Welcome!

So nice that you have found your way into my blog. If your interests span in the fields of nature, insects, climate and/or agriculture, you have come to the right place. I choose to write the blogpost in English to make the posts more available for my international friends and colleagues. I hope you will follow me on this journey.

Here, I will post updates from my experience as an internship student at the course of BIO298 offered by the University of Bergen.

But first, a little introduction:

• My name is Kristi Natås, I am 26 and live in Arna outside Bergen with my partner and two furry, tail-wagging friends.
• I am currently in my last semester of a bachelor’s degree in Biology at the University of Bergen.
• I have always been interested in nature and how it works. Still, I did not imagine that I could in fact choose this as a field of study and a path in life. After a somewhat untraditional upper secondary path (norsk: Videregående Skole”) from studying the subject «Design and Textile» to an extension year with Biology as an optional additional subject, I realized that this was in fact possible.
• I am becoming more and more involved in my field and I think there are so many interesting subjects that I have difficulty choosing where to go next. At least I know I’m still hungry for more knowledge and want to keep on studying, but as of now I could study just about «everything!» Sustainability, entomology (insects), ethology (animal behaviour), marine research, you name it … A luxury problem indeed!
• I chose the course BIO298 as part of my optional courses because I want to gain more practical experience in my field and at the same time explore what it is like to work as a biologist. Maybe this can make me more confident in terms of where to continue?

Now that you know a little more about me, I want to introduce you to the place where I have been so lucky to get an internship. I have in fact got an internship at… NINA!

Photo credit: NINA – norsk institutt for naturforskning

NINA, which stands for «Norwegian Institute for Natural Research» is an independent foundation, established in 1988, and research facility studying nature and the interaction between nature and society. Their work areas are wide-ranging and involve research, assessment, environmental monitoring, counselling, and evaluation. NINA have a broad expertise in species, habitat types, but also the connections behind the major driving forces in nature and society’s use of it. (If you want to read more about NINA and their key work areas, you can take a look here: https://www.nina.no/Om-NINA).

NINA has been described as a «dream workplace» for biologists, so even though I did not know anything about the internship assignment in advance (usually you get to read a bit about the internship assignments beforehand, but Covid…) I was sure that this would be a good choice regardless of what tasks would come. However, I was pleasantly surprised at the first meeting with the internship host where I learned about the research-project that I will take part in. This because it hits one of the study fields that I have added to my master’s application list. The project includes work with insects, plants, climate and spending a lot of time in beautiful orchards.

So, what am I actually going to do at NINA? I will tell more about this in the next post, so stay tuned if you want to hear about the brand-new research project «APPLECORe»

– Can you guess what it stands for?