Vedha,Olivia and Max

Today was our first day in a while not focused solely on projects. We got to sleep in a bit (very refreshing) after which we had a discussion on colleges with Caroline, who has taught at Columbia and Princeton and got her graduate degree at London School of Economics (We had a certified college counselor working alongside us all along and we had no clue!), before being taught about scientific statistics by Dr. Lundquist, a scientist who recieved her PHD from SIO and studies the patterns of weather and fog as well as how they affect organisms in the intertidal. She is currently an associate professor at University of Washington. We learned about the application of the Normal Distribution with some helpful graphs to clarify. She taught us about the importance of understanding statistics for yourself, and not relying solely on programs like R to help analyse your data.

After that we went on a fun (and highly educational) hike at the Land Bank with Shauna Barrows, who is a field assistant who works on conservation and ecology with the Land Bank. We learned about the origin of the Zylstra lake as well as its important characteristics such as toxic algae, being a home for eagles as well for the marble butterflies.

After all that we took a refreshing dip in the ocean, and played volleyball at the beach. Adam even joined in!

Tonight, Dr. Crofts (who received her PHD at University of Washington, and is at FHL studying biomechanics as well as the evolution and function of specialized morphologies for the summer, but is an associate professor at Holy Cross College) gave a talk on Comparative Biomechanics, and we will be doing urchin dissection with her and Rachel Haughton to determine the effects of an incredibly acidic seaweed on the internal structures of green urchins.