marine lab = black hole :D

i can't escape the marine lab!!
so it looks like i'll probably be staying at the marine lab for the 2nd summer session too haha (july 6-aug7). it's true what they say that most people who go to the marine lab will come back. the one class i ever wanted to take at duke was marine mammals (only available in summer session 2). so i was wait listed on this class for a long time, and then i decided to take myself off the waitlist and try to relax for the rest of summer, but the marine lab admin doesnt work w/ aces so i just found out few days ago that i got in the class. now i have to reapply for financial aid (after withdrawing my application.. hope they let me do it) but yeah, it looks like i might be here yet another month.. still havent made my mind up yet 100%...

this session is going great though. i'm not particularly interested in the class i'm taking, but it's not too difficult and i guess we're doing an interesting lab and we occassionally get to relax and enjoy nature as a class. last night we canoed over to carrot island again and walked around the water with underwater lights to look at things and collect samples for various labs. dr. dan taught us how to catch flounder with our bare hands (supercool) and we saw sting rays, crabs, fish, all sorts of things. everything is cool at night. we saw fiddler crabs aggregated in the thousands.. we probably killed 100s of them just by walking but it's impossible not to step on them.

tomorrow night we're going on a night time neuse river hike to look for animals in the brakish water. there are alligators and poisonous snakes there so it should be a fun experience. on saturday we're going to okracoke (sp?) island which is kinda touristy just for fun. i'm gonna miss the people here. i've mostly been hanging out with people that were here in the spring semester. watching movies, playing 4 square, etc..

all my decisions about classes and going into summer sessions have been so last minute. i was almost certain i wouldnt be here first session, and gave up completely to go to 2nd session (though i still got in?) but i guess on this track, i should theoretically be able to take 2 classes of my own choice second semester senior year because i'll have my requirements pretty much done.. all without ever overloading during a semester :) i feel accomplished.

i think taking marine mammals will be a good experience also to test if it's something i would really do in the future. were i to go to grad school, it would probably be somewhere in the field of behavioral ecology & conservation of predatory marine mammals (idealy killer whales) it'd be nice to be exposed to a class like this which i hear from all the professors here is a rare experience. All of this will have to be weighed in with whether or not i want to go into some sort of full-time ministry. good advice i got from joe ho and allison at rockbridge was that i should walk down the paths as if i'm going, and see what God does. They encouraged me that it's still very early. For now I think the game plan is to go through next year ready to apply to be on IV staff, but at the same time taking the GREs and looking for grad schools and exploring options in ministry that aren't IV related. I talked with Dr. Dan recently about the personal statement i had to write and from reading what i wrote he said that i'm not ready for grad school, and i should consider taking a year off to work at a whale research center or something. i feel like if i were at any other previous state of my life, this would've been devestating to hear, but i actually felt relieved when he told me this. it reminded me that i'm still young, and i still have a lot of time to figure things out. there is less pressure to make life decisions on a whim.