When I started out the quarter I was hoping to gain some clarity on what it is I want to pursue in my career. I think the realization hit me when I was sitting on the forest floor, in the pouring rain, marking harvestmen with paint pens. Fieldwork is hard. Very hard. I think in an ideal world I would like to have a career where fieldwork comes into play during some aspects of the job, but not all. The FBQ was so much more challenging than I could ever have imagined. When you are thinking about how to carry out two projects you have these neat little ideas about how to do so. Once you try to take the ideas you have and apply them to real life you get some problems. For example, we decided our project required marking harvestmen for identification, so we got our paint pens ready and went out to mark them. Little did we know that when harvestmen are startled they secrete a liquid onto their abdomens. Trying to make a precise dot on a wet surface does not work out too well. The paint spread all over the harvestmen’s bodies, causing some fatalities. With some critical thinking we came up with a solution. The next day we went out with Q-tips to dry off their little bodies before we marked them—which succeeded. So there we were, in the forest Q-tipping harvestmen so we could paint pen tiny dots on their tiny bodies. Almost everything we originally thought would work for collecting data had to be tweaked and refined.

And then the rain. It rained for several days straight near the end of the trip when it was crunch time to collect data. I think one of the hardest parts about the trip was pushing yourself to get up, get on your gear, and go into the rainforest regardless of the weather. And of course you had your poncho on, but somehow you couldn’t escape getting drenched. But this was also one of my favorite things about the rainforest. You would be hiking along, sweating, exhausted, and suddenly it would start pouring. During these moments the rain was welcomed and seemed to cleanse you of all of your frustration. Overall, the FBQ was an experience I needed to have in order to appreciate what science is all about.