Small-Footed Bat

I have been extremely stressed the past few week and have not been getting much sleep.  Since I am up in the middle of the night most night I thought I might as well use that time wisely.  So, a few weeks ago I got a research technician job working with bats.  In case any of you weren't sure, bats are nocturnal and are up in the middle of the night as well! 

We are studying the spread of 'white nose syndrome' which, if I remember correctly, is a deadly fungal infection that spreads very easily between bat populations.  As you can see in the picture above, we go to old train tunnels to trap bats.  You can't see it very well but right in front of the tunnel is a giant net that covers the entire entrance.  The square that you see in the middle of the 'net' is where the bats try to fly through.  The square section is lined with rows of fishing line.  The bats will fly into the fishing line and fall down into a bag at the bottom where we collect them.  Since I don't have my rabies vaccines I don't get to handle the bats but I'll do the data recording, sterilizing, and help with the setup/takedown.  

This is a view of our work area looking down from the top of the tunnel.

This is our work station where we bring the bats back to work on.

Last night we caught our first bat of the season and it just happened to be a small-footed bat which is a state endangered species and probably soon a federally endangered species.  These are the bats we really want to find (although any bat is good!)  When we find the small-footed bats we attach a radio telemetry tracker on them so we can follow them over the following 2 weeks after capture and release.  

They let me name the bat because I came up with a funny name!  At least I thought it was funny.  When we catch a bat and record the data for it we have to make note of what species it is.  We use 4 letter codes that are abbreviated for their scientific name.  The small-footed bat is abbreviated MYLE.  Naturally Miley Cyrus came to mind.  Myle, Miley, get it?!  However, since it is a boy bat I just named it Cyrus.  Come on, thats funny right?  :}

Here we are getting ready put an ID band on his wing.

I love this picture!!  Hopefully you can blow it up after I publish this post.  He's not angry, he's just saying 'cheese'  :}

This is a picture of the bat after we had the transmitter attached, right before he was released.

Me with the bat.

Lisa (my office mate) with the bat.

Juliet (my boss) with the bat.

Philly Trip

I have always wanted to go to Philadelphia to get a legitimate Philly cheese steak.  I proposed the idea when we were talking about activities to do for institute and we actually ended up doing it, today!  It was a bout a 4 1/2 hour trip but boy was it worth it.  We got there just in time for lunch.  If you watch the food or travel channel much you might have caught a show talking about the "big debate" in Philly and who has the best cheese steak.  There is a corner with 2 famous shops that get most of the hype so we decided to check that out.  I was so hungry when we got there that we ate one from Pats and then ran across the street and tried one from Geno's.  I downed 2 cheese steaks in about 15 minutes!!

One of the big controversies is whether to use cheese whiz or provolone, so of course I tried one of each =)  BY FAR the cheese whiz was much better.  The provolone had no flavor to it, pretty much just tasted like water.  So when we went back for dinner I got another cheese whiz!

This is a picture looking from Pat's across the street to Geno's.  I might have to cast my vote for Geno's (despite the fact that that is where I got the one with the provolone) because I liked the bread a little better.  It was softer.  Pat's bread kind of hurt my teeth trying to bite through it (mom would probably prefer Pats due to that :)  Besides the bread, the meat, onions, and cheese whiz tasted about the same from both places.

This is just a random building in Philly.  The city its self was CRAZY.  The streets were small and crowded with cars flying everywhere.  One thing that was interesting is that cars would park in the middle of the street.  If you picture a 4 lane road (2 in each direction) you know how there is usually a big yellow section that divides the 2 directions well people would park their cars in the yellow.  So you would be driving down the road and in the middle there would a row of empty cars.  Some of them even would hang over into the left turn lane.  I don't know if that even makes sense or if you can picture that or not but it was pretty strange.

It also was a pretty dirty city.  The wind was EXTREMELY strong (which made it really cold) but it also made it seem like it was raining trash.  You would be walking down the sidewalk (which had animal poop EVERYWHERE) and plastic bags or small pieces of paper would just start falling out of the sky and landing all over you.

I was walking down the side walk (dodging falling trash) and I saw this statue.  I was looking at it and then looked down at the description/name and saw "The Singer".  Apparently its real name is "The Signer" (I might be a slight dyslexic, who knows...)  But if you were to just look at it what would you think it would say?  Looks like he is singing to me!!

Here is Independence Hall.  Of course when I go to Philly it is under construction.  We were still able to take a tour of it though.  Found out its original name was NOT Independence Hall, can't remember what it was though.

The Liberty Bell.  Pretty cool to see!!

 

Inside Independence Hall.

This is the room where the Constitution was actually signed.  Learned that it actually wasn't signed until August 2nd (or 22nd, don't remember)  July 4th was when it was accepted I believe.  The chair in the back is the actual chair that George Washington sat in during all of their meetings.  It is the only "original" item in the room.  Also learned that after President Lincoln was assassinated, on the way to bringing his body back to Illinois they stopped off there and had an open casket in that room for the public to go and pay their respect.  

A few more items from Independence Hall.  (thought mom might like the piano)

And of course, the "Rocky stairs"!!!  This last picture was from the top of the stairs looking out over Philly.  Nice view.  And no, I did not run up the stair and pump my fists and the top like Rocky  :}

Lost Photos

I found a roll of film when I was home for Christmas so I thought I would develop it.  Mystery rolls of film can be very interesting but this one really came through!  I loved the flash back from when my little buddies were A LOT younger.

 

If you couldn't tell these first ones were from when I went to Grand Canyon.  I did a national parks trip on my way out to school one year and stopped by 5 national parks, visited the Snow's in NM, the Wilson's in AZ, and the Detro's and Warrens in UT.

  

 

I typically HATE these type of pictures but since somebody took this picture I figured they would want to see it.  Plus Jared's face is pretty funny

 

 

I love this last one of "Mo" and Lynny

Evaluations!!!

Warning, Long post...

At the end of every semester the university has the students fill out evaluations on their teachers, even grad students.  It is actually the grad students responsibility to go around to the different classes (the teacher will step out during the eval) and hand out the evaluations.

I just got mine back from last semester.  I unfortunately did not do as well as I would have liked or thought I might have done.  I got an overall score of 3.91 out of 5.  It was roughly midway of all of the grad students.  I was actually kind of bummed because I thought my kids liked me.  Reading through the "free response" answers it actually seemed like I got some very nice comments so I was confused why the overall score was so low.  Oh well.  Heres to improving for this semester!

I thought it would be fun to share some of the comments my students made with you guys.  I found it funny how within the same class the responses were so different.  Oh, when I share the nicer responses, its not to brag but to compare with the not so positive responses =)

(There were 2 questions on the instructor on the "free response" section.  "What are the major strengths of the instructor and then the major weaknesses")

It turns out that one girl REALLY didn't like me.  Lets start with that one...

Major Strengths:  None (with a frowny face)
Major weaknesses:  -Barely prepared.  -Could hardly answer any of my questions.  -Not good at relaying information.  -Hardly ever available outside of class.  -"Suspect" grading scale.  -Barely seemed to care.  -Quick to say "I don't know", without offering further assistance.

Wowzer!  It was actually kind of funny because right after reading that one I read these ones (again from the same class).

Major strengths:  Clear explanations, good with questions.  On time grading and respect
Major weaknesses:  None

Major strengths:  Always came to class prepared and ready to explain the assignment.  Also was there to give step by step guidance.
Major weaknesses:  Sometimes the grading was not explained carefully.  (I'll talk more about this one later)

Major strengths:  Always seemed interested in what the students were doing in each experiment.

Major weaknesses:  Grades to hard

One person said this

Major weaknesses:  He would constantly be late...

I honestly can say that I was NEVER late for any of my labs.  I was always early to prepare for lab.  

Oh, and going back up to the girl that really disliked me and said I was never available; If I am not in class I am ALWAYS in my office.  Many days from 7:30ish until 4ish.  I am ALWAYS in my office, way more then any other grad student and they all admit that and were blown away when I shared that one with them.  

Some more from my other class:

Major strengths:  Seemed to really care about what he was teaching, and helped as much as he could when answering questions.

Major weaknesses:  None

Major strengths:  He was very respectable and very cool as a bio teacher for lab.  (I liked that one =)

Major weaknesses:  Grades this course to hard

Major strengths:  Good guy, friendly, polite, respectful

Major weaknesses:  Never once received full credit for my labs  (many kids DID get full credit.  If you don't deserve it then you don't get it...)

At the end of the semester we hand out awards for the toughest grader and the easiest grader, "Hard ass grader"  and "Powder Puff grader" respectively.  Well, as you might have guessed from my "weakness" comments, I received the hard ass grader.  I was actually blown away by this because on almost all of the assignments I found myself giving points away to these kids.  I was trying to be as nice as I could with the grading.  We have rubrics to follow for the grading so I am told what to take points off for.  At times I would NOT take off some of the points that I probably should have, and I still was considered the hardest grader.  Hmm... not sure about that one

Anyways, I have actually really enjoyed teacher so far!  Perhaps I can change some things around and improve for this next semester  =)

Projects

Now that I am at a non-BYU school, I actually get a legitimate winter break (over a month!!)  Besides the week and a half that I was sick I have been keeping myself pretty busy with different projects around the house.  Here are just a few that I thought you guys might be interested in.

I put in a peg-board for the tools and moved them all over to the way that is shared with the house.  Hopefully this will help prevent toys from building up in front of them so we can easily get to them when we need them!! 

I then pushed the shelves together to close in the gap where the tools were located and tried organizing things so less stuff was cluttered on the ground.  Despite how it looks in the pictures it actually is a lot less cluttered and there is a lot more room in the garage to move around =)

With the help of Katy, when she was still here, I got a bunch of pictures hung around the house.  They really are a lot more straight when you look at them in person compared to how it looks in the picture... Katy and mom can back me up on that!

Moved the fish tank closer to the wall by cutting and adjusting the lid and getting a new filter for it.  (mom still hates it with a passion)

Hung the clock, again with Katy's help

These are on the wall to the right (next to the book shelves) when you are looking at the TV.  Also hung some other random pictures around the house.

I also tried gluing down the train tracks to the train table while Kelly and Katy's kids where here to test how it would hold up to play... complete and utter failure.  Those kids had that thing torn apart within 5 minutes of playing with it!!!  Maybe next time I am home I will try some kind of stronger adhesive 

Well, those were some of the larger projects I did.  Probably not very interesting to most of you but I haven't posted anything in a while so why not :}

UPDATE...

Here is an attempt at a picture of the closet mom was talking about.  I forgot about this project, which is odd because it was a lot of work.  Anyways, it is the closet that is next to the bathroom by the kitchen and dining room.