Science

When I was young and childish and naïve, I thought that science was a noble pursuit. I saw science as flash gear, smooth running procedures, clean methods, white lab coats and something that was very challenging.

Stewart Island

Now that I am training to be a scientist (and having just spent my mid-semester break on a field trip), I realise how wrong I was.

Science isn't all bad

Our very much sub-tropical paradise

Sky's out!

Science is about playing in the mud and getting dirty. After a whole day of bringing up sediment from the ocean floor, getting samples and getting dirty, we pulled up some more of the ocean floor just to have a look. I shit you not, you would have thought you’d given 14 fat children 14 large cakes. There wasn’t enough room for everyone around the pile of dirt. Everyone was in there. I felt like a little kid again, in the sand pit, but this time in pursuit of science.

Samples with a view

Sediment sampling

Our pile of dirt (human for scale)

Getting dirty

Science is about getting good at eating. I used to think that I was a Champion Eater, but I have so much to learn, so much training to do and so far to go. One of my demonstrators demonstrated this 'eating thing' to me when he had breakfast (toast etc), followed by seven eggs, three patties and a million tomatoes for pre-morning tea snack, topped off by a further three eggs for morning tea. He then continued on to have lunch with the rest of us. I considered him a real trooper. Others were quick to point out to both him and me, however, that he would not continue to be, should he continue on in this fashion.

If you don’t get quite the same kick as my demonstrator did from eating, then you could at least get  some secondary gains out of watching him enjoy his eating. He legitimately did a jig on the back deck of the boat as we were given 6 salmon and a (large) bag of mussels. There is nothing better in the world than seeing an unexcitable Kiwi excited.

One of our many feeds of salmon

Science is about babysitting. One of our noble pursuits of knowledge involved, ‘babysitting the machine.’ This meant that we students were told that we needed to stay up all night to watch a screen, make sure it was always recording and change the file ever hour. Maybe it doesn’t sound that bad, but I promise you, when your alarm goes off at 4:30 am to watch a computer screen, there is nothing good about it. At best, it is rivetingly boring.

Settling in for the night

Science is about enjoying other people (and their misfortunes). You know it’s going to be a good trip when somebody has fallen in the fountain in Gore before the field trip has even started.

Gore: Just a generally unfortunate place

One of my favourite parts of the trip was the skipper enjoying our misfortunes, as students. He regularly asked (in a rather sarcastic tone) if we were getting good science. He came to see us at 4:30 am while we were watching science happen on the computer screen, proceeded to get very excited about what he saw and encouraged us to wake the rest of the boat up because they were all missing out on science. But in a funny kind of a way, despite his sarcasm, he's right. 

Because, yeah... science bitches.