With only one full day remaining on San Salvador, we woke up, same as usual, only today, we were a little more antsy than usual. We had one final snorkel to do, some projects to finish up, and a final exam to study for… Then we’re done!
We headed out to do our last group snorkel at Snapshot Reef, where we’d been able to visit on multiple occasions. This was the same site we explored the shallows, the reef, and the wall. Being a cloudy day, there didn’t seem too much to be going on at the reef. We did however, see a couple of the nocturnal creatures, such as squirrel fish. With no objective at the reef, other than to enjoy one last group snorkel, we were able to just relax and enjoy the water (not that we don’t always do that anyways).
After the reef, we headed back to the field station to a lunch of tuna and egg salad, then headed off to the lab to finish up our research projects and start to get cleaned up. Unfortunately, this consisted of putting away all of our coloring books and all the stuff we were using to make bracelets. No, I’m not kidding, we really are just a bunch of little kids at heart.
With the few hours of free time we had before and after dinner, we all took advantage. Some of us packed our bags, some of us studied some more, and obviously the best use of the time we had was napping
This evening in class, we were able to bombard our professors with questions for the final in the morning. Of course, all of our questions were answered. We then went through our pictures of organisms from throughout our time here and practiced identifying them, to prepare ourselves for tomorrow.
These research projects will be presented at the Celebration of Learning at Wittenberg next year. With this program, we were be able to expand our skills and experiences that will help us in the future. Most of the students are going in to an environmental science or marine biological field, so this trip was helpful in giving us a taste of what we will be able to do for the rest of our lives after graduation.
We’ve also made some great bonds with the three absolutely amazing professors who’ve spent these past few weeks with us. We hope to extend these connections into the future possibly for recommendations into our career fields or into even higher education--or maybe we’ll just utilize their connection with to be our close mentors.
Don’t get us wrong, as much as we love it here, I think it’s safe to say we are all definitely ready to come home. We have made some pretty amazing friendships and built relationships that will last, but between missing our family, friends, and fur babies, and getting eaten by bugs, Monday morning seems to still be too far away.
With much to do in little time, we are all headed to bed. Wish us luck!
Congratulations on completing your time on the island. I can tell you that, even well over 30 years later this is still one of my Wittenberg experiences I remember most fondly. Drs. DeLanglade and Morris taught us a lot.