back to work

OK, I think after 3 days I can give a decent update on my job. I've been pretty tired or busy after work, so it's taken me 3 days to write this.

The general plan is training and practice in water quality tests, driving a boat, backing up trailers, etc. for most of june. In july and august, we have sampling trips on Monday and Tuesday, and analyze samples for the rest of the week. I've never considered myself a chemistry person, so I was a little nervous about running all these tests and getting good results. It's hard to tell so far, because there is so much to learn, but I'm starting to feel more comfortable in the lab setting. On one hand, I was the first person to break glassware this field season (the lab tradition is that whenever someone breaks something, you have to press one of those "Billy Bass" mounted singing fish, and hear a song. I'll be more careful in the future- those things are annoying!). On the other hand, the set of 7 solutions I made one of the tests had very little variance from what it should be- I can't explain it briefly, but it's a good thing, and hard to do.

There are 5 master's students working in the lab. I think we'll get along pretty well, we've had some good times already, during and outside of work. Surprisingly, we're all in the joint Environmental Science/Public Affairs degree program, and 4 of us just finished our first year- so we'll be seeing a lot of each other over the next few years. We come from a variety of disciplines, so we all can shine or improve in different areas. Our direct supervisor, who's been running the lab for the past 6 years, seems really great. The professor in charge (my Limnology lab prof) seems more involved than most profs with sizable research projects, but I think we'll be on our own a lot after this month. It seems like an ideal setup- good training, then a lot of independence.

I saw Star Wars III today- yay! I was even more excited to see a preview for the first movie in the Chronicles of Narnia series (The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe). They better do a good job! The books have been some of my favorites in both childhood and adulthood.