Backtracking

After the aside from my last post, let's get back to my 2 part sciencey introduction.

As I said, I recently finished my Master's degree in a bit of an odd situation.  I had to cram the research and writing of a degree that some people never finish into about 6 months.  My Plan B actually came from my desired Plan A.  About a year ago I decided that I wanted to forgo getting a Master's to simply roll my existing work into a PhD.  In an odd turn of events the Department (of Zoology) accepted me to the PhD program but wanted me to finish my Master's degree before beginning this fall. 

I had already planned out my PhD with my advisor (Michael Patten) and niche modeling (more appropriately called habitat suitability modeling (HSM)) was to be part of that work.  So, I proposed a change of focus to my committee, knowing that I had little time to finish a thesis and that my genetics work could not possibly be finished with my current time and funding constraints.  After lengthy discussion I was now faced with learning the HSM software and writing a thesis by the middle of this summer.

The program MaxEnt was my weapon of choice, and the basics of the program were simple enough.  The difficulty was within Arc GIS.  I struggled with the program for weeks before finally processing my data to the point where it could be run through MaxEnt and models could be created.  There were a few issues that I never truely resolved and had to work around in the end, but my results supported most of my proposed hypotheses.  (I would be happy to discuss my findings with you if you are interested, but since this data is what I will be publishing I imagine the topic will come up over the course of the semester)

The writing of the thesis is another tale unto itself, one which I likely won't be sharing here for personal reasons.  Suffice to say, it was an odd time in my life for multiple reasons, and it was very stressful on both me and those around me.  I did come out the other side though, turning in my 3 signed copies a full day before the deadline even.  And with that part of my academic career now behind me I am hopeful for the future and what I can make of this new period of my life.