July 30 2009

It’s crunch time for the students! A draft paper for the eight week independent study students is due this week. Needless to say, there is some last minute scrambling. Several weeks back I had a student suggest it was a bit too much to be dealing with a class and an independent project simultaneously. I told them to get used to it. As your research career progresses, the number of balls you have to keep in the air only gets larger. Time management is a critical skill for being a research scientist!

I’m always struck by how time moves in the summer. So much happens in the summer that at times it seems like it stretches on forever. Students arrive, make new friends, hike peaks, go to talks, learn how to do research, etc. The days are so full that sometimes it seems like a single day stretches out for a week or longer. But even though the days are really long, summer happens fast. By early August it feels like you’ve been hit with a semi-truck; everybody is wandering around with a dazed look wondering what happened to the summer and trying to figure out how they’ll fit that last peak in before they have to return to classes.

In some ways, it’s just how the ecosystem works. The plants and animals lie dormant under the snow through a long winter. Finally they peek out from the snowpack and then it is a mad race to complete their annual cycle before the frosts arrive in the fall. There’s so much to do and so little time. As much as I like summer, I must admit that I take a deep breath and enjoy walking a bit slower when fall arrives.