Living a Dream: Back to SML
So, today, I’m going to catch a ferry out to the Shoals Marine Lab. I’m just going to be out for a day to meet with the undergrad intern I’m mentoring. I’ll be back later this summer to work with her and setup some permanent monitoring transects.
I have to be honest, this is one of those moments in my life where I am watching a dream come through. I went to SML in the summer of 1999 to take some classes. It changed everything for me. I cannot recount the number of paths that opened up due to that summer than I have run down, higgledy-piggledy. To return now as a mentor and researcher? To have the chance to really learn the secrets of the sea around the Isles of Shoals? To come back with new eyes after a decade of developing as a scientist? I’m having a hard time expressing my excitement and joy.
Rather than kvell any more about the place and my excitement, here’s a video from the participants of the Underwater Research Course at SML (which, also, totally formative to who I am as a scientist - thanks, Jim!) I think it conveys a lot of what I could say, but in images and video that’s much more telling.