Friday, June 5, 2009

Blog Week 10

As we are all putting the final finishing touches on our projects and polishing up those presentations, I hope that we can all take a minute and reflect on this past term. Writing this blog has forced Nathan and I to travel back, (only ten weeks ago!) to when we first started this grand adventure. Here’s a few of our favorite moments from the past term:

1) Mudfights at Sally’s Bend. I’m not sure if it was a “fight” or a general free-for-all-get-everybody-as-muddy-as-you-can-fiasco. That was ten weeks ago and I don’t remember but either way, it was fun as hell.
2) Midnight paper ball fights in the library. Yeah… Unprovoked massacres of the “Quiet Side” by the “Collaborative Side”. And sometimes all out, balls-to-the-wall library wars. And on that note, library climbing, library Olympics, general library adventures, etc. were awesome. Don’t worry Sally, we didn’t break anything… too badly.
3) The 4th Invertebrates Presentation and Dessert Extravaganza. I remember Reed doing a ridiculous crab dance, some other hooligans performing another dance to Maddona, and an educational video about a new drug craze: The Green Tide. (I’ve tried it myself, and now I see why this thing could sweep the nation.)
4) Monday night dance parties. Reason? Because we can’t party on Thursday because we have finals on Friday.
5) Water balloon massacres on the Bunk House (and other miscellaneous pranks on the bunk house).
6) Annette eating, drinking, and partying with us after the algae section.
7) Donut Wednesdays. Nuff said.
8) Pirate day on the Elakah
9) Hotel party.
10) No Final for Karen’s section.
11) TAs playing sand vol with us.































And as the term ends and we part ways heading off to summer jobs, summer school, or *gasp* the real world. We all leave with a tear in our eye and look forward to the Hatfield Reunion in 2010.

Monday, June 1, 2009

Oh my god it's projects week!


The plot thickens....
Monday morning came to greet us for the first time without a class day, but we still had a full week ahead of us in a different way....RESEARCH PROJECTS!!
And so it began...the chaos bubble came rolling in quickly, in fact some of us spent the weekend filling buckets with ice to try to keep a so called "cold room" cold, turned out that we were using the wrong thermostat to try to control the temperature the whole time, ah the perils of being new to research (and knowing what a thermostat looks like :).
Others of us scrambled to collect enough specimens to get the ball rolling. Learning how to collect and document data in a way that makes sense has been quite interesting as well.
There has been bartering to acquire and keep hold of supplies, as we are all running around like chickens with our heads cut off. Still we are oddly enough maintaining some sort of schedule and learning to be quite resourceful in the mean time.

From harassing fisherman at the docks to acquire crabs, numerous store visits for random supplies to rigging hand made filtration systems to tanks, we have persevered and should have some interesting presentations next week to show for it given that no one decides to have a melt down in the mean time, hee hee hee :).
We are almost done and getting sad about the thought of leaving, though we will definately enjoy the much need rest after this.

Despite some sleepless nights, we are getting to do science which is the coolest part of all. We have learned so much so far. Finally we get to use the knowledge we aquired through this course, our wonderful instructors, and T.A.'s, to produce something all our own. Exciting!
Till then bloggers, the project mayhem continues and we are still head strong and going full steam ahead!