Roday, who has accepted admission to the University of Texas at Austin for graduate school, where she will study eco-toxicology in the marine environment, said it was beneficial to learn about the Florida ecosystem and red tide firsthand.

“It was great to get a chance to travel to Florida and live in Sarasota while studying red tide,” said Roday. “I enjoyed being able to appreciate a new ecosystem and learn about the issues that are impacting it. I also got to do some scuba diving while I was down there so that was really fun because it was snowing in Delaware and I was scuba diving.”

It wasn’t all smooth sailing, though, and Roday admitted that having an internship during a global pandemic in another state was not without its challenges.

The hardest part was moving to live in another state during the pandemic. Because she didn’t feel comfortable taking a plane, Roday drove down to Florida. She also found that it was particularly tough to be alone during the holidays.

“Celebrating the holidays alone with no one I knew was definitely isolating,” said Roday. “I had to celebrate Hanukkah during finals week, which was the third week of my internship. There were several projects happening at Mote the first few weeks that I was there so I was really stressed and overwhelmed.”

She did get a little bit of home back when her friend Gretchen Johnson, who works as a lab technician in the lab of Kathryn Coyne, associate professor of marine biosciences in UD’s College of Earth, Ocean, and Environment, and director of the Delaware Sea Grant program, went to Mote.

“Gretchen has been doing work with red tide, trying to find an algicide that will kill a specific species so that scientists can later use the algicide in the field,” said Roday. “Gretchen flew down and stayed with me for a week while conducting experiments at Mote. That was really cool because I got to see another collaboration between UD and Mote.”

Overall, Roday said that she would encourage other undergraduates to participate in an in-person internship if they are comfortable doing so during the pandemic.

“For other people who are looking to get involved during a pandemic: if you try to create the opportunity and use your resources, you will be able to do anything you set your mind to,” said Roday. “I was disheartened when I couldn’t pursue a summer internship and so I thought, ‘I need to do something.’ I know a lot of students feel the same way. It is definitely possible to find an internship and other students shouldn’t be discouraged.”