S-STEM/TRAIN Scholar Christopher Livingston's Blog

The semester is coming to a close very soon and although it felt like it's taken forever it also feels like it went very fast. This is my last semester at Phoenix College (although I'll be back for another chemistry class at some point). Being a student again has been an amazing experience for me, every aspect of my life has changed since I decided to come back to school and sometimes I'm not sure who I am anymore... but there is nothing I regret and I'm coming to like the new me the more I get to know him. It takes courage to make life changing decisions, and it takes courage to see your commitments through and nobody tells you how scary and difficult the process of destroying yourself to build a better you is. I'm sure nobody expected this semester to turn out as it has, I think about how we've had to adapt to make things work and that the tools that we've utilized to adapt have been because of advancements we've made in the past decade. There is no wa

Happy April 23rd fellow research students! This week I was able to get a hold of my insect samples that were collected from the Phoenix College garden earlier in the semester. They are currently 'chilling' in my freezer, waiting for me to further separate and classify them for the research project. Having these samples will help me to do much more work on my paper than I would have been able to do without them, so thank you Matt for coordinating a safe hand-off of the samples to me. As we continue our isolation indoors I hope that everyone is doing well and has plenty of nutritious food and stimulating activities. Please take care of yourselves, I will see you all on the other side of this pandemic!

Hopefully everyone is doing well out there. This week things seemed to start moving along with my classes. I have been getting in touch with some contacts from my physics and chemistry classes so we can struggle through this ordeal together and it seems to be paying off. After speaking with Matt I have a good idea of how my research project is going to proceed, so that is a relief. My paper will probably only have a partial conclusion but I think that should be just fine given the situation. It seems our beautiful extended spring may be getting ready to depart us, so if you have any big projects to get done in your yard this weekend might be your last good shot at it. Take care guys. More flowers from my yard:                  

So, we've been away from school for some weeks now and trying to get back into the swing is going to be difficult. A couple of my classes are going fine online and I don't see any problem with completing them in the future. The rest of my classes are not going as smoothly though, either it's a problem with transitioning to online format for the instructor... or because the instructor communicates very little to the students (which was also the case while we were still coming to class). I really don't know if I'll be able to pass some of those classes online. I at least felt like I had some sort of control over my grade when I was able to physically attend class... now, not so much. Hopefully things work out. Attached is a picture of this blog being written on my laptop.