A Commentary on Creativity

A wonderfully warm and muddy day on the water this Monday, as I was joined in Panama City by fellow graduate student Allie Blanchette and a high school student who volunteers in our lab, Owen Jackson, for another sampling cruise. We managed to collect all 90 samples with only minor difficulty at the very beginning of our excursion. Thanks to our boat captain Adam for pioneering a new way of dislodging the core tubes from the coring device, we were able to save so much time while doing the research.

The picture from this week is a highlight of what my team looks like after a full day on the water (Hint: my bathing suit is red and white, and Allie's shirt is neon green). I think that people often have an appropriately misconstrued idea of what marine sciences are about: visions of scuba diving, colorful coral reefs, and even Arctic excursions. However, the work of a meiobenthologist, limnologist, or anyone studying geochemistry can be quite messy, though still enjoyable. We as a society, I think, downplay the importance of messy jobs by complaining when kids play in the mud, dig in the sand, or enjoy things that some might consider gross. A combination of only highlighting eye-catching or aesthetically pleasing subgroups in the sciences and other fields as well as scolding children who enjoy exploring messy endeavors can lead to less individuals pursuing some of the subfields of marine sciences, for example, because they aren't as well advertised as others. My hope is that through this blog and when I get to speak to audiences about my research I can express the importance of other less objectively photogenic fields of science and encourage young people to explore, create, and make messes, because nobody knows what skills will be needed for the future, so there is no reason to limit someone's creativity now.

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