anahorvath.com

Tag: ecology

  • My First Year of College: A Reflection

    first year of college

    And just like that, I am done with my first year of college! Wow was that an experience! Here’s what I have to say about my first year at Colorado State University.

    It feels like I was just moving into my dorm. At first, living there felt like I was in a hotel but then over time, it began to feel more like my own living space (minus the fact that I shared the room with another person). People were always telling me that it was going to be hard to adjust but I really didn’t find it that difficult. I have always been close with my family and I kept myself busy throughout my time at school so I never really felt “homesick” or worried about my transition into college life and a more independent life.

    My first semester, chemistry was rough. I had the worst professor out of the general chem professors offered that semester and had to teach myself a lot of the material. Thank goodness I had a decent high school chemistry teacher. She saved me a lot throughout that class. I squeezed by with a B+ which wasn’t what I had hoped for, but was still incredible considering the amount of work and difficulty of the class.

    Second semester, chemistry was tough again but I really enjoyed my honors seminar on dance, my biology class, and my honors section of ecology. I had a wonderful professor for that class and it consisted of only eight other students, considering that it was the first honors section ever offered of that class. My schedule was extremely flexible and I really loved all of the free time I had in the afternoons.

    This first year of college, I really learned that if you take time to get stuff done right after class or in between classes, you can allow for more time to do the things you really want to do. The work you put into a class is the results you’ll get out. I studied my butt off this past year and I think that the work I put in really paid off. I’m really proud to say that I made the Dean’s List for both the fall and spring semester (as long as everything went well with my finals this past week!).

    Some of my favorite memories include getting cookies from Insomnia Cookies one night with one of my friends, going to get breakfast with my chemistry friends on a snowy Saturday morning, hiking Triangle Mountain with my roommate and one of my other friends, and the countless hours I spent studying and working on chemistry with my chem study group who I am proud to call my good friends. Ram Welcome, dinners with my floor, decorating my friends’ doors for their birthdays, trips to Torchy’s Tacos, and trips back home helped make this school year the memorable and amazing year it has been.

    I’m sad to be leaving Alpine Hall 375 but I’m so excited to see what’s next for me at CSU. This next year is going to be tough but so much fun. Organic chemistry, I’m looking at you! Thanks to everyone who helped make my first year of college the magical, fun experience it was. See you in the fall CSU!

  • When Your Dorm Room Becomes An Aquarium

    aquarium and ecosystem of my little shrimps and snails
    On the far right, in the last jar, you can see one of my snails saying hello. 🙂 If you look hard enough, you may be able to see a shrimp. They’re very hard to find, mostly because most of them are fairly transparent.

    So you might be asking yourself, “Did her dorm room flood?”. The answer to that is no, thank goodness. For my honors ecology class, we were asked to make five small ecosystems. We could do this in what ever way we wanted to using the jars provided. Other than that the only other rules were that the ecosystems are closed, meaning that the jars remain shut, and that we cannot use invertebrates.

    For my closed ecosystems, I chose to use cherry shrimp, ghost shrimp, and Japanese algae eater shrimp. I also used zebra nerve snails. For plants, I’m not quite sure what my longer plant is, but I know that the moss I got was java moss, which the shrimp and snails enjoy.

    Last weekend, I went home to set up my miniature aquariums and spent a lot of time at PetCo and online, doing a lot of research on all of my little fellas. Ghost shrimp are actually really cool, weird creatures and so are all of the other shrimp and snails I got. The project was due this past Friday and so when I came back up to CSU last weekend, I became a mother to 13 little snails and shrimp together. They were all in their little ecosystems and throughout their time with me, I tried to give them as much light as possible, so that the plants could photosynthesize and provide all of my shrimp and snails with enough oxygen and food.

    Unfortunately, my cherry shrimp and ghost shrimp passed away before I even handed in my ecosystems, but that’s ok, I guess that my snails will have more food and nutrients available to them. RIP Cherry and Ghosty Goo (name courtesy of my sister).

    The goal of this project is to create ecosystems that are self-sustaining and will support life up until the end of this semester. I’m not totally optimistic about how my ecosystems will do, but the process of making each little aquarium or ecosystem was really fun and insightful. I’m hoping I don’t kill any other shrimp and that I don’t lose any snails in this process either. We’ll see how this goes! Have a good week everyone.

    • Japanese algae eater shrimp
    • Cherry shrimp
    • Ghost shrimp
    • Zebra nerite snail