While I've ultimately enjoyed my time at Algae Research and Supply, something I've learned is that I don't want to be an entrepreneur. Because ARS is so small, that was mostly what my internship was about, and while I liked collecting data (which I did a bit of) most of my work was creating shareable media to better promote new products. Dealing with the business side directly, paying other people to do things, relying on strangers to support your idea, all that stuff is the kind of stuff I can't really see myself doing long term. I wasn't really expecting my internship to revolve around entrepreneurship the way it did (I initially thought it would involve more lab work) so the knowledge that I don't really have the desire to be my own boss doesn't immediately change my plans for college and my future career. I realize that makes it sound like I don't like being a leader, thats not true, I do like being a leader, I just don't enjoy leading on the business side of things.
As I said before, I did get to do some lab work, and that was probably my favorite part of the internship. Sure, the actual work of measuring out volumes and squinting at vials wasn't the most exciting thing in the world, but collecting metadata and searching for trends to discover something new was really fun. I didn't have that much interest in how different amounts and ratios of sodium chloride and bicarbonate effect the growth of algae and Artemia salina in a closed system going into the internship, but at this point I'm supper excited to see the results. I'm actually planning on going back to my internship in a few weeks to take a few more sets of data (the Artemia haven't completed their entire life cycle yet). I don't know why, but for some reason I got it into my head that working in a lab would be boring, despite always having a good time when doing in-class experiments, but this internship has cleared that thought from my head. I'm probably still going to pursue engineering, but being a scientist has a newfound appeal.
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While I wasn't able to take pictures of everything at my internship, I think I got enough to give a bit of an idea what my time there was like. The entrance to the lab, the picture makes it seem dark and spooky but it's actually filled with florescent lights for the algae. Algae can get stressed and dire pretty fast when exposed to direct sunlight, so I suspect thats why the lab is so closed off. The setup for an experiment I started on how different amounts of different salts affect the growth of algae and Brine Shrimp in a closed system. My experiment after four days. If you look closely you can see some brine shrimp hatchlings. I'm excited to see the ultimate results but internship will probably be over before then. Graph of the results I have so far The Kickstarter I helped launch for Soil Algae. It might be over when you're reading this but heres a link anyway: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1533123026/soilalgaecom-healthy-soil-has-algae-in-it?ref=nav_search&result=project&term=algae Some salt and salt bags that I filled to use to create the medium algae like to grow in. Vials of nutrients for algae that I helped package and label. Tiny algae cultures I'm taking car of myself. The one on the right is Spirulina and has ben growing for almost 5 weeks, the one on the left is some soil I suck in water with algae nutrients, so see if I could grow the algae already in it. It will probably take a while to be visible, as there was a very small amount to begin with. An unnamed dippy bird. It nods yes to all our ideas and is great emotional support. Estimates on how many people will buy soil algae and what that will equate to in dollars, as well as our media kit and a to-do list for the day. Poorly drawn screenplay of the soil algae kickstarter video. Screenshot of the final video, which was based on the shot in the top left corner of the previous picture. My cameo in the video as "person on the phone" What Spirulina looks like under a microscope. It spirals, hence the name. Close up of a Brine Shrimp. This is a screenshot from a shot that I want to include in the Brainy Brinys kickstarter video (another project). Brine shrimp swimming around in the bottle we'll probably sell with Brainy Brinys. This bottle is actually significantly larger than the ones I'm growing my algae in, but brine shrimp are still pretty tiny.
If there's one thing I've learned from watching Mr. Huber run Algae Research and Supply, it's that nothing comes cheep. Everything costs money, and an entrepreneur has to always be ready to sink money into things that might not pay off. For instance, Mr. Huber wants to have in infographic to describe one of ARS's new products, so he paid around 500 dollars total (thats just my estamate based on what've overheard, it could be more) to various freelance illustrators, but some just never got around to it and others turned in a first draft and never responded to our messages again. For the record, I tried my hand at making an infographic, but it didn't turn out that well either. While I've certainly enjoyed working with Mr. Huber, I'm not sure if I'd be cut out for running a small business. Having to rely on people you've never seen to do work before a deadline is nerve-racking; I'd much rather do what needed to be done myself or with a team of people I knew.
My largest contributions so far have been editing together our kickstarter video and writing and releasing a press release to a dozen or so bloggers. One of the largest ones actually got back to us today and is willing to promote our product for 300 dollars, which sounded like a lot when I first heard it, but given how many gardeners visit their blog every day even assuming only 0.01% of all viewers will donate to our Kickstarter and buy the product, we could easily make 2.5 thousand dollars off of the deal! Ultimately, the success of my video and promotional material will be measured by how many people support the kickstarter, which we'll start finding out next Tuesday, but Mr. Huber seems happy with what I've done so far. So far, I think one of the things that has come out the best was my press release. Most other things I didn't initially feel happy with and elected to go back and change, but the press release seemed ready to send out only a few tweaks after my first draft. I know my writing has improved this year, and based on the press release I think it shows. |