I’m Kaitlyn. Rising senior at Mission Hills High School in San Diego. I make ceramics, play beach volleyball, and grow bacteria on purpose.
I’m interested in microbiology and environmental science — specifically what’s living in the ecosystems most people walk past without thinking. Estuaries. Tidepools. 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 studying coral microbiomes at Biosphere 2 in Arizona, then coming home to do my own research at the same lagoon I’ve been restoring — five minutes from my house.
I’ve been making art since before I could spell it — drawing, painting, ceramics. I’m in AP Ceramics and I mentor younger students in the MudCave club at my school, teaching them to throw on the wheel. I also make agar art, which is exactly what it sounds like: painting with bacteria on petri dishes.
This blog is where all of that overlaps. The science inside the art. The art inside the science. The stuff I’m learning, the stuff I’m getting wrong, and the stuff I can’t stop thinking about.
Next year — college. Microbiology.