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Welcome to Earth on the Rocks, a show where we get to know the person behind the science over drinks. Each episode will highlight a new scientist in the earth and atmospheric sciences to learn more about their journey, what interests them, and who they are outside of their science.
Host: Shelby Rader
Producer: Cari Metz
Artwork: Connor Leimgruber
Board Operator: Kate Crum, Betsy Leija
Funding for this podcast was provided by the National Science Foundation grant EAR-2422824.
Hi, folks, and welcome back to Earth on the Rocks, the show where we get to know the person behind the science. I'm your host, Shelby Rader, and joining us on our midseason finale today is Molly Karnes. Molly, thanks for coming on the show.
Molly:Thanks for inviting me. So, Molly, we're gonna get to
Shelby:know you over drinks. What would be your drink of choice and or a drink of non choice if you have one?
Molly:Well, I usually mostly just drink water because I don't really like tea or coffee or alcohol very much. But every once in a while, I really like to have a cheer wine, which I know you like to talk about regional snacks. For anyone who doesn't know, cheer wine is a cherry soda that's pretty popular in the Southeast.
Shelby:Yeah. Can you describe a little bit the flavor profile? Because it is a cherry soda, but it's to me, it's sort of like an intense cherry soda.
Molly:Yeah. It's not like a cherry cola. Like, it's just a cherry soda, and it is a very intense, syrupy, cherry flavor. And in fact, when I was living in California, I couldn't actually buy it because they require Red Dye 40 to be labeled, and the company doesn't label the sheer amount of Red 40 that's in it.
Shelby:And and if folks wanna try one of these, do you know where you can get them? I have found some before, but it has been difficult to find
Molly:them in stores, I feel like. Kroger has them. Okay. You can get, like, 12 packs of cans at Kroger. I don't know if that's just regional or if that's, like, more nationwide.
Molly:But at least here, you can get them at Kroger.
Shelby:Yeah. Yeah. Cherwan is an excellent example of
Molly:a regional I really like it over vanilla ice cream.
Shelby:Oh, that would be good. Because you're right, is sort of it's syrupy in a way where it's almost thick with sweetness. Yeah. And so I feel like it would make a really good addition to a dessert in that way. Yes.
Shelby:Like a nice sauce. So Molly, if someone were to ask you what do you do or how you would describe yourself, how would you answer that?
Molly:I think that depends on who I'm talking to. So as a student, I was training to be a stable isotope ecologist. So someone who's using stable isotopes to study how organisms and specifically like ancient extinct organisms interact with each other and the environment. And so if I'm talking to a little kid, my main system of study was sharks.
Molly:Children love to talk about sharks. So Even adults love to talk about sharks. They're pretty cool. But, you know, talking to kids about how I used to study fossil sharks gets them very excited to talk about science. But now I'm mostly a lab technician.
Molly:A lot of times with family, I'll talk about how I'm sort of like an instrument mechanic. Like, I keep the lab running. I do the repairs on instruments. And I think my family responds really well to hearing about how I'm a mechanic for science, basically.
Shelby:Yeah, I think that's a really good way to describe it. And part of why I'm really excited to have you on, because I think you have this really interesting perspective on a few different aspects of academic based science, which I think is really useful. And so I want to eventually touch on all of those, but for now I want to start with some of the work on sharks because it is really cool. And so can you tell us a little bit about what about sharks you were studying, what sorts of analyses you were doing, and then expand maybe a little on how you can use that information to understand how they were behaving with each other or with different parts of their ecosystem?
Molly:Yeah, so I got interested in sharks mostly because I was so interested in stable isotope analysis. I think it's just a really awesome tool that can be applied to so many different study systems. And sharks particularly are really good for that because they are cold blooded organisms and so the temperature that they're experiencing is the ocean temperature, mostly. There are some that can regulate their temperature a little bit. And so these sharks are basically just like little data buoys that are floating through the ocean and recording things about the chemistry and temperature of that seawater.
Molly:So not only can you learn about the sharks themselves and what they're doing, but you can learn a lot about the environment that they're living in. And so we were looking at stable isotopes in their teeth specifically because that is what is recorded in the fossil record. And so the fossil record is very, very rich in shark teeth because sharks are continuously forming teeth throughout their entire life, kind of like a conveyor belt of teeth. So they move forward from the back of the jaw towards the front, and then they shed those front ones and they just sort of continuously replace themselves.
Shelby:What sort of the time scale that that's happening? I'm assuming it might vary depending on the species, but is this like a few weeks process, a few months, a few years process for them to form and then shed?
Molly:Yeah. It differs on species, and we don't have great numbers on all species of sharks, but it's sort of in the months to year timeline.
Shelby:Okay.
Molly:And so it's really recording, if you're thinking about, like, the fossil record. If you can get something that was recording for one year, like, that's pretty good time resolution. And so in order to understand how the teeth are recording these signals, we need to study modern systems first. And so a lot of my work was really understanding how the teeth are recording the environmental system in sharks that are still living, where we have measures of the temperature or we know what they were eating. There have been captive feeding studies done, and so really understanding that modern system so that we can then apply it to the fossil record.
Shelby:And a captive feeding study, I'm assuming, is where you have some number of sharks in captivity, and so you are controlling their diet plus other things, I would imagine, and then you can measure these things that you're interested in on those teeth to see how they compare to the variables that you have a value on because you're the one controlling those.
Molly:Yeah. So my graduate school advisor, when she was a PhD student, she raised her own sharks. This was at UC Santa Cruz, doctor Sora Kim. And so she had these leopard sharks that she built tanks for. She kept them alive with help from some people at the marine center there.
Molly:And so she knew exactly what she was feeding them. She knew what all their water conditions were. And so then she was able to measure stable isotopes in their teeth and various muscle tissues and relate that back to the diet that she was feeding them.
Shelby:How how many sharks is she keeping alive at once? Is this like a a large scale operation? This is impressive.
Molly:I think she had somewhere around five.
Shelby:But still
Molly:Yeah. It's pretty impressive, and I don't think she's ever gonna have live sharks ever again.
Shelby:Yeah. I'd say that that that's a lot to juggle, but a very cool aspect of somebody's job to say, oh, yeah. Just have a few tanks of sharks.
Molly:Yeah. In our lab, we mostly worked with teeth that people sent us. So there'll be fishermen who have catch that we can get teeth from, or people who are doing catch and release studies who are doing satellite tagging. Because these teeth are continuously shedding, it doesn't hurt them any to just pull a couple out. And so we had teeth that they had just, like they caught them.
Molly:They did their measurements, pulled a couple teeth out for us, and then tossed the shark back in.
Shelby:So you've mentioned that one of the tools you're using are stable isotopes. And so for listeners, there's sort of two fields of isotopic work. There's these stable isotopic systems and then what are called radiogenic isotopic systems. And the difference there is that with radiogenic systems, the elemental system that you start with actually changes as a function of time. And so if you've ever heard of somebody saying, We know the age of this because we've dated this sample, it's because of those radiogenic systems where you can tell how long something has been around based on how much of that initial element has changed or converted into a different element.
Shelby:But with stable isotopes, they're maybe the name makes it not that surprising, stable over geologic time scales. And so they're really useful for a lot of other applications, including the things you're describing here, understanding environmental conditions, understanding dietary conditions. You can use them we talked about this on Peter Sour's episode to understand geographically where organisms have lived throughout their lives. And so these stable systems are really, really versatile. And so using them in sort of these aquatic animals is a really interesting way to apply them.
Molly:Yeah. One interesting thing about geographic location is sharks are not only, like, geographically spread as far as, like, North to South Pole or, like, towards the coast or off coast, But also depending on the species, they prefer to either live benthicly, so towards the bottom of the ocean, or more pelagically sort of swimming through the middle of the ocean like you would think of a fish. And so one thing that you can do with sharks, especially in the fossil record, is if you know something about that species, you can start to think about like differences within the water column. Because if you're taking measurements from a shark species that you know is living benthically, that's going to be more of a sea floor. Or if you know that they're migrating, that's a more spatially averaged value that you're gonna get from that shark.
Molly:And so there have been some studies that really look at like how sharks are migrating and especially there are a lot of species of sharks that have areas where they are sort of like a nursery habitat, where they'll go back there to have babies, the babies will be raised to a certain age, and then they'll leave that area.
Shelby:Yeah, and that way it's almost like some of these samples that you're working with can give you information in four dimensions because you can have like this vertical profile of ocean conditions near the surface or near the bottom of the ocean which is really, really deep or anywhere in between. Also, these sort of lateral conditions, so near coast, far from coast. Then you have sort of conditions that you can understand from pole to pole, so north to south pole and where they are spatially within that area. But then in the fourth dimension, things like diet or ocean conditions sort of broadly. So that's a really, really broad ranging application for these tools that I think is really just a cool, fun way to apply them.
Molly:Yeah. And another reason why the shark teeth are really cool in the fossil record is I mentioned that we have so many of them in the fossil record. One issue with stable isotope analysis, especially when you're thinking about fossils, is that it's a type of destructive sampling. So you have to essentially destroy part of your fossil to be able to do that analysis. And so in organisms that the fossils are more rare, museums don't really like to allow people to destructively sample those.
Molly:Whereas with shark teeth, there's so many of them that it's pretty easy to get permission for destructive sampling.
Shelby:So with these modern samples, you mentioned that oftentimes they're coming to you all in the lab, and with that you have some sort of connotation for the species that they're But related what about in cases where you don't or in the fossil record? Is it difficult to identify what a species you think it is based on just a tooth? To me, that sounds like that'd be really hard.
Molly:It's difficult for me. Yeah. I guess I was, you know, my background is in chemistry and earth science, and so I'm certainly not an expert in identifying shark teeth. Looking at the tooth, could probably tell you, like, maybe what group of shark, what family of sharks it belongs to. But a lot of that identification were were done by collaborators.
Molly:And in the fossil record it kind of gets difficult when you talk about what is a species. Because you know, in modern a lot of people think of a species as like two organisms that can reproduce together are a similar species, or some people might define species based off of like DNA sequencing. There's a lot of different ways to define a species, but when all you have is a tooth, that gets kind of difficult and there's not a lot of, like mammal teeth are more complex, and so there's more things to differentiate. Whereas, like, shark teeth, they have less complexities than what, like, a molar would have. And so when we're thinking about isotopes, it's not necessarily always important to get all the way down to species.
Molly:But if you at least have genus, like, can assume that most of the sharks within the same genus are probably doing something pretty similar.
Shelby:So you sort of start in this modern scale where you're evaluating samples that you have really good contextual information for. So you know the water conditions, the temperature, the dot of these animals, and then you're seeing sort of what values these teeth give you based on those conditions. So then you can start to correlate, well if we have an isotopic value of this, then that likely tells us that this was a sort of near surface warmer water condition where an isotopic value of this may be a deeper or cooler ocean. So then do you end up applying that to the fossil record? And if so, what are some of the questions that you all are asking there?
Molly:I left school before I got too far into applying to the fossil record. But a lot of those questions are related to climate change and how organisms are surviving through climate change. So we were especially interested in sharks from time periods that saw really dramatic shifts. So like for instance, PETM or the Paleocene Eocene Thermal Maximum is a time that a lot of scientists use as sort of an analog to modern climate change because it was a really fast spike in CO2 and temperature. Sharks have been around and thriving for a very long time and have lived through many mass extinctions.
Molly:So looking at how sharks are surviving through these times can be really interesting to think about, like how they're adapting to that.
Shelby:So how did you get interested in this field? So sort of, I guess, what was your journey from high school to deciding you wanted to sort of specialize in chemistry and earth sciences, and then from there, go to work with sharks.
Molly:So I think I've listened to a lot of the podcast episodes and just talking with other geoscientists, I think that I had a kind of similar path where I knew as a kid I loved science. And I got really interested in chemistry in high school because I had a pretty good high school chemistry teacher. But earth sciences was sort of lacking at the, like, high school level. And so I went to college really confident that I wanted to be a chemist. Almost all of the chemistry majors were pre med.
Molly:They were not pleasant to be around.
Shelby:It's a pretty competitive environment. Everyone
Molly:was competitive. Everyone was, like, trying to be better than the other person. And it just like wasn't enjoyable. But I still loved chemistry, I still loved my labs and I knew that I loved science and so I started investigating other sciences on campus. And I came to find that the geoscience department felt like a family.
Molly:Like everyone there was really collaborative, the work was really interdisciplinary, there were lots of people in the department who were using chemistry. In fact, our the chair when I transferred, he was a chemist who was studying water quality. And so I was able to continue my love of chemistry, but in an environment that was just more enjoyable. Like, I really liked the collaborative aspect of geosciences.
Shelby:Yeah. And it feels very applied, which which I have always appreciated too, because, all of these things you've just described are super cool. Who wouldn't want to say, Oh yeah, I've measured a whole bunch of different aspects of shark teeth. And that is a really applied approach to chemistry and to earth sciences and to climate science. And that's just something that I think, in my experience, has been harder to find in other fields.
Shelby:And so I feel like that's also sort of a common thread amongst a lot of folks who've been on the show is, yeah, it's just like so fun, the stuff that you get to do that pulls in all of these other STEM disciplines in a way that feels really approachable.
Molly:Yeah, and so once I switched into the Geoscience department, the first class I took was just sort of a basic geology one zero one, and it was taught by a professor who was a paleontologist. And it kind of brought back these like childhood memories of like how awesome dinosaurs are. But growing up in sort of, like, rural America, like, you very quickly learn as a child that paleontology is not an option as a career. And, like, seeing a professor who, like, was clearly doing very well studying paleontology and using chemistry to study paleontology was really exciting. And so I started working in her lab, and her focus was on marine mollusk communities, and she was using stable isotopes to study the ecology of snails.
Shelby:And what do you mean by the ecology of snails?
Molly:Mostly their diet and things about the environment that they're living in. And so there are these specific families of snails that are predatory, and they eat other mollusks by drilling a hole through their shell, and then they have a proboscis that they stick into that hole and slurp the clam or oyster out of the inside of the shell.
Shelby:Wow. I'm gonna look at snails in a whole different light after this.
Molly:And so the group that I was looking at are called Eastern Oyster Drills. And so they're just these little bitty tiny snails, and they sort of cruise around on oyster beds, drilling holes, and slurping out the oysters. And they've been pretty closely studied, and everyone has always thought that they were predators. But weirdly enough, when you look at the carbon and nitrogen isotopes in their soft tissues, their values come out more like an omnivore.
Shelby:And what does that mean for folks that are listening?
Molly:Meaning that they're feeding from multiple trophic levels. So most likely their diet is some mix of meat and plants, which is unusual because nobody's ever seen them eating anything other than oysters. Interesting finding. And so that was my first sort of like independent research project as an undergraduate student. And I was able to present that at the Geological Society's yearly conference.
Molly:And I had an older man come up to me and say at my poster that I was presenting, and he was like, you know, that makes a whole lot of sense because the area that I study, all the oysters are gone, but somehow these snails are still alive. And as a student, it was really motivating to think, like, we found this unusual finding, but it seems to still make sense to people. Yeah. Like, was a very motivating feeling as a student at this big conference my first time, and then have someone like
Shelby:Someone from the community.
Molly:Yeah, someone from the community exciting about the finding that we found.
Shelby:Yeah, yeah, that would be, that would just be like really reassuring in sort of your journey.
Molly:Yeah.
Shelby:And so is that sort of the moment or one of the moments where you thought, oh, this is something I could see myself doing more of, like I'm interested in pursuing research at the graduate level?
Molly:Yeah, that project has definitely, like, gave me the confidence to feel like I could be a researcher, you know, because I didn't really know very many scientists until I went to college. And then, like, having this project that, like, I worked on by myself, I mean, with help from my advisor, but, I was really in control of this project and it was successful in some way. Really gave me a lot of confidence.
Shelby:And so then what sort of prompted you to, I guess, sort of stay in the same realm but switch gears a little bit and decide you wanted to focus on sharks for a while?
Molly:I was just really motivated by the tool of stable isotopes. And so my main goal looking for graduate programs was to find somewhere where I could continue working with that tool, but really dig into learning about it more. And so I really wanted to find a lab where they had the instrumentation to run those samples in house. A lot of people sent their samples off for stable isotope analysis. And so I wanted to have access to those instruments and be in a lab where I was able to learn how to run my own samples and learn more about how those instruments work.
Molly:And that's sort of
Shelby:a nice segue to where you are now. And so can you talk a little bit about that transition to what you do now and sort of what it is that you do in your technical role?
Molly:Yeah, so I think my entire time working in labs, whether it was as an undergraduate or a graduate student, I really tried to expand my toolbox, basically. And even if it wasn't directly related to my research, I tried to pick up as many lab techniques as I could. And if someone else, like another student in the lab, was doing something, like I was very interested in learning about what they were doing as well. And so I I just really spent a lot of time with the instruments in the lab. That was my just favorite thing to do as a student.
Molly:And so I feel like that segued into the job that I have now really well because my position is the technical manager of the stable isotope facility here. And the requirements of my job I think are varied, but the main ones are really running samples on instruments and keeping those instruments running. So when the data is not coming out well or the instrument is just not running, troubleshooting why? And so I think that a lot of the tools that I picked up along the way really helped with I think it's a specific mindset to think about that troubleshooting. So like even if it's a problem that you've never seen before on the instrument, understanding like how do you just like be like, okay, it's broken, let's stay calm and let's think about what are the symptoms that we're seeing and is this most likely to be an electrical problem?
Molly:Is this a problem with the computer? Is this, you know, a pump isn't turning on, but, like, just sort of staying calm and using, like, logical reasoning to like narrow down what the potential problem could be. Another part of my job that I really like is I get to see such a vast array of applications of stable isotope analysis. And so our lab works with groups all over campus and even some external users. So I get to see earth and atmospheric students who are asking questions about the environment.
Molly:We have biology students who are looking at how plants uptake nutrients or how birds migrate or there's just a huge variety of applications and I think that's really cool.
Shelby:Yeah, the application part is part of why I think this field is so fun because, you know, obviously we're in an Earth and Atmospheric Sciences department and both of our trainings are in the Earth Sciences So you can sort of think of some pretty obvious applications there, like, oh, let's understand minerals and how they're changing if they're interacting with the fluid, or how are these rock compositions varying depending on these geologic processes. But there are so many other applications using isotopic systems like some of the things you noted, you know, bird migrations. So where are these birds coming from? Where are they going to? How long are they staying in different areas?
Shelby:You can look at bird migrations through heavy metal accumulation as well. So if they're in more rural versus urban regions, can see that signature isotopically. You can look at cosmochemistry, so how are our planets evolving, Where are they coming from? Where were they originating? You can look at environmental applications, at sort of geographic applications.
Shelby:You can use isotopic tools to understand unsolved murders. I mean, there's Yeah. There's so many different ways to apply this information and working in the lab like you do and like I get to do, it's fun to see what other people come up with and to collaborate with them in a way where they know these questions that they want to ask and it's certainly an area of expertise that that I'm not well versed in but then I can help identify sort of tools that we can use to understand those questions which is is where you come in and play a big role too. So I think that's a really fun way to go about some of the lab stuff.
Molly:Yeah, because fundamentally the chemistry is functioning the same way no matter what the system is. And so I think especially when like a student is starting a new project and they're really motivated about their system, but then I can teach them how they can apply stable isotopes to that system.
Shelby:Yeah, because another thing that you do really well is you engage and interact with students in a way that I think makes them feel very comfortable and you're very approachable. And so they can come to you to ask questions that maybe they don't feel comfortable asking other people and really understand the ins and outs of of why we prepare things in this way. What what's actually happening when you're running these samples? How does an instrument work? And that's always something that that I think had been interesting to me, and it sounds like was interesting to you too during your career is rather than being one of those folks, and there's nothing wrong with this, where you send your samples to somebody and they send you data back and that's the end of it, is like understanding the how and the why.
Shelby:So how are we getting these data? How do we know that they're accurate? Why is this instrument working in this way? And so it's a bit like a puzzle where you're you're trying to piece together information and aspects of instrument behavior to troubleshoot, like you mentioned, which is very hands on, which I think can be really sort of satisfying, but then to ultimately end up with a really cool science story. And so you've really been able to work on both sides of that, which I think is a really fun place to be.
Molly:I really like working with the students who are also really motivated to learn how their samples are run. So I think there's a pretty wide range of student involvement. But the way that our lab is set up, if a student wants to spend the time to come into the lab, learn about the instrument, and really spend that time, then they could learn how to run the instrument to be able to run their own samples. And so I think that if a student wants to learn and get that hands on time, our lab is set up to be able to facilitate that. And I really enjoy working with students like that.
Shelby:And I mean, it sounds like that was sort of where you were as a student, as you wanted to understand things worked. Why do you think that was? What was it about that that was intriguing or appealing to you? Because like you mentioned, not everybody is like that. And like I said, there's nothing wrong with that.
Shelby:There's all sorts of different flavors for how you collect your data. But for some people that is a really important aspect, sort of getting the hands on experience.
Molly:I think maybe it really is just that hands on portion. Like, I find it very satisfying. Obviously, every research project requires some amount of data analysis and staring at a computer. But I was always just way more excited about having something in my hands, something tangible that I can do. And I think that learning more about the instruments is sort of an extension of that.
Shelby:During your time sort of both sides, so like as a student who was sort of leading the data collection and the writing and going through that process of graduate school to now sort of being this technical manager of a a whole bunch of different facilities, has any aspect of that been sort of surprising to you or maybe would be surprising to listeners? Something that they might not expect from either of those positions or areas that you've sort of worked in?
Molly:I think that like even with the amount of hands on experience I got as a student, I didn't really think about like when you're responsible for upkeeping a facility, the amount of skills that you need that don't seem like they're related directly to So, like, you know, knowing how to use power tools and like things that feel like they're sort of like DIY home repair. Yeah. But you're doing that in the lab. And especially, like, as instruments age, they require a lot more love and attention. That's a very
Shelby:nice way to put it.
Molly:And so I think that, like, a lot of those sort of, like, mechanical skills I under underestimated when I was a student.
Shelby:Yeah, because it is a wide spectrum of things that you end up I don't know that you ever truly become proficient in them in the way that someone who specializes in that would, but you have to become familiar with. So in some ways you have to understand plumbing because oftentimes many of these instruments have some form of water cooling associated with them. Oftentimes you have to have some familiarity with electronics or with electricity. You'll have to replace electronic components. You'll have to upgrade electrical components so that instruments can work and function.
Shelby:You have to have just sort of general renovation skills because sometimes you have to build things to hold pieces of equipment or you have to do a lot of taking apart and reassembling and troubleshooting. So yeah, there's a lot of different aspects that go into it that you wouldn't think of until it happens. Vacuum pumps.
Molly:We have so many vacuum pumps in the lab, and they all need annual oil changes, which is very similar to changing the oil on your car. There's just like a lot of a lot more mechanical stuff than I expected.
Shelby:Yeah. Yes. And and like I said, I think sometimes you don't think about it until you have to. Yeah. And it's it's maybe occasionally in, like, these moments that would be easy to panic in because something has gone totally And now all of a sudden you have to try to troubleshoot as quickly as you can so that you don't impact other components of the instrument.
Shelby:And so it ends up to me developing a lot of really useful life skills because like for me personally I can do all sorts of stuff around my house now because I've had to learn how to do all these things for instrument maintenance. Yeah. So that's really useful. If someone's listening and, you know, is sort of like interested in the things you've talked about, either on sort of the isotopic research side or sort of the lab maintenance side, what sort of advice would you have for folks that maybe you wish that you would had when you were going through that or that if you could go back and tell yourself you would?
Molly:I think that finding undergraduate research opportunities is really important. And I think that they don't necessarily have to be directly related to what your goal research ends are. Because I think as a student, any research experience is going to benefit you in the future. So it might seem like it's a different topic or a different system, but you're going to be learning these skills that can really be broadly applied to different research. And I think also when you come in with experience from a different field, that can really help you to think about systems in a different way.
Molly:And so really thinking about picking up tools for your toolbox as opposed to trying to specialize as fast as possible.
Shelby:Yeah, think all of that is super great advice and sometimes as a student you may work on a project and realize you hate it. Yeah. But that can be super informative because you know, for these reasons I now know that this sort of thing isn't for me and so let me try to see if there's other opportunities that don't involve these aspects that I don't enjoy. Developing more tools for your toolkit I think is really important. I think it's also really fun and useful to sort of see how different labs operate.
Shelby:Because even in our field, some of the things we do will be very similar to other labs that work on similar systems with similar equipment. But everybody has slightly different ways for how they organize a lab space or the sort of sequence of events of sample prep. And seeing different perspectives and asking questions about, why do you do it this way, what's the benefit of this, can really help you individually sort of develop different characteristics of how you like to operate and things that you appreciate or maybe don't appreciate. As you go through your career you can start to specialize in those areas that you really enjoy. Did you do other sorts of things, especially as an undergrad, maybe were of interest or maybe weren't?
Molly:Yeah, so the research project that I spoke about that I was really excited and presented was not the main way I got paid as an undergraduate student. I had money to fund that research, but my hourly pay was in a different lab. And so I spent one semester just downloading and processing satellite data for a project related to evapotranspiration. And it was one semester and I was very tired of looking at a computer. And then I spent a couple semesters working in a soils lab and not as much involved in sort of the research questions and like the bigger picture, but really just processing the soils like drying them out in the oven, crushing them, separating them, measuring pH, just like very basic.
Molly:Like I would go in, would spend my couple hours a day and I would leave. And some graduate student got that data and used it. And even though I wasn't as interested in the research that was going on in that lab, I gained so many skills. So And I got paid,
Shelby:so Yeah, that always helps. You have to have a way to pay the bills. I also think a topic that you mentioned that I think is worthwhile to point out again is you also had the opportunity to go to this conference as an undergrad, which I think is an incredible opportunity that if you're an undergrad and you have the opportunity to do it, should take it. I think sometimes it can be overwhelming or intimidating and you might feel like you're not, you know at a point where you feel comfortable presenting or engaging at these conferences but it is such a useful opportunity to see what other people in the field are doing. In your case you got to talk to people in the community and sort of get this reassurance that the work you were doing was really useful and impactful.
Shelby:You get to go to a cool place, usually.
Molly:Yeah, it was in Seattle. That was pretty exciting, traveling from Kentucky to Seattle.
Shelby:Yeah, because you usually go somewhere that you maybe haven't been before, and it's just a really great chance to get to engage with people in a different way. I think folks should take the opportunity if they haven't.
Molly:Yeah, the research and all of that travel was actually funded by an undergraduate research program that I was part of called the McNair Scholars Program, and that's actually a national program. A lot of universities have it, and it's specifically for either first generation low income students or for minority students. And you're part of a cohort where they're not just giving you the money to do the research, but there's a lot of support and mentoring in how is research done, what is a conference like, how do you apply for grad school. We were given a lot of help with our applications. So like, how do you write a personal statement for a graduate school application?
Molly:How do you even reach out to people to see if you could become a grad student there? And so there was a lot of support through that program to, like, sort of step you through that process of becoming a graduate student.
Shelby:Yeah. Which is incredible because I think a lot of times in academia there's all these unspoken rules that unless you have an in or somebody that just sort of proactively tells you about them, it feels a little bit like a black box. So to have a support network to walk you through those, I think, is really invaluable.
Molly:Yeah. It was super beneficial.
Shelby:Molly, we always end each episode with our Yes, Please segment, where we each get a minute to talk passionately about something that we're inspired by in the moment. So do you want to go first or do you wanna go second?
Molly:Sure. I'll go first.
Shelby:Okay. And if you're ready, this is Molly Karnes' Yes, Please.
Molly:Okay. So this is very specific, but I'm really excited right now about Sonic Cherry Limeade Jell O. So I had not had Jell O since I was like a middle school student, my mom buying the little plastic packs of Jell O. And I just happened to be in the baking aisle and they have sonic slushy flavors of jello now. And this is like a dollar 50 a box and you can make yourself a whole big container of jello and it tastes exactly like the Sonic Cherry Limeade and it's amazing.
Molly:And I can just have it in my refrigerator and just take a little bite of it whenever I want to.
Shelby:I had no idea that was the thing. Do you or what other flavors do they have?
Molly:They have two or three different sonic flavors. So they have, like, the sonic ocean water flavor and something else. And then they also have starburst flavors of jello. Interesting.
Shelby:Yeah. I'm like you. I haven't had jello in a long time.
Molly:It's literally like 1.5 a box, and you just have to boil water.
Shelby:Yeah. It's like Every now and then, would just totally hit the spot. Also, we don't have a Sonic here in town. No, we don't. Because whenever I was sort of an undergrad and grad school, especially in the summer, a slush from Sonic just But really hits the yeah, there's not one anywhere close to here.
Shelby:And so sometimes if I'm traveling to and from Kentucky, there's one on the way that's like an hour from here, and so I'll make it a point to stop just to get a slush. All right, Molly, if you don't mind to time me. Okay. And you can just give me a countdown as we go. Okay.
Shelby:So Yes Please, let's start making more physical photo albums. I feel like I've had a trend this season on the Yes Please segments of like bringing back physical media, but I feel like photo albums are one of those things that are sort of a remnant of the past, which is really unfortunate. So everybody has a ton of photos on their phone, but how often are you actually going through and sitting down and looking at those or showing them to other people? They're usually intermixed with like screenshots or like pictures of things that are like recipes that that are just sort of stuck in the middle of these really wonderful photos and so I think it's really gonna be a fun thing for me personally to start to print some of these out and make actual photo albums. A few weeks ago I was in my hometown, I was visiting my family, and we ended up pulling out some photo albums from when my sister and I were kids and showing some other kids And that were it was just so much fun to like think about all the memories that came with that and get to see these things that we hadn't thought about in a while.
Molly:That's a really good one. I agree with that. I don't know. Maybe within the past year or so, I went through a lot of the photos on my phone and chose, I think, six of them to put into one of those frames that you put on the wall that I puts all the bought a couple of those at Goodwill. And so then sorting through all the pictures on my phone to try to decide what I was gonna print out was kind of fun.
Shelby:Yeah. A few months ago, I had this collage on my wall of photos that I'd printed out, and in the process of going through to pick some to print out, I was like, Wow, first of all, there's a bunch in here that I need to delete. But you never wanna take the time to sit down to delete photos. They just end up accumulating. And second of all, like there's some really fun stuff in there that I hadn't thought about because there was no trigger for me to go back and reminisce on those things.
Shelby:And so I have made it a goal of mine for the spring semester to to start to put together some physical photo albums that that I can get out and start to look through and share with people. Molly, thanks for coming on. This has been a great episode. I really appreciate it. And thanks to the listeners for sticking it out for this half of the second season.
Shelby:We'll be back in the spring with eight more episodes, so we hope to see you then. See you. Earth on the rocks is produced by Cari Metz with artwork provided by Connor Leimgruber, with technical recording managed by Kate Crum and Betsy Leija. Funding for this podcast was provided by the National Science Foundation grant EAR dash 2422824.