It is Slain!!!

Many of those close to myself and my family are familiar with this picture. My brother (click the picture to go to his blog) drew it for our small town newspaper in The Dalles during a district merger.

That particular image has been stuck in my mind all week, but my personal hydra seemed more of this variety:

Oh noes! It's the dreaded Ecology Journal!!!!

So here's whatall was due today:

Ecology Journal -

100 pictures of Ecological Events

100 descriptions of said events - handwritten on index cards

Species, Date, Locality, Tidal Level, and Event description for each.

Silly little borders for each picture

Chopping scrapbook paper into 50 8.5 x 11 sheets

Chopping the scraps into 1 inch strips for the silly borders

Draw lines on both sides of all of the newly cut sheets to have the cards and pictures be placed centered

Ecology Notes -

Formatted Notes (harder to do than you'd think... our professor is hard to follow)

Diagrams - done to Dr. B's standard, which is ridiculous. The man teaches a course on biology illustrations

Embryology Notes -

Formatted Notes (see above)

Diagrams (see above, and multiply by two)

Embryology Pictures -

Pictures of the developing embryo (stresssssful - I lost some of my pictures)

Sketches of said pictures (see above, multiply by four)

See why I liken this to a hydra? With every head I thought I was tackling, I found myself with more coming at me from all sides. The whole week was super stressful, and even though I'd thought I was making good progress throughout this whole course, and that I'd been fairly productive this week, I still found myself down to the wire at the last minute, putting finishing touches on a project that I wasn't especially proud of. I just know that I could do so much better! Hopefully I do fairly well with my grade, as our professor seems reluctant to give less than an A as long as everything is complete. I hope I'll have the discipline, however, to re-do the parts I'm not proud of so that I can have a journal that I'll be more proud to show off.

So THAT'S a huge load of stress off, but now we're moving on to the research project presentations. Which we're giving in front of many esteemed professors at BYU. We have two days to get everything done, and my group still isn't completely sure what our data proves.... oh well, I'll worry about that tomorrow.

My dad came down for the weekend, and my wonderful Aunt Pam is coming down Monday for "Dr. B's Bash". It was great to have Dad here, although I wish I'd had more time for him and spent less time with my journal. Still, I managed to get him to buy me a meal, show him the campus and the nearby beaches, go sea lion spotting, and tidepooling at my favorite pools, all in the about 24 hours that he was here! He also made it up to Bandon without me while I finished up my journal.

The lighthouse of Lighthouse Beach

I'm crazy excited for Pam to make it up here. I haven't seen her in a few months, and she and I don't get to hang out just the two of us very often. And this'll be a great opportunity to nerd out and be marine biology nuts together!

Random picture from a couple weeks ago - those of us who got wet at the docks.

It was requested by some of my peers here that I mention them in the blog. But I have to find a way to do it unforced... I think that'll be my next posting, a detailed, in depth description of all of my new pals and our shenanigans.

I'm so excited to finally have some time with no class and few obligations to spend with these amazing people! Too bad it didn't happen until there were only a few days left.... :(