate Fellow
Tick and Wildlife Ecology Team
Team Vibes

Yoshi is joining Tyson from Brown University, finding himself in St. Louis for the first time. He is splitting his time between Kim Medley and Kasey Fowler-Finn’s Team Vibes and Beth Biro and Solny Adalsteinsson’s Tick and Wildlife Team.

One thing that I learned from this summer, or so far, is that research actually goes a lot slower than I thought it would – you can’t rush it even when you’re excited about it. And it makes sense because the projects at Tyson have been active for years, right? I'm currently a rising junior, so I only have like two years at most in college. I tend to put a lot of effort into my projects and then get exhausted, like I'm gonna push myself and just do a lot of work. But I realized that it's also important to think about research in the long term, to be able to maintain your motivations, or to just maintain work-life balance in general. I haven't thought about that much as an undergrad.

What’s been your favorite part of the summer so far?

My favorite part was the overnight activity. That was really fun, just like to get to see what Tyson looks near dusk and at night. I also liked being with my friends, talking and getting closer to them.

You and Lyle camped out, right? What did you get up to?

We went somewhere near the entrance of Tyson because he knew of a flat place. Basically what happened was like we set up, joined the other community events, then we were so exhausted on that day, because it was past 11. So we went to the site and just fell asleep. It was a cool spot, but it was too dark, I didn't see anything. I also woke up pretty late on that day, 7 or 7:30, something like that. So I didn't see the sun coming out or anything different from what I usually see. It was just like, yeah, normal Tyson. Overall, it was a good experience.