It’s been forever since I posted anything and since spring term was so fun and busy, I thought I’d split it over two posts and this will be about the first half of the term. My absolute favourite class this term was Ornithology (the study of birds), which I had been looking forward to since the bird class I took in September! My professor for the class made it really fun and he’s so knowledgeable and friendly, he even took us on a 12 hour birding trip where we got to visit wildlife refuges, the coast, and some off the beaten path spots in between to see some rarer species (and we also saw an elk, grey whale, seals, and sea lions!). It was so fun and we got to 100 species of birds! As part of the assessment for this class we could choose to do 5 bird observations and write a report about each, so me and Nicole had lots of adventures visiting different places to go bird watching which was really fun too.
These pics are from Yaquina Head lighthouse, one of the stops on our Ornithology field trip. The second pic is a Brandt’s Cormorant, they have bright blue throats and pretty entertaining displays which we got to see! The third is a White-crowned Sparrow which is quite a common bird around here, but I really like them and they have a cute song!
My other favourite class of the term was Mammal Conservation and Management, taught by one of my favourite professors from the previous term. We also got to go on some cool trips with this class – the first to learn about wildlife damage (from e.g. bears, mountain beavers, deer) in the mountains, another to do some distance sampling to estimate deer populations (again in the mountains, it was so pretty!), and we also got to take part in a necropsy with deer, a beaver, mountain lions, and a bobcat! This was probably the most challenging class I’ve taken here, mainly because I knew absolutely nothing about how the American model of conservation works, or anything about hunting, which is really important in so many ways. I definitely changed my perspective on a lot of things during this course (and my opinion of regular hunting completely), and it’s the one I feel gave me the best insight into American life and wildlife conservation, so it was really interesting. We also looked into aspects of trophy hunting (which I definitely do not like) and contrasted the American model of conservation with the Scandinavian and African approaches, which I really liked.
One of the fieldwork locations for my mammal class!
I also took Evolution and Global Change Biology, both of which I learnt a lot in and found interesting, so I really enjoyed my classes this term. For Global Change we had to do a group presentation about a topic of our choice, and my group chose to focus on ocean acidification, but since this is really overdone in regards to coral reefs, we chose to look at the effects on other species such as fish and urchins. Even though I didn’t take Invertebrate Biology, some of my friends were in the class and were allowed to bring a friend on their fieldtrip, so I also went to the coast with them to spend the day studying invertebrates which was really fun, though climbing down/up the side of a cliff and falling over slippery rocks made it a bit more eventful!
Seal pup from the invertebrate biology fieldtrip! The mum was swimming around close by, and we gave him some space after the initial excitement of him popping up on the rocks!
Quite early on in the term I went on a hiking trip to Silver Falls State Park with some other international students. It was so beautiful and had been on my bucket list for so long, and I met some really nice people too (and saw some of my favourite birds!). There’s a big trail that takes you past all of the 10 waterfalls, and at some you can walk behind them which is really cool! We only did the south part of the park on this trip since we were only there for a few hours and stopped so many times to take photos, but I’ve recently been back with Ashley and we did the north side so I’ve now seen all 10 falls!
Me and Diana carried on our tradition of going to the sports games this term, though since the football and basketball seasons had finished, we went to check out baseball! I have to say it’s probably my least favourite American sport, but it was really sunny and they serve alcohol, so it was a pretty fun day even though I got really bad sunburn! That made a nice change from the first few weeks of term though when it rained CONSTANTLY. You would think I’d be used to that, being from England and all, but it was something else. It’s been so nice since around May though luckily, and I’ve had a few more sunburns since!
We got there way too early as usual!
Earlier in the term I also went to a graduate school application event that the Fisheries & Wildlife club put on. There were 5 current grad students talking about their experiences, applications, how to choose a supervisor, and all sorts of information and advice. It was so helpful and definitely enforced my feelings of wanting to apply for grad school here. Also like every other event at OSU there was free pizza, drinks and snacks, I honestly love this place so much haha. My friend Chris was also at the event so we went for drinks afterwards at a local bar that I’d been wanting to check out for a while, so that was fun!
The second half of the term has been just as eventful, in fact a lot more so, so I’m going to do a separate write up for that soon, and also one about my summer here so far too.
Sarah's Travel Adventures 