Until this year, I'd spent most of my education tunneling through library stacks, or sitting in lonely cubicles with stacks of books blocking out the light. It did nothing for my tan, or, to a certain degree, my conscience. While being a professional reader was a lot of fun and I wouldn't trade it for anything, I found myself searching for something greater. And now, I think I have found that thing, and it is mud. Yes, in all its glorious forms, from the diluted brown liquid I used to pretend was chocolate milk, to the stinky anoxic stuff that smells like &%^$&#, mud is the ultimate Consolatio Philosophae--I don't knowwhat Boethius was thinking with all that OTHER mumbo-jumbo.
Okay, that's probably enough pretentious literary allusions for one paragraph. Suffice to say, I'm really looking forward to exploring the fascinating world of marine ecology through the medium of mud and
estuaries. As far as intellectual interests go, I'm still working those out specifically, but if I could FIT in some birds, bivalves, biodiversity/ecosystem function, behavioral ecology, conservation biology, and, yes, perhaps even a little discourse analysis (can't let all that English go to waste), I would count myself fulfilled. And I don't think Boethius would take me to task on that.
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