What exactly do I do?
I get this question a LOT so let me tell you. I'm a research assistant for Dr. Gill in the Biology department at BYU. Basically it is a great title for manual labour with a bit of science involved. We are studying the effects of climate change on an already fragile ecosystem. People say the climate is gradually warming, well why do we care? Because they say that it will probably make the wet seasons wetter and the dry seasons drier, or everything will become drier and warmer. Again, why does this matter? The ecosystems in Utah are super complex and fragile, a slight change in when the first summer rain comes can completely change the harvest, or whether the trees live or die. (by the way I am not a tree hugger – if someone owns land and wants to cut down their trees they can – it’s their own problem, although I do think we should respect the environment. It has so many natural cures, a couple of guys in the lab I work in are studying plants that might have cures to the four main cancers- amazing) So anyways we are studying the probable effects of climate change in Ephraim, Utah.
Back to the unanswered question: What exactly do I do? Ditch digging, sifting, organizing, research, record keeping, construction, camping, pest control, electrical work, software programming, and engineering. Really I am learning lots of skills. And now most of our manual labour is finishing up so I might be able to do some actual science stuff this summer.
Any more questions?
