Traveling & Staying Still
July 2019 through May 2020
I started my junior year in Costa Rica and ended it in pseudo-quarantine, huddling in my Seattle basement and venturing out periodically to Willapa Bay, four hours away, to sleep in a goat barn and work in the mornings. It was an odd year, certainly, but not a remarkable one personally. I came back from Central America musing over agriculture, preservation, and biodiversity, got a job (paid, alas, in credits) at a climate change research lab, and went back to ordinary life after half a year of adventuring out of Seattle. I knew, by this point, that my long-term goal was to study algae in the Arctic, a combination of two niche subjects; I was somehow convinced at the time that the more niche an interest was, the more likely one was to someday make a living off it, perhaps due to the specificity of most PhD theses. I was acquiring skills with an abundance of possible applications, so I probably wouldn't founder whatever happened. I chugged along, with my hyperspecific goal and my widespread stepping stones, with no great upheavals or epiphanies until the spring. I had faith in the inertia of everyday life, a faith which was promptly smashed by our minor apocalypse. Ordinary life can change suddenly. Who knew?
I started my junior year in Costa Rica and ended it in pseudo-quarantine, huddling in my Seattle basement and venturing out periodically to Willapa Bay, four hours away, to sleep in a goat barn and work in the mornings. It was an odd year, certainly, but not a remarkable one personally. I came back from Central America musing over agriculture, preservation, and biodiversity, got a job (paid, alas, in credits) at a climate change research lab, and went back to ordinary life after half a year of adventuring out of Seattle. I knew, by this point, that my long-term goal was to study algae in the Arctic, a combination of two niche subjects; I was somehow convinced at the time that the more niche an interest was, the more likely one was to someday make a living off it, perhaps due to the specificity of most PhD theses. I was acquiring skills with an abundance of possible applications, so I probably wouldn't founder whatever happened. I chugged along, with my hyperspecific goal and my widespread stepping stones, with no great upheavals or epiphanies until the spring. I had faith in the inertia of everyday life, a faith which was promptly smashed by our minor apocalypse. Ordinary life can change suddenly. Who knew?
Hille Ris Lambers Lab
I applied to work as an undergrad assistant in the Hille Ris Lambers Lab, which is perhaps the only time I have tried for a job with no prior connection to my potential employer. One of my references was David Giblin, however, and Dr. Janneke Hille Ris Lambers called him up and asked him about me, so my accidental networking still gave me an in. My job with Janneke helped lead to me eating lunch in LSB early one March, which in turn led to my job with the Ruesink Lab the following year.
Statistical analysis and graphing
Marine Ecology
The class that launched a thousand ships. Its name was my future field, so I took it despite not having fulfilled the prereq. (I frequently skipped prerequisites in my college career. It never did me any harm.) Dr. Jennifer Ruesink taught it in the Burke Museum, behind a glass wall through which museum-goers would gawk at us. I never understood how we were a more interesting exhibit than the leopard dissection or the dinosaur bones, but I suppose we had the advantage of being alive and moving. Much of this class seemed like a continuation of my time at Friday Harbor, except that the experimental subjects were mostly all dead and no one required me to memorize Latin names. Our final paper was in the format of a scientific article, written using data we had collected and analyzed, an excellent trial-run of the format I expect to write in for the rest of my life. It was also the class where I made good friends, who do crosswords with me every Friday now that the world has ended.
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A weird spring
Did you know that a pandemic started in March? I remember texting my friend Anna the day it officially was upgraded from an epidemic. Life was altered dramatically anyway, so I thought that having a dramatic word to describe it was a silver lining, all told. From that point on, even if I was initially incredulous, everything would be online or a terrifying risk to one's health. Seeing friends? Online or else a terrible risk. Class? Online or a terrible risk. Buying groceries? Terrible risk. Runs? Terrible risk, also a source of vague guilt for panting in everyone's nice open air. I did not like this new world. My housemate adapted well, since he was a homebody anyway, but I'm an outdoor cat, and I never bought a desk. I suppose I'll make the best of it.
Ecological modeling
I persuaded my friend Chris from Marine Ecology to do this class with me, a decision he seemed to regret. We worked on every assignment together, every lab together, and debriefed after each exam. I loved it all. Coding is like a combination of logic puzzles and writing, two of my favorite things, and it's such an obviously useful skill that I feel no guilt wasting time on perfecting a line. The subject was fishery management, mostly, a quantitative complement to my past experiences. It laid the groundwork for success in future classes, and, I hope, in future jobs.
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