This is one of my newer lessons as collaboration is more prevelant once you expand beyond the bounds of the University. It still happens all the time though within UofSC where any number of professors will help another in the same or different school. In my experiece, it was difficult to get help from other professors when it was not my field of study. I was often overlooked as an overeager student who was overly ambitious. I mean who could blame them? I was incoherent when I spoke computer modeling with gaps of knowledge I had yet to understand. When signing up for a dual degree, an exploratory advisor deemed I was in over my head. I actually needed to find the dual degree sign up myself hidden in the archives of old forms on the university website. It was to their suprise that I was in the new major workshop.

    It is easy to show when collaboration did not exist, but when it did it almost seemed as though it was natural. At a recent cross paper talk with Dr. Senner and Dr. Dallas labs, we discussed the benefit for the combination of theoretical and empirical ecology. This is basically the divide between mathematical formulations of the environment and measuring field observations. It should be a balance of the two, but far too often due to inexperience in advanced math, ecologist seem to overlook fundamental ecological theory papers. It is a necessity that we improve the bridging of these divides to encourage innovation in a combination of different schools of thought.

    It was the summer of folowing my junior year, I had the opportunity to be an intern for the Pacific Northwest National Labratory. I had to unfortunately be virtual like so many due to Covid-19, but this brought the opportunity for me to be part of a national group of scientists in real time. As part of a new research group called COMPASS, I was tasked with working with this wonderful group to find ways to evaluate and measure nutrient cycling in our nations most vulnerable and valuable ecosystem, estuaries. Before signing for the role, I was told I would be working with random forests, a machine learning model, to increase the resolution of nutrient measurements by utilizing surrogate water quality metrics that are sampled via sensors every 15 minutes whereas nutrients have to be measured in the lab usually at an hourly resolution. It was through this experience that I got to work with other National Labratory scientists on both coasts of the U.S.. They mentored me in how to write code efficiently and with heavy documentation through GitHub and in R.

    Though this national collaboration was easy to see and was invaluable as an experience, it opened my eyes to the collaboration that existed right in my classes. Coming from a diverse set of backgrounds, my group in CSCE 247 created an amazing fundamental app for housing in South Carolina for students and teachers as our class project. The design document is below. We exemplified teamwork through regular team meetings and assignment of roles. We pushed each other to exceeed expectations, take initiative, and mentor one another to be better programmers. I owe this experience much for the reason why I can use GitHub so proficiently and as to why I have two life long friends who I can always turn to for help. It is through collaboration we build new relationships, continue to innovate, and diversify our own personalities and insights.

    Like the dragonfly in the picture above, we can often be percieved as alone when it comes to our passions. We are often so honed in on on our own missions in life that we often miss the opportunites to grow from each other. We often miss the opportunities to take advantage of being a better person. If I were to leave a mission for UofSC to look toward, it would be to look for chances to ease the boundaries of interdisiplinary study, focus on helping students broaden their skills for after graduation, and challenge those that are willing to do more than what is expected. This challenge to foster a community that is together and not divided by school or though makes for a place for UofSC students to trully go into the working world prepared and not scared for any adversity they will surely face.