Survivalology

An organism is sometimes faced with a rapidly changing environment and must adapt to survive.

Recent observable behavior changes:

--Weather actually impacting decision making: pouring rain means no grocery shopping. In this way a person might be more in touch with nature in the city than in the suburbs.

--Crossing the street to get to the sunny side. This is a result of sunlight deprivation. Not just because I'm studying all the time, but because there's so little light in my apartment. It's always Cave-o'clock in here, and it's depressing. I'm compensating by ordering candles and strings of Christmas lights and other cheery items. In an interesting contrast to the above statement about being closer to nature, one of these cheery items was a wall decal of cherry branches. There's no light or life (other than me) within these walls. I have to order it online.

--I wondered if this program would force me to adapt to less than 7-8 hours of sleep a night. It hasn't. It won't. Nothing can.

Recent intellectual changes:

--The Coriolis force describes the apparent effect that the rotation of the planet has on the movement of the atmosphere. It is also the reason a hurricane can never form along the equator. And why storms rotate clockwise in the Southern Hemisphere and counterclockwise in the Northern Hemisphere.

--Thermohaline circulation (variations in temperature and saltiness makes oceans move the way they do) means the bottom of the Pacific is very old. Water there has been down there for 200-300 years.

--Imagine not knowing, for the first time in ten years, what a gallon of gas costs. I have been freed from that one kind of concern. At the same time, I have also been studying the environmental harm caused by extracting, transporting, refining, and combusting fossil fuels. And learning just how certain the best scientists in the world are that carbon dioxide must be causing global warming (or climate change, or global weirding, whatever you like). It’s Science.

I also find myself doing less yoga but being more present. I focus on each day and the things I must do, and the individual days fly by. My boyfriend comes to visit on Wednesday. Then we will see how good I am at balancing business and pleasure. Right now, though the midnight blogging may not give this impression, I am on track NOT to study or read or do lab assignments for the 4th of July weekend.

Because I won't change entirely. I won't evolve entirely away from direct language into corporate or scientific jargon, no matter how many workshops on science and management I attend. I will remain fabulous.

Tuesday was my only venture out of the Columbia area this week. My program organized a trip to the Staten Island Yankees (aka, not the "real" Yankees) game. It was my first time seeing the Manhattan skyline and the Statue of Liberty.

Sometimes, you don't care if your hair is frizzy. That's another behavioral/intellectual fabulous change. It's too humid here to care.

Surviving is important. thriving is elegant. ~Maya Angelou