This week was our final week of classes and we have been really busy wrapping up all of our final assignments. We have all been working hard to put the final touches on our capstone and independent research projects, and it's really satisfying to have an end in sight.
Part of our semester at the Biological Station was a science communication course. The class was taught by three different professors, all with different backgrounds: Rada Petric, a researcher responsible for many publications, Lilly Knoepp, a journalist who reports on environmental and political issues in the region, and Brent Martin, a writer and poet who writes about the natural beauty of the region alot. These three have all brought really different things to the course and shown us just how many different ways science can be communicated. Our class culminated in a final project and presentation of any creative piece we would all work together to create.
For the days leading up to our assignment we bounced around a lot of ideas: a poem book about time, a magazine of invasive species, a play or drama about Macon County floodplain issues, but we eventually settled on a collage of the native flora and fauna in the Little Tennessee watershed. We started getting to work at about 8 pm, cutting out pages from magazines, sketching different organisms, and creating a background for our collage.
The project was very collaborative and everyone focused on what they were good at and wanted to do. Everyone brought a few art supplies to share and our living room was quickly transformed into an art studio. Markers, scissors, paint, and glue were all being tossed around the room as we all worked to create our own little pieces for the collage.
Annika and Edie, who are both really good at watercolor painting, worked together on our background.
We decided to do waves, representing the Little Tennessee river, which is the center of the ecosystem and an important part of many of these organisms' life cycles.
I wanted to draw so I sketched some pitcher plants, cattails, a bird's nest, and a muskrat.
Everyone made sure to stay busy and before we knew it, we were ready to start arranging all of our different components into a final scene. We included title cards with the common and latin names of each species for our final layout, magazine clipping, pressed leaves, paintings, and sketches.
It ended up being about 2 am before we had a final product we were satisfied with. It's so easy to lose track of time when working on something we can get excited about. Creative assignments like this are particularly fun for me at least, and its always great to have an assignment that breaks up the monotony of essays and exams. The next morning, we gathered in Weyman to present our collage and some of our other creations from the semester to our teachers and other station faculty. We celebrated Jason’s birthday with a chocolate cake and candles. It was a really enjoyable meeting, and one of the best LDOCs I’ve had since I came to UNC.
It's nights like this I will miss when the semester is over, everyone working together in the living room of Valentine. The projects we have undertaken this semester have allowed us to become so close in such a short amount of time. It has been great relaxing with everyone, but I have the most fun when we have a problem we are solving together. It feels great to be surrounded by creative, funny people who value the environment as much as I do. I can’t think of a better way to spend my final semester as a Tarheel than surrounded by beautiful nature working closely with great friends.
-CT
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