My Next Adventure (I Can Dream...)

Procrastinating

Well, I got through last week and somehow lost all motivation. I had a final exam in diving (which I did well on--100% on one section!) then two presentations. I got an email from my Invert Bio Seminar prof and she told me she really enjoyed the papers I chose to discuss. I did my presentation on Sacculina, a parasitic barnacle that infects crabs, and on carnivorous sponges. Les gave me a lot of information on them and even let me take some of our specimens to show--like show and tell. I think that is the best way to learn though. Why does grad school mean the end of show and tell?

Anyway, after last week, I have done nothing... Well, that's not entirely true. I did go to to Coconut Island today to try to set up some space for myself for octopus research--yay!

Unfortunately, the semester is not yet over. I still have one more presentation and I need to finish up my proposal... Not to worry, only 30 pages of the rest of my life...

Ahhh!

Here are some pics from the deep dive on the wreck a couple weeks ago. Why do I always look so spaced out? No wonder I'm so calm underwater--I look like I'm drugged.










I'm on the left giving Kasie the shaka :) and she's giving it back!

Ahh! Amazing

this is one of those songs where when you first hear it you kind of want to put forks in your ears. but then, after one listening, you want to listen to it over and over! or at least i do :)

Finals

It is the end of the semester and unarguably, a stressful time. I just had a final tonight in my dive class. We had our last two dives on Saturday. The first one was on a wreck 100ft deep off of Kewalo. Before we got in the water, there were 4 turtles just hanging around the boat. Then, there were a couple of turtles on the wreck too, and some eels, giant puffer fish, and parrot fish as well. One interesting thing about this wreck is that there is a tourist submarine that passes by it every once and a while. It was pretty surreal. There I was, narced from diving Nitrox at that depth, kind of spacing out staring at this giant turtle, when this weird noise came from behind me. It definitely took a second to register and I looked around to see where it was coming from. This big white tube was coming towards us and people's faces were pressed against the sub's windows. We waved at them and I think they got a kick out of it :)

On the second dive, we were joined by a dolphin. We did photo transects and saw eels, giant scorpion fish and many exciting invertebrates. The end of that second dive meant the end of Scientific Diving (for the most part). Today we had our final exam, and I feel ok about it. I felt fine until I started talking to other people in the class...but isn't that always how it goes? Why waste time worrying about it? I have a presentation of Thursday and a presentation on Friday, so I need to get cracking on those. I need to have my proposal done by the end of the semester and I have a presentation in a week for my Pop Bio class and then I'll be done! Whoo Hoo!

Also, I finally signed up for a motorcycle class at the community college so I will be on my way to transportation. I'm very excited :)

Just need to make it a little longer..

And of course, now Hawaii has decided to have beautiful weather everyday that makes you feel terrible for staying in doors and working on academia...


And, these are the creepiest slippers ever...

Tuesday

Today was one of those days that just makes you happy to be alive. I went to work with Les today, but he wasn't there until around 10, so I had an hour to read (Ender's Shadow) and then we worked with the corals we got from the cruise. I've been really going back and forth on my dissertation research proposal since Les gave me my ultimatum. I wanted to do cephalopod work, but should I spend my summer freaking out trying to get data, just to have him tell me I need to do something else? I decided, yes. I'm going to do ceph work, but keep an open mind for other research possibilities. He had mentioned a very interesting competitive interaction project between hermit crabs and amphipods in Palau. Ultimately, I'd still be an invertebrate biologist--and that is the goal. I guess I just hope people will still love me even if I don't study cephalopods... But, I will cross that bridge when I get there--I still have at least 4 months of octopod friends.

Speaking of octopod friends--we had our first night dive on Saturday. We saw a baby octopus, a slipper lobster, lots of fish (don't I sound like a marine biologist?). Someone saw a white tip shark, but I didn't :( The best part though was when we turned off the lights. I preferred to dive without the lights, actually. I eventually kept mine off the rest of the dive because I found it cumbersome, and the ambient moon light was enough to see. And you can't see all the cool bioluminescents with the lights on... The goal of the dive was to learn underwater photography though--so here are some photos of me looking silly :)





Anyway, Les let me leave early this afternoon because he didn't have anything for me to do. And, I found out that I won't have too much work to do for him this summer either, which gives me more time for my own research, but I'll still get paid the same amount--yay! With my free afternoon, I went to the beach. It's been way too long. I decided to treat myself and I just read Ender's Shadow and relaxed in the sun. When I finished the book (which was amazing), I went to see a masters defense of a friend of mine, then went to dive class. We have an exam on Thursday and were reviewing for it. It was a good class. But I think any class would have been good--I was just in such a good mood today. And then, after class, I got a ride half way home and walked the rest of the way under the moonlight. The air is the perfect temperature, the clouds are glowing with the reflection of the moonlight, the breeze from the ocean is fresh. Sometimes I can actually get my head out of my ass long enough to realize I live in Hawaii and am lucky enough to study science all the time :)