Our Coos Bay microclimate treated us to an exemplary last week: classic fog-steeped mornings and breaks for sun around lunch, and just enough flashes of distant lightning to make us all question our sanity at least once. The first two days were our last of research. I spent them trying and failing to gather some supplemental video data, then farting around with diatoms under the confocal. I came to the Von Dassow lab hoping to learn imaging - I can’t credit myself with comprehensive knowledge of anything, of course, but I wield my new skills with glee. Riley put out the last call for data on Wednesday afternoon, then printed the posters in the mysterious poster dimension. And just like that, all of our projects came to a close, wrapped up, for what it’s worth, in 30-odd-inch cardboard tubes. We celebrated with a charcuterie dinner on the big beach and another good old-fashioned frolic. Thursday seemed to pass in a fugue, as we scoured our presence from the labs, sorting, scrubbing, and dumping our last specimens out to rejoin the sea at last. I bid goodbye to our sand dollar children, which have grown into a beautiful cadre of pluteus larvae. Like any good parent, I did not mention to them the <1% chance of survival for planktonic larvae in the ocean. And yesterday, Friday, was our true last hurrah. We held court in an open poster session, and I got to talk chimeras with so many wonderful students and scientists from the station and its associated departments. I’m so proud of my freakish little embryos - of everything I’ve done this summer - of all of us. We all did fantastic. We were researchers! Then began the time of the rising tide, the time of goodbyes. Evening saw us out at Richard Emlet’s house for a potluck, where we ate good seafood and blew some potatoes to kingdom come with a duct-tape shielded PVC cannon. As the light trickled away back on the station, Ethan finally broke out his famous violin and serenaded us with some Romanian folk tunes. It was a fitting sendoff. To Maya, Richard, George, and Erin; to my REU cohort, thank you all so much for showing me the ropes and keeping me alive, for goofing around and being so serious, for answering my questions and questioning my answers, for making this one of the best summers of my life. It is the half moon of August, the small tide. Maybe some things don’t have to change so much. My sister has come down to get me. In an hour I’ll be packed and gone, back up the coast whence I came, out of the fog and into the rest of the year. And then who knows where? Currents are unpredictable things. But whatever happens, this blog now comes to a close. If you have questions about the program, you may contact me through the form below (emailing to [email protected]). If you’d like to hear more REU research stories, my friends’ blogs and those of past summers are available on this website. As for me, this is El signing off for the last time. Dear readers, friends, colleagues, family, thank you for tuning in. Farewell, and fair winds to you all.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
|
Proudly powered by Weebly