A new passion by Sean O'Sullivan

Throughout my life I have had an immense infatuation for the ocean and the creatures that inhabit its waters. Growing up on the coast near Cape Cod has provided remarkable opportunities for me to learn about the ocean through simply spending time with it. During high school I had no idea what I wanted to do, but began to accelerate myself toward science based classes. I knew that I had a strong affiliation with the water, but I was unsure what I would be able to do with it in the future. I chose to pursue a Biology degree and thought that I might be a physician’s assistant someday. Three years of hard work and two organic chemistry classes later my mind had been slightly swayed. I did not know if I was going to be happy working in the same hospital doing the same thing for years at a time. After having that revelation I soon became infatuated with undergraduate research opportunities. At the time I was in Icthyology and thought that it might be worth while to ask Professor Marsden if she was offering any opportunities. Sadly she was not, so I was moved to look elsewhere. Drafting classes for senior year I was introduced to Soundscapes by my good friend Kate Ziegler. Kate had taken the class the CURE course last semester and thought that I would absolutely love it. After hearing this news, I quickly made my way to Dr. May-Collado office to have a conversation about the class and what it had to offer. Immediately I was awestruck. The 5-minute conversation we had completely sold me on the fact that I would like nothing more than to conduct research on things that are immensely important to the world at the moment. Throughout the semester I have been challenged by Soundscapes due to my unfamiliarity of writing real research papers for submission. I got to spend weeks analysing real data that could contributed to the protection and conservation of countless different places and habitats. I learned that analysing the data is hard, daunting work that could take hours a day to file through and figure out. Being exposed to this data helped me recognize the importance of having people that enjoy doing this stuff, because some of the ideas and patterns that people find could potentially be main contributors to the aid of certain ecosystems or species. Laura has been an absolutely incredible mentor and role model. She took the time to analyse and critique each section of our proposal as well as the research paper and gave us any insight that she may have thought was helpful and could make the paper better. Getting the correct format as well as wording the sections correctly was the most difficult part. I was quite unfamiliar with research paper formatting because of all the labs that I had taken before hand. Soundscapes has encapsulate me into the world of Marine Biology and I am totally aboard for the ride. This class has peaked my interests in graduate school and has given me the opportunity to enjoy what I will be doing for the next several years. Obviously, it is not all fun and games, but how could you not love your life when you are studying the oceans and the creatures that inhabit it. Soundscapes/CURE is the pinnacle of my education at the moment and has excited me vastly more than each one of my previous classes. I look forward to coming up with new and improved ideas and hope to be published one day so that my ideas can contribute to the help that our environment so desperately needs. I want to also thank Laura May Collado for this absolutely incredible experience and am looking forward to spending next semester improving my paper and ideas.