Ari in Antarctica

I’m a textbook over packer. I could easily pack ten outfits for a two-day trip (honestly, I have no idea who I’ll want to be each day/minute of any trip) So how am I going to adequately pack for a 52+ day trip where I will have absolutely no access to a store for at least 45 of those days? How can I possibly know how much shampoo to pack, and moisturizer for the insane cold I’m not prepared to face? Will I pack enough soap and socks? Probably not. I seriously have no idea how to pack or prep for this trip when it comes to personal items, but there are the few things I’ve figured out so far. For toiletries, I’ve found that locally made package free soap lasts about three months, so I’m definitely packing two because I can’t take the chance I’ll run out. At least I’m not packing 3, trust me I’m tempted. When it comes to the heaviest and arguably most important toiletry items, shampoo and conditioner; recently I’ve had a few friends suggest the brand Ethique to m

The past few days we've been packing our trunks full of any scientific equipment that we didn’t include on our SIP (Support Information Package) which is just a giant list from NSF where we check the boxes of alllll of the equipment we’ll need to carry out our research on board the cruise. That means every microcentrifuge tube, reagent, pipette, and sharpie we think we’ll need we wrote out in our SIP. We’re packing extras of some super important things like zipties, sharpies, 5mL snapcap tubes, and we're also packing everything we couldn’t request on our SIP like the light boxes and incubation boxes we had to build or special order for this trip. I usually think packing is fun, I'm one of those weird Type A (ENFJ/enneagram 3) personalities. However, when you have to itemize every single thing in each box, including the quantity, manufacturer information, and product number, it becomes a daunting task. So, BLESS that it’s over! And now 87 days before the trip, our g

I know you’re the one really reading this blog, so this is for you! 88 days. That’s all that stands between me, and the journey of a lifetime! Well 88 days, prep work, classes, tests, and lots of homework, but honestly that feels like nothing. So, what is this trip of a lifetime?  It’s a forty-five-day research cruise on the RV Laurence M. Gould centering on Palmer station, Antarctica. My team of five is one of four teams on board the ship for this trip, and we’re going to be studying the microbial ecology of the marine microbial communities along the Antarctic Peninsula. What does this even mean?  It means we want to study the specific bugs (bacteria/archaea) that live in those waters and how these bugs interact with the marine environment around them. Isn’t that what you already do? Oh yeah! I get to study the marine microbial ecology of Pensacola Beach on three temporal scales here at home, and now I get to use these same assays and techniques while puking int