Time and Mosquitos.

Having a project that is field work intensive had led me to learn lots of skills I didn’t know I would learn.  I have learned to walk through creeks of all different kinds. I have learned how to avoid large branches and jump over fallen trees. I’ve learned to accept mosquitos but to cover yourself as much as you can and spray every inch of remaining skin with bug spray because they’re ruthless and will bite your eyebrow, which is very annoying. Oh, and I’ve learned how to avoid the big ugly spiders that like to hangout in the trees. But, I’ve also learned that it takes a lot of patience and practice to be out several days a week in the heat surrounded by mosquitoes to obtain the information we want to ultimately present to the community yet fun and rewarding to do.

Being so busy with field work, it has been difficult for us to spend time with other teams and work with them to get a deep understanding of what it is they are doing. So instead, I ask my fellow LAKES friends what they are up or what they have been doing for their projects when I do see them or I find out what they’re up to from the weekly check in meetings. Through this I found out how the economics team, Madison and Ryleigh, sent out many surveys to different resorts in Chetek and how they had to go retrieve them, along with what their response rate was. I also learned that Kathy has been working hard with transcriptions and contacting several farmers along with having meeting with them to obtain more information for her CAFO concentrated project. The one team the geography team got to work with was the biology team. We got to work with them with collecting sediment samples and water samples and they helped us out in the field.

While we haven’t been able to go out with other teams as much we have had help from teams such as the econ team and the anthropology team. Taking other students out has taught me how to teach other people about what we are doing. Plus, they get to experience what we do when out in the field. There is still a couple of weeks left and we are wrapping up our field work so I am hopeful that there will still be the opportunity to help other teams and experience what they do.