Hello, my name is Victoria Starnes. I’m a graduate student at Mississippi State University. On my way to becoming a graduate student, I have visited several other universities and I know other graduate students in labs across the U.S. Today I wanted to talk about something that has made Mississippi State stand out: communal office spaces.

Now, I get it, communal office spaces don't sound that exciting, but for me they really have been. These office spaces are shared between all graduate students in the Wildlife Fisheries and Aquaculture Department regardless of lab affiliation or MS/PhD track. Working near other graduate students with vastly different focuses has allowed me to learn about and volunteer for some really cool projects. Like the one below where I helped a PhD student, Adrienne Dykstra, use camera traps to track feral hogs.

Then, because she let me run around the Mississippi Delta looking for pigs, I let her drive my boat on Bluff Lake while we went out to replace water level loggers. She even did a few drone flights for me to survey aquatic vegetation on Bluff Lake!

I've also been able to volunteer for some red-tailed hawk trapping with another PhD student, Natasha Murphy. In turn, she's spent several days mapping the bottom of Bluff Lake with me (like in the image below).

I'm so thankful for these opportunities to volunteer outside my discipline! I'm not saying that graduate students that don't work in these types of environments can't have the same types of experiences. I just know that working so closely with others has allowed me to easily start conversations about projects and become more involved in the graduate student community. These volunteer trips have allowed me to not only connect with other students and gain free labor, but they have also allowed each one of us to share our diverse skill sets and ideas.