The students are racing to the finish line on their research projects and the experience of what it is like to be a graduate student with its own set of responsibilities and demands. The independence of choosing what to do with their time goes hand in hand with managing their project goals for the summer. With guidance from their mentor, they get to plan out their experiment, collect data in time to get their final presentation started and work on the final paper. This week was a great opportunity to see what graduate life is like with two master’s defense presentations where they could see what kinds of questions make up a master’s thesis. At the end of the week, we held a graduate student panel for the REU students. The panel included current M.S. and Ph.D. students and addressed questions such as “why go to graduate school”?  “What are the funding opportunities like”? “How do you apply for graduate school or pick an advisor”?  The panel got our REU students thinking about the future after their undergraduate institution.  We have two weeks left of the program and expect and encourage that the REUs continue asking questions to their faculty mentors and other graduate students about next steps.