Field courses were what quite possibly made me decide I should be a biologist. Something about

…hiking around the Salt Lake City foothills as a high school student to sample diversity at local geographic maxima,

…or watching the sun rise over the Mojave Desert while checking mammal traps in college,

….or dubbing our mud-sliding density-at-breast-height tree sampling in the Ecuadorian Amazon  “Indiana Jones biology” that captured my interest and imagination. So I am pretty stoked to be the teaching assistant for this course right now:

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Of course, it means that I’m essentially out of town for three weeks right before my field experiment for the summer kicks off. Today was the second day of the course, and we’re already utilizing all the combined medical and mechanical skills of the group. On to day 3!