Blog 13: 10 Hour Mentorship Check-In

Essential Question: How can a paleontologist best reconstruct the life of a prehistoric creature?

I find this picture really funny because there's a robotic raptor manning this Japanese hotel's check-in. Good thing only humans are operating this check-in. By the way, the girl on the bottom left is actually a robot.

1.   Where are you doing your mentorship?

- Lately, my mentor and I have primarily been meeting at my local library since its really hard for me to make the trip over to Santa Ana during school time. Also, we met at my house today.

2.   Who is your contact?  What makes this person an expert?

- Dr. Eric Scott is my contact and he is an authority in paleontology due to his vast work experience, expertise on ancient horses and camels, and education on Physical Anthropology, a field very closely related to Paleontology since it deals with fossilized hominids, at UCLA.

3.   How many  hours have you done during the school year? (Summer Mentorship Hours and Mentorship Hours should be reflected separately in your Senior Project Hours log located on the right hand side of your blog).

- As of today, I would have done 10 hours of mentorship hours during the school year. 

4.   Succinctly summarize what you did, how well you and your mentor worked together, and how you plan to complete the remaining hours.

- So far, I have cleaned one of my mentor's many fossils from the San Bernardino County Museum's collections when he was still working there. I also was able to witness him and his colleague Dr. Brown begin to write a scientific paper along with being able to touch an actual mammoth lower jaw. Also, I analyzed an article detailing a traveling dinosaur exhibit that aims for scientific accuracy in its restorations of dinosaurs. As for the synergy between my mentor and I, I think that we work together really well and if it weren't for the distance impediment we would probably be more consistent with meeting up. Seeing that I have 40 hours to go, one plan I have is to set up a schedule so that my mentor and I can meet more consistently before the may deadline. Another idea that I have, but that I have to run by Mr. Rivas is that I might try to hit two birds with one stone by asking my mentor if he could help me out with my second independent component. I'm not to sure about that last idea but I think that its worth it to ask Mr. Rivas tomorrow.