Christine is a 4th year PhD student from NRES working in the Hoover Lab at the Illinois Natural History Survey. She studies wild turkey behavior – specifically, how forest management may influence turkey habitat selection at different scales, and how incubation behavior may influence reproductive success.
What have you been working on this past week?
This week I’m revising the turkey home range maps that I created earlier in the year for an annual report. We’ve collected more data since the maps were created, so they just need to be updated. I store the location data used to create the home ranges in a PostgreSQL database. I connected to the database, accessed the data, and re-ran home-range analysis in R. I still need to re-run the seasonal home-range analyses, and export the shapefiles to create fun maps in ArcGIS Pro. I also TA the Intro to GIS course and spent quite a bit of time grading labs and assisting students with homework questions.
What have you been reading recently?
I’ve been reading (technically listening since it’s an audiobook) The Radium Girls by Kate Moore. It’s non-fiction and a sort of compilation of memoirs of the women who worked as watch-dial painters during the early 1920’s. Women hand painted numbers on the watch faces with radium-based paint, yes radium. Since the numbers were so small, they would swirl the tip of their paintbrush IN THEIR MOUTHS to create a fine point for painting. I haven’t finished it yet, but so far I’ve been in a constant state of horror while hearing their stories.
Do you have any pets?
I have two dogs – Eddie and Phoebe. Eddie is a 14 year old grumpy/anxious beagle-jack russell mix. He has few teeth, a slight under bite, enjoys treats, and long naps. His greatest trick is opening the door to let himself outside. Phoebe is a 3 year old chi-weenie-pom (she’s a small dog blend). She adores Eddie, and after licking his face clean each morning (gross, I know) will snuggle up to him for their morning nap. Phoebe loves being cuddled and is a total lapdog. Fall is probably Phoebe’s favorite season; she likes to walk into leaf piles and immediately breaks into zoomies around the yard.
What was your biggest struggle this past week?
Honestly, my biggest struggle has been revising the home range analysis that I mentioned before. It’s a fairly time intensive process, and the steps between creating the ranges and producing the results are never simple. I often end up with some sort of error and having to troubleshoot (read: Google R errors), despite the number of times I’ve done this analysis. It’s not my favorite thing to work on, so it tends to be a struggle.
How do you unwind after a long day of work?
Admittedly, I usually plop on the couch and watch a show. This also involves playing and cuddling with the dogs. Lately I’ve been rewatching the Great British Baking Show, because baked things, amiright? I needed snacking material and felt inspired, so I baked some granola this week.
