A Perspective on Analog Writing Implements

The motto of my favorite journal brand, Leuchtturm1917, is "Denken mit der hand" or thinking with the hand. I'm not the only member of my group with an appreciation of the analog. This week Elisa, one of this summer's graduating PhD students and our resident stylophile, shares her own love of tactile thinking. Her caption for the image above is: "Hastily scribbled text trying to capture the incessant flow of words coming from Elisa's mind. Only some of it is captured. Even less of it is legible. Somehow, she still manages to get the gist of it transcribed."

by Dr. Elisa Dong

Analog tools are often overlooked these days as more and more of our work shifts towards the digital space and collaboration shifts towards being hosted on the cloud. Most of this isn't necessarily bad per se, and typing is certainly faster than writing unless you know shorthand. I do feel like the act of writing is one best not forgotten, however.

Who am I to tell you what to do? My only credentials are that I love stationery. Functional, pretty, and just plain cool. Stationery will always excite me. Oh, and I used it extensively throughout my current academic career and attribute much of my successes of writing things by hand. If you like lists, there are lists in this blog post.

Perhaps it is best to start off with a side story regarding my love of note taking and documentation. My first ever purchase with my paltry $5 allowance was a notebook. It was spiral bound and the covers were made of a stiff foam. The cover had some sort of tropical bird on it made of overlapping pieces of foam. It might even had had a googly eye or two attached to the head. As you can imagine, it was immensely exciting to me. I purchased this notebook as guided by my parents to keep track of what I spent my allowance on, or note down when I received more. To this day, I still tally up my purchases by hand, though I'm certainly less vigilant than I used to be. Somehow, the number of my expenditures has also gone up. 

You might have not had the same experience of looking over your numbers and squishing a foam notebook, but I'm sure there will be something you can care about when it comes to stationery. 

Here's another, more recent story for you. During my defense last week, I asked the examination committee to pause right before the exam actually began in earnest (sorry Scott!) so I could grab my notebook.

    "I wanted to take notes," I explained.

    "Don't worry," said one of my supervisors, "We're taking notes."

And so they were, it was meant to be reassuring and a reminder that I would get a summary of requested feedback afterwards. In the meantime, I didn't have to simultaneously take down the questions and try to answer them. 

    "I wasn't (worried), I just think better with a pen in my hand." 

This is true! At least for me, I find my focus instantly sharpened when I have a writing implement in hand. I feel somewhat badly for those who do online exams now. Perhaps their brains have worked out the association with typing into blank boxes and forms. I know mine hasn't. 

The Joy of Writing

I also find my writing to reflect some things that I really enjoy. It's scribbling, yet flowy, and reminds me a lot of my mother's handwriting on the notes she'd leave out on the table for herself as a reminder. I have attempted such reminders, but it only works if I remember to look for them. Naturally, my handwriting is also far harder to decipher than hers. I also love the way ink flows on paper, whether it be a ballpoint or gel, though I'm particular to a smooth ink. Pencils can also be a lovely experience, with a touch of toothiness that reminds you that you're physically sheering away a layer of pigment to lay on paper. 

If you happen to enjoy a touch of colour in writing, it can be quite a delight to write in pencil crayon or fountain pen ink. I personally like fine-tipped felt markers. I periodically order a couple packs of the Zebra Sarasa vintage ink pens. They come in sets of 5 or so, and contain a suite of fairly standard colours, but deeper and more muted. These are far more economical than the clicky gel-pens I used to buy at the Waterloo bookstore to mark assignments or annotate my own work. What a delight it is to use a different colour on paper and see how variable (or invariant!) it can be. Different colours and strategic outlining can be so useful when narrowing down thoughts. Its like highlighters, but more subtle (on that note, I recommend Mildliners, I have some that are nearing a decade old and still function great without searing my retinas). 

Then, there is paper. Receipt paper, cheap paperback paper full of disintegrating fibers, 100 gsm toothy watercolour paper, paper with films or coating for a smooth texture that renders them water resistant but prone to skidding, craft paper... there are so many options out there. I found that the numerous packs of 10 cent sheets that are sold in massive packs at Walmart at the beginning of the school year always treated me well. I certainly went through thousands of those sheets. My biggest gripe with them at the time was that they didn't come in a 5 mm ruling, and instead came in 7 mm. I find 7 mm exceptionally difficult to read on, unless the writing is quite slanted and flowery, in which the extra space helps each word stand out without too much overlapping between lines. Back in elementary school (and for some part of undergrad), I would either opt to write two lines per ruling, or just freehand the lines. I do not think my teachers were impressed by this. I'll come back to this later, but I eventually moved into notebooks within finer rulings or using a grid pad with 5x5 mm grids. 

A Real-time(ish) Example and Things Elisa Likes

Right now (or when I originally drafted this post, see the photo at the top of the article), I'm writing on a discontinued 52 gsm Tomoe River paper notebook that has been printed over with a 3.7 mm grid. The binding of this notebook is excellent. I originally ordered this notebook years ago from Nanami Seven Seas and I think I got one of their cheaper offerings that had some defects, hence the lower price. Back then, the exchange rate of CAD to USD was also far more palatable as well. If you've ever read my personal blog, you'll know that I have a fondness for Hobonichi planner products which use the 52 gsm Tomoe River paper, and had been using them since 2018, but the paper is also now discontinued. Turns out there was only ever one factory that produced this paper and they had closed down. Oops. I believe the replacement is now Sanzen paper. Generally, I'm looking for incredibly thin paper that doesn't show through ("ghost") onto the other side too much so I can write on both sides, and carry around an enormous amount of paper with me at all times without adding too much weight to my already overfilled bags. 

This notebook has several nice features, but I especially appreciate the ability to lay flat (due to the binding method) and the incredibly sturdy binding overall. It has been tossed around in the bottom of my bags for 7 months at this point, and I expect it to hold up for another couple of years. (AN: I'm noticing right now that it’s actually taking longer to type this up than the original writing, perhaps I'm a terribly slow typer! Or perhaps it’s just difficult to transcribe my own writing). I also peeked at the website, and apparently the notebook IS still available, as is the paper. Huh. Perhaps they had a huge back-stock or aren't concerned about the changes in paper quality and there certainly were changes. Mind you, the Café B6 slim that I have is currently unavailable, and it does state that it uses the new paper. 
 

Paper Rankings

Let's say I've intrigued you a bit regarding paper, but you don't want to hunt down a discontinued old copy of the notebook I have. Here are some that I've enjoyed in the past and would happily repurchase:

1. 1/2 year Stalogy notebooks in A6 or B6. These small pocket-sized notebooks use a similar binding technique that let you set the notebook fully flat. Because they can be a little small, you may have to push the pages down, but don't worry because the binding won't give out on you. The typical colours available year-round are black, red, and yellow. Limited edition colours are sometimes released. There is gold embossing along the spine for branding. I personally use the gridded paper version. It comes in 5 mm grid (or dot) and is the perfect size for doing math calculations by hand. What's not great about it if you get the printed grids is that they end quite far from the edges of the page, losing valuable writing space. On top of each page is also a calendar, lightly printed so you can mark in the date yourself. This too, takes up valuable writing space. However, one can certainly use it as a title section. I recommend the slightly larger B6 for actual writing or taking notes, and the A6 for more of a personal to-do list. The problem here is that its not always readily available in Canada, and there is quite a price bump buying it from a local business. I tend to do so periodically if I'm only purchasing one, but otherwise I'll get them straight from Japan if I am putting in an order for pens too. 
   
   
2. Mnemosyne. These notebooks are super sturdy, spiral bound, have a sleek black cover and are perhaps best used for on the go writing when you need a sturdy surface. For an unknown reason, there is a stunning strong yellow page in each one of these notebooks. I find it incredibly eye-catching. I have only used the A5 size from this brand. Regardless of the page design, the back side of each page is blank. The individual sheets are quite sturdy and thick, with a lovely soft cream colour that's really quite close to white. Each page tears out neatly with the microperforations. This notebook is for those who like a bit of heft, but appreciate a slim build to tuck away. Or if you like to doodle and write notes on a rickety subway line. They also take wetter inks and markers quite well, and I find that pencil crayons shade nicely on this paper. I usually use it as my base paper for sending letters because I find the paper so satisfying to hold in my hands. I imagine the recipients appreciate it too, though I've never confirmed.
   
   
3. Muji notebooks. The ones in the 5 packs with different coloured spines. I used these extensively in my undergraduate studies. One notebook colour per class. And I'd just purchase more if I was short on them. The paper texture was reasonably nice and smooth, and the price was definitely right for something so customizable. I've checked, and there are no Mujis close by to my new place! Looks like I'll have to swing by on my trips to Toronto. There was something exceptionally charming about the Muji shop encouraging people to stamp their notebooks in store to customize them. 
   
   
4. Leuchtturm1917 notebooks. The paper quality of these is variable, but if you enjoy a thicker notebook cover and built in bookmarks, I recommend these. The cream colouring is excellent and easy on the eyes. These notebooks are A5-ish sized. Normally I'd argue that they're too large to be toting around. But since the cover is very stiff, it'll hold up against the other miscellaneous items rattling around in your bag no problem! It's also got an elastic to keep the pages shut to prevent dinging up and folding pages that might splay open. I found that these typically lasted about ¾ of a year for me. I do really appreciate that the pages are numbered if you like indexing your notes. 

All of the above, except for the Muji notebooks, have a coating on the sheets that let ink float on top and show off fun features. It also means that text can take some time to dry before you can close the pages without smearing. I've also found that if your hands are a bit oily/sweaty, it can ruin the coating on the paper leading to a very blotchy writing experience. This seems to vary across all the papers, with the original Tomoe River paper having the least amount of ruined coating. Mnemosyne is also pretty great about staying consistent, but I don't do enough writing on it to actually test it out. It does seem like a lot to care about when I write it up! Nice writing experience aside, I feel like there are some good reasons to give writing by hand a shot: 

1. Improved memory of things you write down. I'm sure there are a few references kicking around for this. Have people done studies on typing as an equivalent? It does still take fine motor control to some extent (my motor control is less fine, if you ever hear me type, it sounds like I'm trying to destroy the keys).
   
   
2. I imagine its generally good for the brain. Something about using both the more creative side and the fine motor control side at the same time. Perhaps there is also an equivalent perk when it comes to typing however, as stabbing at tiny keys can be quite difficult to do precisely!
   
   
3. Processing of ideas, emotions, and the like. This mostly pertains to the value of journalling, but I also find it useful to write things out by hand when I’m looking for patterns. This can be notes on papers I’m reading, or a wrong variable in an equation I’m trying to track down. 
   
   
4. Bonus - talking to other people who love stationery! One of my new colleagues recognized the pens I was using, and we ended up connecting over the brands we use for writing. I've promised to bring in fountain pen inks to the office. I also remember one of the first meetings with the PVL lab I went to, John saw that I had a rather unique looking notebook! Stationery lovers can identify each other from a mile away I feel. 

Discontinued notebook and paper aside, I also try to always have a booklet of regular letter-sized grid paper on a pad on hand. I find it super useful to work out problems, illustrate things to people if I don't want to check if the whiteboard markers are dried out, and mock up maps if there's some impromptu DnD about to happen. I used these extensively in undergrad for a while as an alternative to the Muji notebooks. I'd take notes continuously on the pad and flip them over so they wouldn't tear at the top, and just start a new page for each class I was going to. At the end of the term, I would compile all the sheets together. 

I wonder if there are many students who bring paper and pen to class these days. I can see the value in not losing your notes by maintaining them digitally, but it is nice to be able to shuffle sheets around and see the entire class represented all at once. I remember I mostly brought in my laptop to read manga during lectures, and occasionally annotated power point slides as they became more common later in my degree. Rarely did I feel it was worth the battery power consumption to bring a laptop to class though. About half of my classmates simply printed out the slides and filled them in by hand, later transcribing them onto a digital copy. Doing things twice might seem inefficient, but I imagine it meant things stuck in their heads more.*

I'm at somewhat of a loss as to what I'm going to do after I finish up my stash of notebooks (I accumulated a few from Hobonichi with their blank/undated pages a couple years ago, though I don't love the book size). I recently purchased one from Knock Thrice which had a fun trim, but the notebook itself seemed far to heavy to be lugging around. Since I don't love having separate books for different things, unless it's meant to be very one-off, I think I'll have to go back to the Stalogy. Maybe with my next bulk purchase of the Zebra Sarasa since I'm down to one now, I think. With Tomoe River gone, possibly forever, I may truly need to move on. 
 

On Pens and Friendships

In the past few paragraphs, I've been very "In my day...", but the the truth is that my stationery loving journey really accelerated when I found entire online communities that shared similar interests. Shortly after I had an explanation from my brother as to why he had a syringe in the bathroom that is (blunt-tipped, used to refill ink). He promised it was nothing nefarious, and gave me my first ever Platinum Preppy. Prior to that, I just periodically purchased rather pricey gel pens so that my hands wouldn't cramp when marking student assignments. After... well. Let's say I've been to pen meetups and regularly scope out stationery shops when I get the chance. The existence of the community has given me access to trying out pens that go for thousands of dollars MSRP, and sampling papers that I normally wouldn't have paid for, like those element themed bound notebooks that launched on a Kickstarter that I won during a giveaway that seems to have since vanished. 

I found that the (fountain pen) community was incredibly generous and welcoming, regardless of what price point you could handle, or what it was you enjoyed. Whether it be 18 K nibs, custom grinds, cheapie beaters, urushi, or the history of pens and paper. I was encouraged to test things out, swap inks, and simply chat about whatever it was on our minds. The community at the time was fairly small, and it was interesting hearing perspectives on new developments. I tried to give back where I could, and essentially gave away a prized Platinum Century 3776 that I had initially purchased second hand from the US. I'm also a big fan of distributing Platinum Preppy and Pilot Kakuno pens, which I find to be excellent writers in spite of their price point. They are currently my preferred pens, though I have cracked several of them. 

As it turns out, price does not correlate with quality when it comes to fountain pens. Typically, the writing end comes from one of a few companies, and the differences arise from the body of the pen. Urushi, a hand lacquring technique, is far more expensive than an injection mold. Explosive rods that were used for the gorgeous striping found in celluloid have been discontinued because...they are explosive. The technology for flex nibs seemingly has been lost over years. Pens with unique aspects tend to go for more than the standard counterparts. 

Some of the modern “grails” (sub $200) I've tried out! I enjoyed the writing experience of the Platinum 3776, but the number of turns to uncap the pen drove me nuts. I've also had a Pilot Vanishing Point, and upgraded to a vintage body. Unfortunately, I didn't purchase a vintage nib along side it, and it doesn't cap fully when retracted, leading to a messy experience. I also tinkered with the nib and lost most of its tipping. Oops. I also tried out the gorgeous Lamy 2000. What a nightmare that was. I found one on sale with exactly what I wanted, an extra fine nib. Well, with such a huge tolerance for EF, it was decidedly not extra-fine. Furthermore, the makrolon body cracked after a few months, apparently a well-known defect the Lamy team hasn't resolved. I quite enjoyed the taper of the pen, but clearly it was not the one for me. I'm still eyeing a Waterman Carene, but the Platinum desk pen is actually an excellent replacement that is actually fine, and tapered. I've also acquired a "vintage" Pilot pocket pen that posts and turns into a light-weight rounded pen. It has an engraving on it that I've never bothered to translate, but it was most likely a graduation gift for someone at some point. The nib is slightly bouncy, and allows for excellent variation across a single stroke. But it doesn't open so wide that it would be classified as a flex pen. I like this one for urban sketching. 

These days I use a mix of the Zebra Sarasa vintage pens and relatively cheap fountain pens (Platinum Preppy and Pilot Kakuno). I'm not too surprised if they crack in two years given my reckless treatment of them, but they last usually well beyond that length. I had a favourite Preppy with the most incredible nib last just over five years! 

More Reason to Carry Around Stationery

Anyhow, I do feel it is well worth trying to write things using pen and paper. There's something about the inability to edit and simply scratching out mistakes that is incredibly satisfying. Having a notebook on hand also gives you the freedom to doodle during boring meetings rather than browse unrelated websites, which might be more obvious. 

Related to writing, is also just drawing out your problems. I personally think my presentations are pretty decent! For the better ones, I almost always have something mocked up on paper first to show a story board. This is something I did for my defense (Fig. 2), and I had less than normal feedback on the specific contents and sequence of delivery as a result (I think). Instead, the feedback I got could focus on small details to really polish the final product (Fig. 3). When I start drafting something on Power Point (or equivalent software) right away, I often get stuck and feel uninspired, even if I have headers and points of what I want to present on each slide. Starting it out on paper feels more exciting and I can see the whole vision together with minimal distractions. No looking at my messy fingerprints on the screen, the annoying colour scheme of the software, or a reminder to log into my Microsoft account! Especially when I'm planning out a sequence that involves quite a long time to put together, I feel like its best to see it out on paper before the committing the several hours it takes to complete.

Figure 2. A draft storyboard in preparation for a defense. Elisa likes to think of them as movie scripts, with critical details in scenes shown as their own slides, and various arcs that need to be captured. The ellipses represent various content that are either methodology or results, which she likes to keep fairly simple, nothing too flashy. Some of these sections would borrow from previous slides, so any critical design elements didn’t have to be reproduced. The transition slides and ideas are shown on the far right. Key words are written in all caps for legibility.

 Figure 3. Simple notes that Elisa took during her second mock defense regarding things that could be improved. These pages are a mix of suggestions in illustration and animation upgrades, and text that covers things she likely wants to remember or reconsider for before the final presentation.

 

Conclusion?

I don’t really have one for you. I wanted to share a love of stationery and encourage that readers seriously consider trying out writing by hand. Even if you cannot read your own handwriting, there is a lot of value to putting your thoughts on paper.

---

*As a further aside, I lived in China for a year, and I recall the stationery there to be generally excellent unless you were purchasing scrap paper that was clearly quite rough and fibrous that was meant for practicing letters. Paper was pretty much always quite nice, regardless of whether or not it was cheap and had cute figures on the front. I definitely recommend purchasing random cute notebooks when in East Asia, generally everything is nicer feeling, even if it is cheap! 

One Year In

 

It's an adjustment, starting grad school. Even if you've already done research work, becoming a teaching assistant, taking on more responsibility in the lab or even lecturing to a class can be daunting! But fear not - these are challenges that all academics have overcome in their careers and so will you. This week, MSc student Isabelle Marincic reflects on her first year experience.

by Isabelle Marincic

It’s official! I am one year into my masters, yet I am feeling dumber than ever before. Well, not really, but being in a constant state of learning makes me feel like I never actually know anything for certain. After a slight crash-out with my supervisor (shout out John), I am finally starting to feel like I belong, and that maybe I can actually get through this degree. I want to dedicate this blog post to things I’ve learned, skills I’ve gained, and things I am still working on. (This blog post topic was inspired by Grace’s wonderful enrichment exercise at the last group meeting.)

What have I learned (seriously!)

Throughout a masters, learning comes in many forms. This can be academic or personal, in that while I have definitely gained scientific knowledge I have also gained knowledge about how I am able to effectively conduct research. A hard lesson learned was how self-regulated a masters degree really is, and as it turns out, I needed to come to terms with the fact that I am really bad at self-motivation sometimes. Most days my schedule is completely up to me, which sounds ideal in theory but in practice allows for the perpetuation of bad habits, such as doom-scrolling on reels. This combined with the crushing weight of impostor syndrome leads to quite the unproductive day. I quickly realized that I needed to change my mindset, mostly regarding my impostor syndrome. For a while doing research felt like; “Why even bother if I know some other masters student out there is way smarter than me?” I bother because I love research, I love what I am researching, and this is the place I know I want to be. On top of my difficulty in an academic setting, the negative self-talk was seeping into other areas of my life, into things I also simply love doing. So, while having learned a lot about remote sensing techniques and methane measurements on Mars, one of the most important learning experiences was learning how to speak nicer to myself. Self-motivation can be really difficult - and it is currently a work in progress - but it is most definitely progressing in the right direction. Thankfully, I work with an amazing group of people who always offer the best and most comforting advice :) 

Have I even gained any skills?

You bet I have. Again, skills can be separated into academic and personal. The academic skills I have gained are small but mighty. For instance, I can read better now. And by this I mean I can better approach a research paper rather than having absolutely no clue where to start. A good place to start is the abstract, though. Then I like to read headings and assess the flow of the paper. Sometimes I accidentally end up just reading the entire paper depending on how cool the research is, but this is often a waste of time </3 

Earlier this year I had the opportunity to give a lecture on Martian methane (see image above)! I was really excited to work on my public speaking skills as this skill is crucial when attending conferences and presenting your research. I also hope to continue down the academic track to obtain a professorship (in a thousand years) so giving a lecture fit right in with that goal.  

Finally with regards to a personal skill that I’ve gained, I realized that in order to complete work I HAVE to allot hours in my day to specific tasks. Otherwise, I will literally not complete anything. Perhaps I acquired this skill a little late in the game but better late than never!

Some more room to grow

There will always be room for a person to grow, which is what makes life so fulfilling. Although, it can be hard to admit you need to grow, hence my crash out. I was in denial for a couple of months about the severity of my issues, resulting in such a build up of feelings that they all came out in a teary mess. So, moving forward, I plan on maintaining a positive internal dialogue, and to simply keep trying new things despite not feeling 10000% confident. This holds true for my academic endeavours, like writing my first paper, or my athletic endeavours, because my climbing gym is sandbagged and I keep falling off the wall. But like most things in life worth doing, you have to suck before you can get better!

 

DPS/EPSC 2025: Izzy’s First Masters Conference

 

One of the best parts about being an advisor is that you get to see growth in your trainees. Not only is is satisfying to see those students succeed, but you are also reminded of the early times in your own career. There is no more reliable occasion for such moments than a masters student's first conference. This week is Izzy's turn to talk about this evergreen topic on our blog!
(Above: Izzy at the Airport. Image credit: Izzy's father)

By Isabelle Marincic

From the title, you probably have been able to deduce the topic of today’s blog post. What you may not have guessed is that I am going to recount to you in chronological order the events of my first conference during my masters degree!

Step one was getting to the airport (YYZ, Rush). My father graciously drove me to the airport for my 4:30 pm flight on September 5th, 2025. Pictured above is my father embarrassingly sending me off while he waited outside of security. Naturally, I was about 2.5 hours early for my flight. 

 

Feeling under-packed and tired, I bought a delicious panini to tie myself over until they fed me dinner on the plane (yum!). I think I slept most of the flight to the layover location: Frankfurt. Upon arriving at the Frankfurt airport, I took the world's longest bus ride to the other side of this ginormous airport hoping I would magically arrive at my terminal. Which I did! Long story short, I accidentally gave the German government my fingerprint, and waited in a very long line for security. One final flight later, I arrived in Helsinki, Finland. Very excited to take European public transportation, I trained to the city center, and meandered my way to my hotel on foot. First impressions of Finland: grey.

 

Fast forward to Sunday, September 7th after Milena and Abby arrive. We took this day to peruse areas near our hotel before the conference began the following day. Abby and I guided a ship to shore, and got some steps in. 

 

 

 

With this being my first conference attended during my masters, I was extremely excited to learn about tons of new science, to meet other scientists interested in the same things as I, and to present the work I had completed so far since arriving at York. There was an immense amount of information being relayed throughout the conference, it was so much all at once that I had trouble remembering most of it. This was a lesson for me to take notes at the next conference I attend. But, the programme included talks on terrestrial planets, outer planet systems, small bodies (comets, asteroids, etc), exoplanets, origins of planetary systems and astrobiology, and outreach, diversity, and amateur astronomy. The talks I primarily attended were those in my general field of astrobiology, along with talks given by members of my lab.  

 

 

 

One of the highlights of the conference with regards to my professional development was the poster I presented during the Exoplanet and Astrobiology poster session. Tragically, I only attracted a single visitor to my poster. While it was slightly awkward to stand by my poster for about an hour without being able to talk about my research, I still firmly believe in the writing and presenting of poster presentations. It is a necessary segue into academic writing, which is a very difficult skill to master. I have yet to do so. So, writing short abstracts that explain your work to a relatively broad audience is good practice for advancing your academic writing skills in the long run, especially for undergraduate students.

 

 

 

Overall there were two lessons learned during this conference: (1) take notes, and (2) talk to more people! I was insanely nervous as this was my first time interacting with a large group of intelligent people, so it was quite intimidating. I know Abby and Elisa have no problem with this part of the job, so maybe I should ask for some tips. I personally enjoy collaborating and sharing ideas with people in my field, as I believe this helps improve my science by hashing things out-loud. Now that I am a whopping 4 more months into my degree, I think I will have more ideas to share during AbSciCon 2026 :)
 

Lastly, below are some images of Helsinki during the touristy part of the conference trip! Helsinki was a 

very inviting and pleasant city, especially with the availability of public transit which the North American mind could not comprehend.

 

  

  

Say Yes to the Lab Group

It's an interesting exercise to look back from time to time. Can you make out the pathway that brought you to where you are today? No matter whether the decision at any particular juncture was good or ill in retrospect, as the song (and Mary Schmich column) goes: "your choices are half chance." But why not improve those odds? Today, MSc student Milena Markovich offers some advice for those thinking about returning to university for graduate school.

By Milena Markovich 

In December of 2023 I found myself with that annoying, undeniable and incurable itch. The itch to go back to school. Only six months after graduating from five arduous years of an engineering undergraduate program, complete with all-nighters, co-op terms and oceans of coffee, I had vowed that industry was the place for me. I wanted a break – a simple 9-to-5, no working on weekends (most weeks at least), no worrying about assignments or exams.  However, after only a couple months as a full-time engineer, I knew that this was not what I wanted my future career to look like. I had always paved my path through engineering with the goal of one day working in the space industry – and, after all, what was I waiting for? I decided “one day” had to become “today”. Now that I had made up my mind to pursue graduate school, I began the hunt every little scientist dreams of – the hunt for the perfect lab group.
 

Here we get to the crux of this blog post: an easy (in theory) how-to guide for finding the perfect grad school program for you. Step number one: “thank you, next” – meaning, establish your dealbreakers. For myself, the past 5 years of my life had been spent laboring over an engineering degree, and I was hesitant to throw that all away. I wanted my MSc program to be a low-stakes introduction to the world of research. From this principal objective, I could establish two requirements. First, the program or research must have some relation to engineering, whether it be with engineering courses or instrument-based research. Second, I needed to graduate from this program debt-free, such that I could later choose whether to remain in academia or return to industry, without the pressure of financial stressors. This led me to limit my search to graduate programs within Canada, both for the proximity to friends and family and to avoid hefty international tuition fees.

Step number two: “so tell me what you want, what you really, really want” – or, set your core values. Seriously answer the dreaded question from every behavioural interview: “where do you see yourself five years from now?”. No one stays in grad school forever (at least I hope not), and as such you need to tailor your graduate program to the career you want. No doubt priorities shift, interests evolve, and you can finish grad school with an entirely different goal. But based on your aspirations right now, you can start your hunt for a supervisor. For myself, I knew I wanted to retain the engineering mindset I had built from my undergraduate program. I also knew I valued the novel approach of my program – integrated engineering at UBC, which allowed me to learn multiple disciplines of engineering, informing a systems-based approach. These values were what initially made Dr. Moores’ career, and the Planetary Volatiles Laboratory, stand out to me. Having completed an undergraduate degree in engineering science at U of T, John has built his career bridging engineering and science interests in space exploration missions.

Step number three: “you’ve gotta have faith”. When it comes to grad school applications, a myriad of factors play into a supervisor’s ability to accept you as a student. When I first reached out to John, I initially received the dreaded “sorry, no vacancy”. However, as I continued connecting with various supervisors across Canada, a couple months later I opened my inbox to find a follow-up response. As luck would have it, a spot had opened up and I was able to meet with John to talk about potential thesis projects.

Step number four: “how deep is your love?” – I fear I must age myself and establish that this refers to the Bee Gees song, not Calvin Harris. Of equal importance as a supervisor or program, is your thesis project – namely, how much you can commit to this project. This is what will “take over” your life for the next, at minimum, two years. As such, you want to make sure that this project aligns with your goals beyond grad school. Imagine yourself sitting in an interview, discussing your work over the past couple years. Will this project help you impress your dream company and land the dream job? Will it help you take steps towards the path you want in academia? Is the project feasible to tackle with your skill set? Does it help you build a new skill set which you need to be a competitive candidate? When I first spoke to John, we discussed a modelling-based project which had me very hesitant to join the lab. I was steadfast in finding a project that would suit my engineering skills and which I could use to market myself to future employers in industry. Once again, in another blind stroke of luck, only a couple weeks after re-connecting with John he attended a conference which kickstarted renewed interest in a Lyman-alpha camera he has been working on for lunar ice prospecting from within permanently shadowed regions. Instrument-based? Check. Relevant to space industry interests? Also check. With this project aligning better with my goals, I was nearly sold on the Planetary Volatiles Lab.

Step number five: “I’m pickin’ up good vibrations”. If you are like me and have relocated for grad school, this step is likely of equal importance to everything else. Living in a new city, trying to make new friends while overwhelmed with the workload of research, taking courses and teaching assistantships can feel impossible. You want to establish what the lab culture is before you make this big jump. Ensure that the lab aligns with your personal expectations outside of research – a social, welcoming and warm atmosphere can help ease the transition to a new city. John happily connected me with Alex and Grace, both of whom helped confirm my decision for me. As numerous blog posts have detailed before, our lab makes time for social activities throughout the year and during conferences, facilitating a friendly environment. Establishing a support system within the lab has been the biggest factor in my success in moving to Toronto and starting graduate school. Research can be difficult in its own right, choosing a lab where you never feel alone helps to brighten both the tough times and the celebrations.

“Goodbye, everybody, I've got to go” – and that’s all folks. Following your own values, goals and passions will result in a foolproof strategy for picking the right lab group. These decisions are not one-size fits all, and at the end of the day only you can make this decision. So, think about these steps, write some pro’s-and-con’s lists and take the leap into the wacky world of graduate school. Whether this guide leads you to us at the Planetary Volatiles Lab or elsewhere, I wish you luck in your new adventure. 

Swapping Mars for Exoplanets: My Time at Harvard University

Providing graduate students with a range of experiences is a key part of helping them figure out what they want to do and where they want to do it once they have completed their degrees. Sometimes that means visiting another university lab, or working for a government agency or finding out what it means to join a team in the industrial sector. For much of the year, PhD student Grace Bischof has been investigating these questions in the lab of Robin Wordsworth at Harvard University.

by Grace Bischof 

Last summer, I received an email telling me that I was eligible to apply to the Michael Smith Foreign Study Supplement, funded through the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC). This supplement designates money for graduate students to partake in research internships at institutions abroad to help build global connections. Immediately after receiving the email, I excitedly emailed John to ask if we could talk about possible researchers that I could reach out to about this opportunity to see if they would be interested in having me in their lab for a few months.

At the top of the list of researchers I was interested in connecting with was Dr. Robin Wordsworth at Harvard University. During my time interning at JPL, one of Robin’s papers formed part of the basis for the work I was doing there, so I became familiar with some of his research. About a year later, I saw Robin give two fantastic talks about the environment of Mars at LPSC and the 10th International Conference on Mars. Ironically, though the two talks I’d seen by Robin had been about Mars, and my research at York for the past ~5 years has been about Mars, Robin does not primarily do research on the Martian atmosphere. Though Mars makes up a portion of his research, he also works extensively on modelling the atmospheres of exoplanets. So, for the first time, I wrote and submitted a proposal for research outside of the solar system, characterizing the atmospheres of rocky exoplanets through Lyman-alpha transit spectroscopy.

I learned in late December that my proposal was successful and by the first week of February I was on a plane, flying to Boston, Massachusetts. Unlike the winter of 2023 that I spent in sunny Pasadena happily skipping the cold Toronto winter, Boston has a similar climate to home. Upon landing, I was greeted with below zero temperatures and several inches of snow on the ground. I took a cab to my new home in Cambridge (where Harvard is located), which is just across the Charles River from Boston, feeling equal parts excited and anxious about the next few months ahead of me.

Luckily, I soon learned that I had I little to be anxious about. Though I had never researched atmospheres other than Mars’, I loved the project I was working on (and will write a blog post detailing it later on!). At the beginning of the internship, it felt like I had a mountain of literature to read and understand to even grasp the basics of the project, but I chipped away at it slowly, finding a new love for exoplanetary science. Everyone in Robin’s group was extremely friendly and thoughtful – I learned a lot listening to them talk about their research. Going into this experience, I didn’t think I could enjoy an area of research as much as I love Mars, but I am very pleased to have discovered something new that I find so fascinating. 

One of the best things about working at Harvard is the stunning campus, with its gorgeous centuries-old buildings. A favourite location of mine on campus was the Harvard Museum of Natural History, which also encompasses the Geological and Mineralogical Museum, the Museum of Comparative Zoology, the Harvard University Herbaria, as well as the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology. My office was on the upper floor of the Geological Museum, so I was greeted by walls of gorgeous rocks and minerals every day. With a student ID, I was able to get in for free and roam around the floors of these museums. I took lots of pictures of the dinosaur fossils and bones for my 3-year-old nephew, Tate, who is a dinosaur fanatic. My favourite part of the museum was the comparative zoology section, where there are taxidermized animals of every kind you can imagine from all over the world – I kept finding it so fascinating to think that people in Australia would think seeing a kangaroo is as mundane as we find seeing a squirrel in Toronto. 

Under the bones of a Steller’s sea cow, while admiring the giraffe on my right

Since it was my first time in Massachusetts, I spent some time exploring the Boston area with friends and family who came to visit. We walked the Freedom Trail, visiting historic Boston sites like the Paul Revere House, Granary Cemetery where some of the American Founding Fathers are buried, and boarded the U.S.S Constitution, which is the world’s oldest commissioned warship that is still afloat. When my dad visited, we rented a car and spent a morning wandering the streets of Salem, learning more of the Witch Trials that plagued the town in the 1600s. That afternoon, we drove to Concord and visited the Orchard House, where Louisa May Alcott wrote and set the novel Little Women. The 2019 film adaption of Little Women is one of my favourite movies of all time, so exploring the home that inspired the novel was an experience I won’t forget!

 

 Outside of the Orchard House where Louisa May Alcott wrote Little Women 

Before I knew it, it was June 1st, and I was packing my bags to fly back home to Toronto after four incredible months at Harvard. One thing to know about my academic journey while reading this blog is that getting to grad school was not necessarily the easiest for me. Though I loved the content of my undergraduate degree in physics and I worked hard at it, my grades were certainly not the best. When John accepted me into PVL in 2020, he was taking a real chance on me. All that to say: I never thought I would spend any time at an institution as prestigious as Harvard, let alone feel like I belonged there and was proud of the work I was doing. This internship helped me grow confidence in myself both personally and professionally. Five years ago, when I started grad school, I wouldn’t have believed I would gain that confidence, so I am beyond lucky and grateful for this experience – and especially for my experience in PVL which got me here in the first place.

Poster Sessions and All That

An image (Figure 1, courtesy of Elisa) of one of the many buildings which housed the 2024 American Geophysical Union Conference in December of last year. The conference is massive, overwhelming even! Yet, it provides a venue where even disciplines with small numbers of scientists can meet and discuss their science. From Elisa: "There was no mistaking this was the place. So many poster tubes and people piled up waiting for the light to change."

 by Elisa Dong

Going to conferences… is fun! 

The attendance at conferences is a significant part of a graduate student experience. These are the places where we showcase our work, get feedback, and check out what’s up and coming in the field. Sometimes, conferences take place at exotic locales, and sometimes, they may be as mundane as “the place near the airport that is extremely inconvenient to take public transport to.” AGU 2024 fell somewhere in between, in Washington D.C., capital of the United States of America.

Given that the flight time and drive time were not too dissimilar, my boyfriend and I opted to drive down to save on costs, a very real consideration for going to conferences! While unplanned, we drove through some fascinating geological features going through Pennsylvania, dotted with various electoral signs on the way down. We stopped at a fairly mediocre cash-only brunch place, and saw snow and horses for most of the way down. Entering the city, the traffic went from a quiet one lane drive to cars changing lanes without signals, and mysterious roundabouts with confusing signage. Once at our hotel, we spent half an hour figuring out the parking situation, grabbed some food downstairs (with the best free bread we had ever had), then promptly went to bed. 

AGU is about a 5 day conference (see Day 1 in Figure 1!), and I had a poster on the first day and a presentation on the third. My presentation went well, and I was able to touch base with a coauthor of mine to confirm a few key concepts for a paper I was writing (I did this by tapping his shoulder to say hello). I had thought I would have the entire last day off to wander the city. As it turns out, there was an entire session dedicated to planetary defense and impactors that I had missed in my schedule, so I slunk back into the conference center to hear about the modelling work that was ongoing (Figure 2 shows once of the very few photos I took at the museum). 

Figure 2. Ducks at the museum! I also took photos of many many rock displays, but the local fowl section was also very cool!

It’s worth noting I met up with several other colleagues who do similar things – checking on some scientific concepts that were their specialties, sharing ideas for future works, and generally touching base. Despite running around to sessions, visiting random posters, picking up free ducky keycaps, the networking and chatting with more distant coworkers and future collaborators is one of the best things about a conference for me. Getting on a zoom call or sending an email is just not the same. 

The collaborative and productive nature of conferences was really highlighted by the poster I had up. I made the questionable choice of wearing heels that first day, anticipating being able to sit and walk around. Unlike some other conferences I had attended in the past, this poster session was huge. Having mine on the first day, I didn’t realize just how well attended it would be! 

So instead of being able to kick back and look at other posters during my session, I was glued at my poster well past the closing time and completely missed seeing an old colleague just a few posters down the aisle. I received a large amount of feedback, including kind critiques and thoughtful questions that have lingered as I consider the limitations of my work. Folks stopped by to offer resources and model simulations, encouraged me to bring up my work to a larger group (this has happened! I gave a presentation and received more positive feedback and further suggestions), and all the good stuff. I met many new people, whose names I wish I had taken down, including some who might be future reviewers of my work that gently pointed out the critical questions that I might want to consider as I continued working on the project. I explained a few concepts to a child attending the conference with family, and shared in their excitement over the awesomeness - that modelling that can help us explain our real-world observations. 

I was also happy to meet up with my previous supervisor and bring him up to speed on what I was working on, and to hear his assessment of the current state of his field and view of the conference.
Some cool things I got out of AGU 2024:

• An invitation to ask about a summer internship position (this didn’t end up working out, but it definitely expanded my thoughts)
• Meeting undergraduate students! It’s always a delight to see what cool things they’re working on, and we’ve spoken again since about work related matters
• A suggestion to present my work at an internal MSL meeting despite not working on data from the team directly
• The potential for writing a paper for a special edition (this also didn’t work out, but the procedure has been established and might be something to touch up again in the future)
• A visit to NASA Goddard! I’ve never been to a NASA Centre before, and I was able to plan it with one of my coworkers based out of there and get approvals just in time! It was great to see what folks are doing behind the scenes, the huge clean rooms with possibly over a hundred HEPA filters installed (Fig. 3), and the old-fashioned, yet extremely functional, measuring tools they used
• A late night ice-cream hangout with an online friend who forewarned me about the roundabouts
• More ice-cream and a super toasty paper fill menu on a busy Friday night when every other place was packed
• An experience (and the post-experience) at Coffee Republic. I have never enjoyed ads in my inbox so much before. The food was delightfully greasy, the coffee solid, and it was fun to hear the workers chat about their relationships candidly
• Going to the Christmas market! Two of them even!
• Barrel and Chuck, the two plushies I picked up on the way back at a Cracker Barrel. (Barrel is the lab’s new emotional support capybara, and has a lavender scented heat pack inside him! All of us in the office where he lives happen to like lavender, so it works out great. He occasionally moves from desk to desk to provide extra support)
• And, an incredible amount of useful feedback for my own work + inspiration from other projects in the future!

Figure 3. The HEPA filter wall. Incredible. What else can you spot in the room?

AGU is one of the stranger conferences out there. It is a huge conglomeration of what is really 30+ conferences that are distantly related all mashed into one location. While it makes it easy to pop into a session about say, climate change or quantum physics, it’s not necessarily planned out in a way that potentially related sessions don’t interfere. Add on thousands of attendees, and you might be feeling a bit claustrophobic and getting more exercise than planned as you trek from one building to another. Something to keep in mind. It may be better for some folks to target more niche conferences to get the same return.

We drove back as well. My eyes are still recovering from being blasted with 8 hours of dry air.

The Crunch

There comes a point when working on any large project when you can run into roadblocks or motivation can flag. This is almost guaranteed with something as long and as challenging as a PhD. Indeed, statistics suggest that in Canada about a quarter of science and engineering PhD students do not complete their degrees within 9 years (as of 2013). Sometimes, the greatest challenge can arise just before the end in "The Crunch" to finish, as Dr. Kevin Axelrod, our new Postdoctoral Fellow attests in this week's very personal post below. But if you find yourself in this situation, don't loose hope!  As the saying goes, it's often darkest just before the dawn.

(Photo above courtesy of Dr. Axelrod: "The view from the roof of the main building of the Desert Research Institute.  I spent a lot of time up here over five years, all four seasons.  It’s that nice.")

by Dr. Kevin Axelrod

So, it’s been a pretty crazy 12 months.  In January of 2023 (one calendar year before this blog is being posted), I was lying on the couch for two straight weeks in my shared house in Reno, Nevada, recovering from leg surgery, high on hydrocodone, and needing my housemates to get food from the kitchen for me (thanks, Heather and Brie).  Not appearing in the lab at the Desert Research Institute for two full weeks, I still had not completed the experimentation for my second publication of my Ph.D. research at the University of Nevada at Reno.  I still did not have a set date for when I would defend my dissertation and graduate from school, and quite frankly I did not yet know where my life was going.  And, believe it or not, I had never heard of York University.  

I had spent the last year and a half worrying about where my research was headed and how it was going to help me take the next step in life after graduation (if I even graduated).  At this point, I was supposed to be in “the crunch” - the last year of a Ph.D. tenure in which a student is supposed to devote their life, body, mind, spirit, overall being, consciousness, life-force, qi, etc. to their research and nothing else.  Instead, for two weeks, I watched Clarkson’s Farm on Amazon Prime (not sponsored, by the way) while eating chocolate pudding.  Not exactly the demeanor of someone who had spent the last 4.5 years of their life in graduate school and was now supposed to be in the crunch.  Of course, I could not walk and thus could not come into lab to work on my experiments, and I struggled to write anything because most of the time, I could not even sit up.  I felt stuck – I was seriously questioning whether I could graduate in August of 2023, which was a date delayed from a previous goal of May 2023, which was a date delayed from my original goal of December 2022 that I laid out in my prospectus defense.  

This was just 12 months ago.  And now, I am writing a blog for the Planetary Volatiles Laboratory, supervised by Dr. John Moores, at YorkU in Ontario.  Back in January, I would not have guessed that I would be here now. 

So, this blog is not about how cool my Ph.D. research is, a summary of an important meeting or event, or a case study of a planetary atmosphere.  This blog is about Ph.D. students in “the crunch”, who are anxious, unsure of their future, feeling consistently unprepared or inadequate, and always being very busy while still feeling like they get nothing done.    

Hopefully, that is not the case for most Ph.D. students who read this.  Hopefully, most Ph.D. students are constantly ecstatic about their research, enjoying all the once-in-a-lifetime experiences that they had dreamed about since childhood when they first watched Bill Nye the Science Guy or Mythbusters.  That was not me, however, and I know I am not the only one.  I had been working on this one singular project (bioaerosol chemistry, and more specifically pollen chemistry) for 4.5 years, and though it came with a lot of intrigue and enjoyment, I had also made many mistakes, suffered setbacks, and was disappointed with what I viewed to be a low level of progress. As a result, I was feeling very stressed and burned out – I just wanted to finally complete it and move onto new things.

After I got to the point where I could walk again, I returned to the lab with a new motivation - to get my life together.  And that involved two tasks: finishing my research on the volatility of bioaerosol constituents in the atmosphere, and also looking past my Ph.D. and finding a place where I could continue my passion for scientific research on a new project which would allow me to expand my knowledge further.  And I ended up finding such an opportunity with the PVL via a flyer that Dr. Moores posted on the American Geophysical Union website’s career listings.  

Upon my first interview with Dr. Moores, I knew right away that I wanted to join the lab – I was completely overwhelmed when he extended the offer to join.  I accepted.  It would be an exciting change of pace - a new project on the development of a functioning methane spectrometer for the Martian atmosphere (and so far, it has been a very exciting change of pace).  But, in March 2023 when I first interviewed, in the back (and front) of my head was a lingering doubt – would I actually be able to finish my Ph.D. research in time to move to Toronto and start research at YorkU in September 2023?

One thing was for certain – the pressure was on like never before.  Pressure not just to produce manuscripts, but to start a new chapter in life.  To self-improve, if you will.  In my opinion, that was the subject of my dissertation writing, even though self-improvement is never mentioned in it.  

And, for the most part, that pressure was good for me.  It made me more focused and motivated towards my bioaerosol research.  And as my leg improved, so did the state of my dissertation.  By the end of March, I completed the experimentation for my second publication and was busy writing the manuscript for it, while simultaneously taking care of in-lab work for my third research chapter in my dissertation.  By May, I had finished the writing of the publication and was wrapping up the in-lab research.  And by July 10, I was holding my dissertation defense.

Granted, the defense was far from perfect (almost nothing ever is in academia).  The night before was my most disturbed night of “sleep” ever. The morning of, I woke up at 4:30 AM and was instantly wide awake – something that had only happened one other time in my life, which was the morning of my prospectus defense two years earlier.  I held off on coffee that morning because it would have had no effect.  My jitteriness was already at a maximum due to the nervous energy surging through me. 
I was in a state of extreme anxiety.  But, I took solace in the fact that I had given the past year, “the crunch”, my best effort – motivated by my desire to make it to my postdoctoral fellowship.  And if my best effort was not enough, then oh well.    

The defense was an absolute fever dream – I don’t even remember most of it.  But it went well, and after two and a half hours I walked out of the presentation room with the blessings of my committee.  After living in Reno for five years, I was finally going to start a new chapter in life.  Provided, of course, that I take care of a few other things before I left, such as updating some of my writing and attempting to gather some results via a secondary analysis of some of my aerosol samples because one of my previous experiments failed.

But before any of that, I had another immediate task: attending my first in-person conference as a graduate student (no thanks to you, COVID), at the International Conference for Carbonaceous Particles in the Atmosphere (ICCPA) in Berkeley, California.  After my defense, my next task was to drive for four hours (on two hours of sleep) to California.  Though I was driving at night and did not arrive at the conference hotel until 2AM, it was one of the most euphoric drives of my life.  

The next day, I finally got to enjoy an in-person conference, as a reward for passing the defense.  It was a great time – I presented a poster on my research, sat in on an absurd number of exciting platform presentation sessions, met several new people and research groups, and certainly did not skimp on the catered wine.  By all estimates, it was one of the most enjoyable excursions of my time as a graduate student.

And one month later, I stuffed all my belongings into my sedan and left Reno, driving them back to my parents’ house before jumping onto a plane two weeks later.  

I will miss Reno.  I will miss the incredible natural landscapes around Lake Tahoe.  I will miss the excitement that I had back when I first moved there in 2018 as a grad student, realizing that I was about to take part in cutting-edge research for the first time.  And I will also miss a lot of the time I spent in lab over those 5 years.  I am forever grateful that I had a great advisor, a great program director, and great co-researchers and classmates, without all of whom I would not have graduated.  I will forever cherish the research topics that I was able to take part in while at the Desert Research Institute.  But there were certainly things that I will not miss: the many times that I made mistakes in my experimentation, the many re-do’s that needed to be done, the eternal frustration of trial and error, followed by finally obtaining a set of results that I thought were interesting enough to be published (and then writing about them for several months), only to have the manuscript murdered by some very truculent reviewers.  This cycle of frustration made it feel like I was stagnating – that I was not moving forward in research or in life.  It made bioaerosol research, a topic that I intrinsically enjoy, into something that stressed me out.  It’s the part of the scientific method that they do not show on Mythbusters.

So, to any current Ph.D. student who feels the same way right now, I would say: try to think about what you want to do after your graduation, even though it can be difficult to think about.  A visualization of your “next chapter” will get you over the hump.  Scientific research has both excitement and disappointment.  A Ph.D. may sometimes seem like it has more disappointment than excitement.  But after completion, you will feel just like the Mythbusters right after they blow something up: total ecstasy.  And that feeling will fuel my motivation for further research here at YorkU - hopefully I can keep it going for a while.    

The Center of the Universe – My Experience Interning at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory

We often encounter kids in our outreach work who can't wait to be astronauts when they grow up. Somehow this didn't have the same pull for me. Instead, I was mesmerized by the robotic spacecraft  exploring the distant reaches of the solar system. One facility came up over and over again in watching documentary after documentary on PBS about those probes: NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. It was a thrill to visit while I was in graduate school. I still don't think I'm completely recovered from having a badge and a parking pass during the 90-sol prime mission of MSL while I was a postdoc!! Because of that, it's always a joy when one of our own here at PVL gets to experience this place for themselves. First there was Raymond, then Emily and, later on, Brittney. Recently, one of our PhD students, Grace Bischof (pictured above), had the opportunity to spend the winter working projects on-lab. She relates her experience below.

By Grace Bischof

In late 2020, I submitted a scientific proposal to the Technologies for Exo-Planetary Science (TEPS) program, with hopes of becoming a TEPS trainee. Upon a successful application, I was able browse through a list of TEPS collaborators with whom I could carry out a four-month long internship (assuming they accepted my inquiry to work with them). There was quite an appealing list of places to intern with – from national collaborators at Canadian universities and within industry, to international collaborators in institutions as far as Japan. There was one collaborator, however, that immediately jumped out of the page for me: Michael Mischna, who is a researcher at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

I had seen Michael’s name previously through a former PVL member – Brittney Cooper – who carried out an internship at JPL a couple years before I had arrived in the lab, and whose internship project with Michael inspired the bulk of my master’s thesis. Not only that, but as a member of the Mars Science Laboratory team since 2020, JPL was a place of legends to me, as JPL is the section of NASA that manages planetary robotic missions including the Curiosity rover. The idea of working there myself was something of a dream. In the summer of 2021, John reached out to Michael on my behalf to inquire if there was a place for me to carry out my internship with him, and luckily there was! Not only would I have the opportunity of working with Michael, but I would also be working with Leslie Tamppari, who had been project scientist on the Phoenix mission. 

After a year’s worth of delays due to the lingering pandemic, in January 2023, I packed two giant suitcases and flew down to Pasadena, California to start my adventure. After hopping off the plane at LAX (haha!), I was immediately greeted to views of the San Gabriel mountains, palm trees, and warm weather. I made my way to the house I was renting with four strangers, which luckily was not an internet scam, and spent the first couple of days unpacking and settling into my new home. 

 

(The first picture I took upon arrival in Pasadena. I couldn’t get over the palm trees.)

Although I had somehow found myself in LA during SoCal’s rainiest winter in a couple decades, nothing could rain on my parade that first day at JPL. Even the 5:30 am wake up call to ensure I was on-time for the first day’s onboarding activities felt exciting. I can clearly remember sitting on the LA city-bus as it approached the JPL gates and feeling awe at the opportunity ahead of me. The first day was spent filling in forms, giving my fingerprints, and taking a photo for my new JPL badge. Afterward, I met with Leslie and Michael to discuss the work I would be completing over the next few months, and then I was given a tour of the 168-acre lab by Michael. At JPL, you often need to have your walking shoes on to get from building to building.

Now, I should probably mention the actual science I did while I was at JPL before returning to the fun stuff. The plan was to work on two projects: the first was polishing some work I did in my master’s, using a radiative transfer model to determine the water-ice opacities at the Phoenix mission landing site. The second was to use the Mars Weather, Research, and Forecasting (MarsWRF) general circulation model to simulate the atmospheres of planets around stars with different stellar type, with future plans to expand this work to investigate the effect this would have on land-ocean distribution.

As science so often goes, the first project encountered many issues. A bug was found in the radiative transfer model which resulted in spending much of my time compiling and re-compiling, running and rerunning the model to determine the source of the issue. The MarsWRF work, however, went much more smoothly. I first spent a couple weeks becoming comfortable using the model. MarsWRF is a giant model, with many moving parts. I was set up with a NASA Supercomputing account so that I could run the model with relative quickness (often, this still took hours to days). Once I had the hang of using the model, I ran some cases simulating the ancient Martian environment to send to a team at Rice University who would use the inputs I provided for a Paleo-Mars lake model. Then, I got to work on the stellar-type investigation. I learned how to make changes to the source code of the model (which could be quite a task – altering several files to ensure that all the correct inputs were feeding into the correct scripts). Once I edited MarsWRF such that the user can define the temperature of the star they wish to simulate around, I ran the model for a Mars-like planet with a thin atmosphere around F-, G-, K-, and M-type stars. From this, we determined that, for the atmosphere that was set up, hotter stars will have more shortwave flux reach the surface of such a planet. This work was the first step in understanding exoplanet atmospheres around different stellar type and will eventually be applied more widely to understand the habitability of exoplanets based on star-type. Working on these projects with Leslie and Michael was such a delight, as they were incredibly supportive during this work.

Not only was the work I was doing at JPL extremely cool, but also the lab itself is one of the most incredible places to work. I was fortunate enough to have an office in the Science building (yes, there was big sign atop the front door reading Science). Although the office was very small and windowless, it got the job done, and I had two great office-mates. There was also ample seating around lab when I was craving a change of scenery. Sometimes I would work in the main cafeteria to be around the buzz of people conversing over their morning coffee, but my favourite place to work was the JPL mall. The mall is a big open area near the front of lab, which had plenty of tables set out to work or eat lunch outside in the fresh air. Working all day on the mall was how I managed to get a sunburn in February – a phenomenon I am not used to during Februarys in Canada. 

At JPL, cool things are happening all the time. In the main cleanroom, High Bay 1, they were assembling the Europa Clipper spacecraft when I was there. How amazing it was to look upon the brilliant people putting together a spacecraft that will one day be orbiting the moon of another planet so far out in the solar system. As cool as it is, this was one of the buildings I was only able to access if I brought an American with me. As a foreign national, there were several areas of lab that were off limits without an American escort – they take security very seriously at JPL.

 

The main cleanroom where the Europa Clipper Spacecraft was being assembled. If you look closely, you can see the workers in their bunny suits. Don’t be fooled by the worker at the front left of the picture – that’s a mannequin known as High Bay Bob, who is often moved around to appear to be carrying out various tasks. Currently, Europa Clipper has been removed from the cleanroom for testing, but a livestream of the cleanroom can typically be found on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yKDA6smS9_k

One of the most memorable days for me was when I was able to visit the Mars Yard to watch the Perseverance Rover’s twin, OPTIMISM (Operational Perseverance Twin for Integration of Mechanisms and Instruments Sent to Mars) out into the yard completing some mobility testing. The Mars Yard is a big, sandy yard that is used to mimic the terrain of Mars. Here, OPTIMISM and MAGGIE (Mars Automated Giant Gizmo for Integrated Engineering – also known as Curiosity’s twin), are brought out for a multitude of testing purposes, including mobility and instrument testing, sample collection, or testing new autonomous algorithms. This day, I was also able to go into the garage to see MAGGIE, which was so incredible after working with the Curiosity rover for the past 3 years.

(Top: Outside in the Mars Yard with OPTIMISM as it completes mobility testing. Bottom: Inside the garage with MAGGIE)

Now, why is the blogpost titled, “The Center of the Universe”? Well, within the Space Flight Operations Facility on lab is the Mission Control Center. Here is where the data from the Deep Space Network antennas in Canberra (Australia), Goldstone (California), and Madrid (Spain) are managed. These giant dishes talk to the spacecraft that are currently exploring the solar system (and beyond for the Voyagers), and that communication is all funneled through the mission control room at JPL. This is also the room from which spacecraft, such as the Curiosity and Perseverance rovers, were landed on the surface of Mars. The story goes that former-JPL director, Charles Elachi, upon thinking about how all the information from the solar system comes into this room once said, “This must be the center of the universe!" There is now a big plaque in the floor in this room declaring it as the Center of the Universe. The JPL mission control center has someone within it, monitoring data around the clock to ensure there are no issues. In fact, since Southern California is so Earthquake-prone, Space Flight Operation Facility was built to be Earthquake-proof to protect the precious control center inside.

(Top: The Mission Control Center, where you can watch the DSN dishes communicating with spacecraft all over the solar system and beyond. Bottom: There is a superstition at JPL that peanuts must be passed around to ensure that launches and landings are successful, dating back to the 1960s. The lucky peanuts were eaten for Curiosity and Perseverance’s landings, among many others)

From my first day, the other interns who I met were incredibly kind and open. The JPL researchers and staff were all supportive and encouraging. I was lucky to experience only friendly and inviting people. The interns I met came to JPL from all over the world – Singapore, Australia, Italy, and Iceland, to name only a few – and were all open to having the most fulfilling experience at JPL, and in Southern California, as possible. I felt satisfied with not only the work I was doing at JPL, but also felt enriched by the experiences and memories I was making with my fellow colleagues.

Top: A hike up Echo Mountain trail which begins just north of Pasadena. This hike was organized by the Australian interns who had heard there was snow at the top of the hike. By the time we got there, one singular patch of snow about 0.25 square meters in size remained. They still made a few snowballs out of it to throw. Bottom: The view of the sunset from Joshua Tree National. My first time in the desert! We spent two nights camping in Joshua Tree, filling the days with hiking and rock-climbing (which I observed from the ground….).

The month of May came quicker than I could’ve imagined, and soon I was flying back to Toronto to continue my PhD back at York. While it was great to be back seeing my family, friends, and pets, my experience at JPL is one I will cherish forever. I feel incredibly grateful to have spent four months at such an amazing place, working with people who have such a hunger to explore what is out there in the universe. I will take the lessons I learned there with me through the rest of my degree – and hey, maybe in 2.5-years’ time when I’ve graduated with my PhD, JPL will have not seen the last of me (wink, wink, someone hire me!!).