Finals Week: Numero Uno

It's that time of year again... Finals Week!  I seriously can not believe that I am almost done with my first class at DISL.  It went by so quickly!  And I still have so much studying to do! Ahhhh!!  But writing this blog will serve as my study break.  Here's what one does during Study Week at DISL...

Procrastinate!  Do absolutely anything but studying! (Like write this blog post.)  Man, we're good at this here. I mean, all college kids are pros at procrastination, but here there's a beach.  Not even fair.  It's like the Sea Lab doesn't want us to study.  If they thought we should study, they wouldn't put all of us on a beach. Just putting two and two together here.  But no worries!  I plan on resisting the waves calling my name and killing my final and research presentation.  Kill as in obliterate and Ace, that is.

Which brings me to my next update... our Research Project.
Spent all day on Saturday weighing our leaves, charting out leaves, burning our leaves, and weighing our leaves some more.  That was to supposedly find biomass... Yeah, we TOTALLY RUINED this part of our experiment.  A word to the wise: ALWAYS clarify between the oven and the furnace. Apparently, we should have weighed before and after the oven, not before and after the furnace.  So we found organic matter of our plants instead of biomass.  If we knew earlier, I guess we could have done both.  Made it 200 tests instead of our measly 180. But we have enough data with those 180, I won't complain.  Especially because I got the best part of this project (note sarcasm here): Results!  Which means I get to analyze data, make it into pretty charts, and explain them during the presentation.  It really wouldn't be too awful, but I made 16 charts.  My apologies in advance, Botany class!  Believe it or not, I could have easily doubled that number with all of the data we've collected.

I would say that our burning juncus was a waste of a Saturday, but it definitely wasn't.  When Anna and I do research for extended amounts of time, the "crazy scientist" is brought out of us.  We've invented a new, eco-friendly eye black. You're welcome, world.

(We're serious about science.  This juncus eye black proves it.)

Back to the fun stuff and procrastination... on Monday after dinner, we (Anna, Angela, and I) went to the beach.  And all of our Zumba songs came on the radio!! So, of course, we stop tanning and start dancing.  In public. On the beach.  That's mostly normal, right??  Maybe not, but it was fun.  And we got a work out. And no one knows us here... it's not like I have any pride left anyways.  So it was a good decision.
And thennnnn... WE SAW A SHARK!  Actually, multiple sharks.  At least 4 of them.  We just came back to shore from swimming and the guys fishing right next to us caught them.  So we just swam with sharks. So cool! So cool! So cool! They were super cute, still babies.  But none the less, I swam with sharks in the wild! (another first for me!)  That's my story, and I'm stickin to it.

Today: I'm putting the powerpoint together for my Research Project.  It's already 44 slides, and I'm not even done yet.  Really, Botany class, I'm so so sorry.  I wish it didn't have to be this way, but what can we do??  You're just going to have to survive through it.  But at least you don't have to present it!  And we're all science nerds... which means you will all love every second of the 4 hours we'll take to present our findings!