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My idea about being a grad student began to develop before I even considered becoming one myself.

(TA=teaching assistant). They can be your best friend or you enemy. They can get your through a course or be the reason why (you swear) you failed. This was my first experience with grad school, as these older, seemingly genius (or not) young adults led our tutorials and lab sections.


Then, there was the Geology Department at Queens University (you know who you are). The idea of being a grad student was so mystifying during the summer of 2009 with soft-ball games, concerts, farmers markets, bike rides to Wolfe Island, and potluck dinners- I found it hard to see how my new friends did any work. But, I was happily ignorant, because, well- I just didn't need to know.  Lots of music, fun, and coffee breaks. If only I knew that there was another side to that story.

Logistical delays of experiments, statistics, lab meetings, feeding fish daily, meetings with your supervisor..etc... are all part of what I blissfully ignored until I started my own project in my last year at school. It is a balancing act because, you can do all the fun things (music, coffee, sports, social) if you gets your sh*t together (pardon the swear word)!!

Now that I am a grad student myself, life is good. Although my program is pretty course intensive, I have things under control...I think (we'll see after midterms!).  The courses in general are very discussion and group-project oriented which is much different from my undergrad and a little out of my comfort zone. I am definitely learning a lot, especially from the other people in my class.

Here is a list of the classes I am taking:

• Ecological Economics
• Environmental Risk Assessment
• Sociology of Environmental Resource Management
• Research Methods

Just to give you an idea of how the REM  masters works, the MRM (Master's in Resource Management) I will take (at least) 12 courses over 2 years and will do a thesis project. The projects are scoped down (not as huge of a project) compared to an master's of science thesis (MSc). In comparison, most MSc programs have students taking 4 courses over the 2 years with a thesis project.


Despite the heavy work load and class time, the REM program does a good job of keeping things interesting outside of school. There is a BEER CLUB (awesome right? Although I personally think WINE CLUB or G&T CLUB would be just as good). Just like it sounds, this group organizes social gatherings, and so far it has been mostly meeting up for drinks somewhere nearby. There is also the REM student union. This group plans events too, like the Welcome Back barbecue (which we had the first week of school) wine and cheese parties around the holidays, and themed parties. I love themed parties. I went to a meeting for this group yesterday and it definitely seems like something I would like to help out with. They have a pretty big budget so are able to set up some cool things!

BUT, just to clarify, my cohort is pretty social and we have been out and about a few times without the help of a social club or group! *gold stars for us*. For example, we have: been salsa dancing (SO FUN) , made brunch together, made dinners together (I had fresh sockeye salmon for dinner one night this week YUM! (that one's for your Kail and Donna haha)) , had a barbecue, and celebrated a birthday!

This is the band that played at the salsa club we went to. They were amazing. When the band took breaks, they would salsa dance and they were SOOO good.

 

In regards to eating fresh sockeye salmon:

*Begin science side note* Sockeye salmon are very cheap out here right now because of the huge salmon run this year. I am sure most of you have heard about it in the news. But if not, here is a little tidbit of information.

Salmon have a life cycle that both requires freshwater and salt water- so they spend parts of their life in BC along the Fraser River and in the Pacific Ocean. The fish leave from and return to BC in time-cycles (usually of 2 or 4 years) (e.g. this group of salmon probably left BC 4 years ago and are now returning to spawn).

Last year, 11 million salmon were predicted to return, but only about 1 million salmon swam the freshwaters of BC (e.g. Fraser River, Thompson River). This devastated the fishing industry and biologists alike. What happend? Only 1/10th of the predicted fish actually showed up.  This only emphasized the fear of the stock collapsing. This year, however the numbers over tripled the original estimation of around 10 million sockeye salmon returning in 2010. Over 30 million salmon have returned to BC this year. Despite this dramatic return, scientists remain skeptic towards the true health of the sockeye salmon population. Some people find new found hope in this return, thinking the fishery is not as bad off as originally thought after last year. But most scientists  (including Dr Randall Peterman in REM at SFU) emphasize that "one year does not make a trend". This run only highlights how much we do not understand about the amount of salmon returning to BC every year. *End science side note*
for more information just google "sockeye salmon run 2010"


Anyway! that was kind of a tangent, BUT either way definitely an important issue out here in B.C. right now.

So that brings us to more recently: 

I went Chanterelle mushroom picking with some friends! Before you ask, no, not those kind of mushrooms. What is a chanterelle mushroom, then? You might ask. Well, they look like this:

  Picture of Chanterelle Mushrooms

and taste delicious ( I had some with dinner tonight sauteed in butter with garlic!).

The day started out pretty gloomy so originally, plans were canceled. BUT we decided to be troopers and head out anyway. And thank goodness we did! The sky cleared out and we didn't get rained on once- in fact the sun actually came out! We drove about half an hour to a place called Buntzon Lake.


View Larger Map

After a semi-stressful-yet-still-fun car ride (let's just say our lovely driver did not exactly know where we were going), we arrived (thank goodness!). We immediately went off-trail and started searching for the golden fungi.

After today, I've decided that to go mushroom picking you need:

1. 4 navigators and 1 driver (or not)
2. Someone who knows what chanterelles look like
3. Buckets or strainers to hold the mushrooms in
4. Lucky Lager Beer (or not)
5. Salomi, cucumbers, hummus, avocado, crackers
6. Samosas
7. Rain pants ( it's wet in the forest)
8. Sense of adventure
9. Tweezers to pull out blackberry thorns from your fingers
10. Slugs
11. Salamanders ( we found both of these little critters in our travels)

It was really fun!!! For those of you who know me, I'm not very good at finding things that are hidden (if you need reminding think: Cirisse's chocolate bunny hunt last Easter), yet I still managed to find a few of my own. I would post a picture, but still do not have a way to take the pictures off my camera onto my computer. But when I do, I will show you. The hiking was sweet, up some steep slopes, along a river bed, around-over-and-on-top of old logs. Awesome. Also, we found some wild blackberries. They are good and bad: good= delicious treat, bad= thorny. The first bushes we found were while were  in the middle of crossing a super brush-y area (think jungle...the brush was over our heads,we seriously could have used a machete)!

The forests here have trees that are so much taller than back home and it is so mossy! Even if you fall, you land on a cushion of moss. It reminded me of Fern Gully (the movie).

Anyway I am off to bed for the night but I am going to try very hard to write soon and post some pictures this week or next weekend!

xox
A.