I am in my second week at the Sea Education Association campus in Massachusetts. I still haven’t figure out how to spell Massachusetts without help from the autocorrect. It’s really about where you chose to apply yourself.
The Madden Center on the Sea Education Association Campus. And a snowperson.
This week’s update is going to be a series of Surprises and Disappointments, but in the reverse order to end on a more positive note.
Disappointment: I was told that an impressive nor’easter blizzard was going to hit Woods Hole and cancel classes today. I was finally ready to see what a Massachusetts winter could do. I was sorely disappointed with only 2.5 cm of slush fell and I still had to wake up early.
Surprise: Turns out I was glad to go to class despite the “storm” because it was Weather Day! As the gale force winds and snain (snow-rain) blasted the classroom windows, we were looking at satellite images of the low pressure system sweeping across campus. Now I can tell you about the isobars, pressure gradients, and Coriolis effect that predicted the nor’easter and make predictions of my own. Perhaps this will prevent future weather Disappointments.
Disappointment: Research plans. I was planning to do a research project on Atlantic jellyfish while at sea, but this plan was kiboshed. Instead, I will work with neustonic organisms like the Portuguese man o’ war (Physalia physalis, not a real jellyfish) and will most certainly spend the six weeks at sea with a perpetual nematocysts-under-my-fingernails feeling. I am a little excited to work with blue buttons (Velella velella) because they are a large food source for the sea sl
- Blue button (Velella velella).
Surprise! I was accepted to the Zoo-bot quarter at the Friday Harbor Laboratories in the San Juan Islands! This program with start two days after I return from sea. My professors there will certainly not hate biology.
Disappointment: The Madden Center, our main building on campus, has an outdoor wanna-be spiral staircase.
Surprise! I discovered a word for my fear of spiral staircases: Spirobathmophobia.
Stairs should be of uniform length. Spirals were made to hurt you.