S-STEM/TRAIN Scholar Christopher Livingston's Blog

  Going forward I plan to work on my health. First off I need to work on my mental health a bit, I need to be able to feel confident about myself and my abilities again. I think that a good way to do this is just to jump right back into anything that is worrying me and deal with it head-on. Doing yoga this semester is helping me think more about my mental needs but also my physical needs which is the second thing I need to work on. I have been trying to get into better shape for way too long and my failure to accomplish this goal is most likely linked to my mental health. I don’t believe that I can work on one without working on the other. Part of my confidence is directly related to my contentment over my physical fitness so it makes sense to work on both in tandem. My career goals are still a bit up in the air, but I believe that I will most likely fall back into work that I was doing previously while I contemplate my next move, if I plan to go further with my education or not. M...

       What I have gained from reading Daring Greatly by Brené Brown is a better understanding of the relationship between shame and courage. I know that regardless of what my next step is after I graduate I should have the courage and confidence to make any decision related to that step. The way I can gain the courage to make those decisions is by believing that I am enough, I don’t have to feel that I am inadequate in any way. Brené Brown says that we should practice gratitude and lean into joy, I know that I can get stuck in a rut thinking about all of the negatives surrounding me but I need to take a moment to be grateful for what IS going right and the privilege I have to be where I currently am. Lastly I should stop trying to control what is out of my control, this is where I can learn to be more vulnerable and move past the shame that may be keeping me from other things.

     I think that the option to go into a STEM field was never off of the table for me. When I was young it was one of the many options that I could choose... although at that time all I wanted to be was a cartoonist, or a comic book artist, so STEM wasn't really something I thought about doing. I do remember watching science programs on television after school, there was Bill Nye The Science Guy, Beakman's World, and of course The Magic School Bus. I believe that I went to a pretty good school for exploring science, I may have been privileged to go to a school that was able to afford the needed equipment and setups for learning science. My parents were not a deciding factor in my decision to pursue STEM, however, they were not restrictive on our education choices so that may have helped open the doors for exploration. I think that I chose STEM because it just seemed right and I wanted to understand more about the world, but I can't say that I feel like I belong. There ma...

       I would love to say that I have a growth mindset but there are times that I question that assumption.  There are certain areas of my life that I most definitely exhibit the traits of a growth minded individual, but there are other areas that I tend to be more fixed. My education has definitely influenced my mindset, it is something that I was starting to discover after I took my first couple semesters of biology. I started to notice that most things didn’t fit into a nice little box, perfectly described, and not worth further debate… quite the contrary is true. How could I learn all of this and not reflect on my own self; was I not a dynamic living creature like the ones I was studying? If the evidence shows that I am an animal born of the same inherited and ever changing DNA as the rest of the life on Earth, then I too must not fit in a nice little box, perfectly described, and not worth further debate. It makes sense that we can change our mindsets, it ...

     I'm sure that I could pick any of the transferable skills and find something within my college experience to match it to. I've picked three that I think are useful and that I was able to get more experience with than the others the past few years: Leadership     For the past six semesters I have been serving as a TA for three sections of a plant biology class at the community college. In that time I have gained a lot of experience working with a diverse array of students. Many of the students excel in the class and need little help from me, but every semester there are at least a few who need consistent help. There are times during the semester when my help is in high demand, especially when we briefly cover genetics and photosynthesis. Overall the experience has helped me to fine tune my leadership skills. Communication     Another thing that I get to practice is  explaining scientific concepts to students pursuing non-science related degree...

This is an interesting question to ask for this blog post. I have been stressing over this very question for the past few years. At the beginning of my academic journey I thought that I would magically know by the end what I would be doing, but I am at the end of my college career now and I can guarantee you that I am just as confused about what I should do with my degree as I was at the beginning. I had ideas about doing research in a lab but after experiencing research I know that it isn't for me. I thought I might go into business using my degree, but I don't see myself as a business minded person either. I could use my degree to go into education but I also don't think that is a good fit either. I think that I need to take a break after the Spring semester to decided what I should do next. I may find that I am at a stopping point, or I may decide that I need to go further in school in order to get where I need to be. I wish I had a definitive answer for what I will do a...

My online presence currently consists of an old unused social media account, an online art gallery to showcase my paintings, and Slack to communicate at work. We use it as an instant messaging app, and it seems to work well. Our next assignment is to create a LinkedIn profile, so I will soon have that to add to my presence. I've had a Linked In profile twice before but I never really used it, maybe this time will be different though. This amount is a bit higher than my desired amount would be, but it should be manageable. I'll admit though that I'm notorious for neglecting online profiles after I make them. I think I might be open to having a social media account if I ever make any sort of crafts to sell online, possibly something that combines my artistic side and my biology side, it would be completely product/art focused though.

Prompt: What is my current on-line presence? My online presence is currently in decline by choice, in contrast to most others who are actively adding to theirs. I was very active online in the early days of social media (i.e. friendster and Myspace), but I have become more private/introverted and less interested in exposing parts of my life to the public as I've gotten older. Currently I have two social media accounts, the first is my original Myspace page, which has not been accessed in ~5 years; the second is my DeviantArt page, an online gallery of my paintings under a  handle of my choosing, I'm merely an anonymous artist. I know that this may be hard for others to understand, after all, during the last decade we've witnessed a mass migration of people to online spaces and it is fast becoming less common to not be a part of the online discussion. As I mentioned earlier, I was active in the early days of social media and as such I got the chance to live that life before ...

 1. What are your professional goals, 1 year, 5 years and 10 years into the future? What will accomplishing these goals let you do? How will accomplishing these goals impact those around you and what will it make possible for those in your community?      I think that my professional goals are pretty basic and they won't change over the course of the next 10 years. My goal professionally is to be in a stable career that is low-stress and involves the thing that I love most, plants. That may take a masters degree, but I'm still trying to figure that out. I'm currently looking at working in a herbarium, so in order to get there I need to experience an internship with one or more herbariums, and luckily I already have one lined up for the summer. There are zero people who will be impacted by any of my decisions as usual. As far as my community impact, I'm not sure there will be an impact to my immediate community, however, the scientific community might benefit from ...

 1. What did you know about your field 3 years ago, and what have you learned about that has 'wowed' you? (Supplemental questions: What did you used to think was an advanced topic in your subject, and what do you think is now? What was the experience that you feel you learned the most from?) 2. What do you want to learn about over the next 3 years? (Is it scientific or personal? Why do you want to learn it? How do you plan on developing this knowledge?) Well, I wish I could say that I know what my field is, but the truth is that I still have no idea what I'm doing with myself, or where I'm going. There just aren't enough classes offered that speak to my interests in plant biology. So, based on that I don't think I can actually answer these questions as they are. I will try to answer these questions more broadly about my educational experience, however. Three years ago I was just coming back to school from a "career" in retail management. I remem...

  1.      Who are you grateful for who has helped you get to where you are today? (What was your situation? how did they help you? How did that help impact you in the moment and how has it led to where you are today? If you have a picture you'd like to share please do so with their permission.) I am grateful for my mother who encouraged me to follow my interests with a biology degree instead of pursuing an accounting degree, which she knew would lead to my eventual displeasure. I had just decided to leave my job as a retail store manager and come back to school, I had everything figured out. I told my mother that I would be going back to school for accounting, and she asked me why I didn’t go for something that would interest me more, I ended up changing my major to biology after that. The simple question she asked helped me to reevaluate why I was going back to school, and to understand that if I was going to take the risk of going back to school, it may as w...

 I just finished taking my last final, thank goodness that is over! This has been an interesting semester for sure. Although I missed out on in-person activities and meeting new people, I feel as though the STEM class helped to fill that void a bit. It was nice to see familiar faces in a new environment (Zoom lol), and become acquainted with new faces. I'd like to share that the most beneficial part of the STEM class this semester was reading Mindset: The New Psychology Of Success  by Carol S. Dweck, I am certain that it has helped me to understand the "why?" of peoples actions and decision making, and also helps me to understand my own thoughts and practices. I've definitely witnessed a closed-mindset in politics over the past four years, hopefully we can learn from our mistakes as a country and heal. I hope that each of you reading this will have a wonderful winter season celebrating however you choose (with safety in mind, of course). I look forward to meeting up a...

 This semester was not the same as the ones that came before it. Yes, we did get a preview of what was to come during the Spring, but that was the panic, this semester was the reality... and so is next semester.  I have many things to be grateful for, but sometimes I can't seem to see those things and it is easier to focus on the major stressors in life as the only things that are happening. I would say that with the loss of the majority of human contact it became easier to only focus on the stress. If we are our own worst critics, then the humans that we come into contact with, our friends, family, lovers, etc., must be the counterbalance to that oppressive inner voice that tries to pull us down. The anxiety this semester was real, I can't remember a time prior to this when I spent so much time worrying about everything, and there was so little within my power that I could change. To live is to struggle, but this year was a little too over-the-top. I spent a lot of time this ...

I'm not so sure that I've dealt with mid-semester stress in the best way possible. I seem to have let myself become overwhelmed and now find myself trying to pick up and move on. Perhaps it is just a symptom of 2020 though, since I haven't had this issue before. It seems to me that one of the benefits of in-person instruction is that you have a set timeframe in each class to worry exclusively about that class and the work that is coming due. While at home I find that, even though I am scheduling time slots devoted to each class, I have not been able to keep my mind from wandering/worrying about everything else... so I definitely need to work on my self-discipline. I'm doing well in all of my classes but this week is going to test my ability to stay on task, wish me luck!

This semester I transferred to ASU as a junior. Since being young I have imagined myself attending a university but never really thinking it would come to fruition. I spent many years thinking that college wasn't for me and for many years that thinking won out over reason. Tough times can cause you to change your mind about the things you think you know about yourself (I think we normally call this hitting rock bottom... but you don't have to hit the bottom to know things need to change). Each of us has waged our own internal battles throughout our lives... our self doubts can become an intoxicating miasma of despair. So, before the nation faced its own battles by an onslaught of ridiculousness, which we will remember with disdain and embarrassment for years to come, I was inside my own head... sowing the seeds of distrust in my own abilities, questioning my worth, chipping away at my own confidence (destructive habits seem to be having a field day in the US for the past four y...

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.

This week I began sifting through my pitfall traps. Removing large debris from the collection yielded about a tablespoon of small material to sift through. Using a microscope and some tweezers I was able to locate an incredible amount of insects, at least 30 insects from each collection (there have been two collections done so far). My task was to separate the insects according to the orders that they belong to using a dichotomous key. So far I have been able to identify orders such as Coleoptera, Hymenoptera, Araneae, Diptera... etc. These insects are very, very small so the biggest challenge I faced this week was overcoming the force of static electricity under the microscope while looking at the insects, the wrong movement could cause the insect to slingshot across the petri-dish a few inches, but at that magnification it may as well have been propelled a mile away. I found a large amount of Diptera larvae which Dr. Ortiz identified as soldier fly larvae (picture attached). This has...