I’m Kaitlyn, a rising senior at Mission Hills High School in San Diego. I make ceramics, play beach volleyball, and study the ecosystems most people walk right past.
I’ve been mixing things since before I knew what I was doing. Slime. Food coloring in sand. Paint on everything. It wasn’t until later that I realized I was always walking the line between science and art — and that line is where I’m most comfortable.
I’m currently in AP Ceramics, on the journey to a “perfect” teapot. I also mentor younger students in my school’s MudCave club, teaching them to throw on the wheel.
I’m passionate about the environment, especially to invisible the stuff living in places nobody looks twice at: estuaries, tide pools, coral reefs, the sand after a volleyball game. I volunteer with the Nature Collective restoring habitat at San Elijo Lagoon, and I organize beach cleanups with Surfrider. This summer I’m studied coral microbiomes at Biosphere 2 in Arizona, then came home to do my own research at that same lagoon — which happens to be five minutes from my house.
This blog is where all of that overlaps. The science inside the art, the art inside the science. What I’m learning, what I’m getting wrong, and the stuff I can’t stop thinking about.
Next year, college. Microbiology.
