However, the Dunedin resident won’t be daydreaming. She will be conducting atmospheric research into greenhouse gases and the impact they have on the environment.
Miss Johnstone will write a research paper based on field-work experiments she conducted in November and December after receiving a Sir Peter Blake Ambassador Award.
The award enabled her to work alongside Niwa scientists at Baring Head (Wellington), Rainbow Mountain (near Rotorua) and Lauder.
The four-week field-work experience taught her how to collect, process and analyse carbon dioxide samples.
"It was a lot of learning. Really, it was a big flashback to physics and chemistry at high school."
The challenge of mastering tools including an air column machine was an appropriate summer holiday task for the former Kaikorai Valley College pupil.
While attending the college, she was awarded a Junior Sir Peter Blake Award, which enabled her to go the 2012 Sir Peter Blake Enviro-Leaders Forum.
The conference cemented her interest in the environment and the need to make sustainable choices, she said.
She is completing a bachelor of science degree, a law degree with honours, and a bachelor of arts degree.
However, her academic work is not enough to quench her desire to communicate science to others.
"What I want to do is learn how science works and be able to turn that into policy and communicate all of the work scientists are doing with the public."
Observing the work of Niwa scientists throughout the country provided her with "invaluable" contacts, but also made her aware she was just at the start of her research into the atmosphere.
"The more I learnt, the more I learnt I didn’t know.
"But what I do know is how big and complex the atmosphere is.
"It is a really important tool to indicate the health of the environment."
After publishing her research, which she hoped would be peer-reviewed, she planned to start a programme to share her learnings — and spread the message of the need to protect the environment — with Dunedin schoolchildren.
