Spring is here
September 2020 through to whenever I finish this
Before you get excited, the above title is a reference to the Tom Lehrer song "Poisoning Pigeons in the Park," not to a sense of renewal or anything. Every year, when I first see the crocuses come up, I get that song stuck in my head again and go around singing about strychnine and cyanide. And why the reference? Well, much of this past year has felt like a continuation of last March, going on and on with the weather changing and the leaves budding and falling, summer in March, fall in March, winter and snow in March, March, March, March. As a result, I have had the song unseasonably stuck in my head.
This year was split between bouts of fright and small escapes, the quiet cold fear of trying to figure out my future interspersed with good, physical work outside, occasional rest in nature. I know my life will probably change quite a bit in the near future, and that makes me nervous. It has been a tumultuous enough year without the specter of moving across the country or the globe, getting into graduate school, making a new start of it, all that. Worse, of course, is the thought that I might end up stuck here, stagnating or loafing around my parents' house. (Sorry, Dad.) Against that, I had trips to do field work at Willapa, backpacking in the North Cascades, hikes up Mt. Si or to alpine lakes, and a road trip with family to southern California, where I leapt into the sea. And it's not over yet. But spring is here once again, and my calendar and memory insist that time has passed, so once again I am out with the crocuses and subtle white snowdrops singing along to pigeon homicide.
Before you get excited, the above title is a reference to the Tom Lehrer song "Poisoning Pigeons in the Park," not to a sense of renewal or anything. Every year, when I first see the crocuses come up, I get that song stuck in my head again and go around singing about strychnine and cyanide. And why the reference? Well, much of this past year has felt like a continuation of last March, going on and on with the weather changing and the leaves budding and falling, summer in March, fall in March, winter and snow in March, March, March, March. As a result, I have had the song unseasonably stuck in my head.
This year was split between bouts of fright and small escapes, the quiet cold fear of trying to figure out my future interspersed with good, physical work outside, occasional rest in nature. I know my life will probably change quite a bit in the near future, and that makes me nervous. It has been a tumultuous enough year without the specter of moving across the country or the globe, getting into graduate school, making a new start of it, all that. Worse, of course, is the thought that I might end up stuck here, stagnating or loafing around my parents' house. (Sorry, Dad.) Against that, I had trips to do field work at Willapa, backpacking in the North Cascades, hikes up Mt. Si or to alpine lakes, and a road trip with family to southern California, where I leapt into the sea. And it's not over yet. But spring is here once again, and my calendar and memory insist that time has passed, so once again I am out with the crocuses and subtle white snowdrops singing along to pigeon homicide.
Projects and wise career moves
I'm disinclined to restate myself about my time in the Ruesink Lab, so just follow the link. Rather less briny was my work with the Burke Herbarium. The basement itself is closed to me, and, regretfully, I suspect that I will not go there again. I don't think I'll stay in Seattle once I have a degree in hand, and I don't know if the uncertain currents of my future will bring me back here once I have left. Still, David was kind enough to give me opportunities to work with our specimens, even if I can't be there in person. A researcher named Dr. Melissa Islam had begun sorting some of the photos in our vast online collection, and I was lucky enough to help out. I should still be helping out, in fact, but I've been rather distracted these past few weeks building this accursed website, so there you go.
Some miscellaneous upper division bio classesI took limnology (the study of freshwater systems), paleobiology, and evolution and development in 2020-2021, all excellent, interesting classes that would have been far more excellent and interesting if they had been in person. I taught myself how to use ggplot in R for one of them, mostly because I was bored but partly because I wanted to make violin plots. There is an example to the right. As you can see, the data I worked with was hideous, as ecological data often is.
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Some miscellaneous Arctic classes
When one belongs to a tiny minor, classes can be difficult to schedule. This not because they fill up quickly, but because they are often cancelled because of lack of interest or lack of a professor to teach them. Sometimes they may be off doing field work, sometimes they may be teaching other classes, sometimes you take a class that you think is in your minor when it really isn't. Oh well. I ended up polishing off most of my minor classes this fall and winter, taking one (erroneously) on Baltic Cultures, one on Arctic hydrology and landscape change, and one on Arctic history. All were useful. The Arctic is generally a place that encourages interdisciplinary study: a scientist who goes in without communicating with residents will probably miss out on useful context or possible data, while a policy-maker or anthropologist unaware of science will be unable to understand most of the changes occurring in the far North. This is why I find it such an appealing area of study. I'm a rambling, well-rounded person, for all my love of algae, and I like the idea of using a variety of skills in my future career.