let the great experiment begin!

tomorrow begins day 1 of my intense push to finish old mr. thesis. I have four weeks to thesis full-time which means 1) 4 weeks to mess around and do nothing but bask in the glory of not having to go to work; 2) 4 weeks to bust out every old craft project, organize every box and file in my possession, clean every nook and cranny of my apt, paint, run, take up yoga, travel somewhere, have movie marathon after movie marathon, hike, cook, learn to sew, bike ride, finish reading all the books I'm still currently reading, etc, etc, everything I can think to do except work on my thesis; or 3) work really hard and really seriously in a focused, diligent manner on my thesis and actually produce something close to a draft. (and I suppose that a fourth option would be some sort of combination of #1-3 but let's just pretend these are mutually exclusive scenarios.)

obviously, I'm aiming for #3. but choices #1 and #2 are very real temptations. this worries me. I've prepared by taking precautions to steer clear of thing 1 and thing 2 so I'm just gonna cross my fingers and hope for the best.

because my project is so absolutely riveting, here's some background:
my project is on the population dynamics of a leaf-mining moth species (Cameraria sempervirensella) in the sierras. this is my study site at plumas-eureka state park:


my data:

if you look closely, you can see tags on the leaves I was sampling. all those splotches on the leaves are mines created by moth larvae that feed on leaf tissue inside the upper leaf surfaces and form sort of hollowed-out tents. then they pupate inside the leaves and finally emerge as adults.

I collected data on way too many leaves essentially looking at mine growth, survival rates, and causes of mortality among larvae on leaves under different treatments. this means that I took thousands of pictures to examine leaves one by one.


about a year after they're deposited as eggs in those leaves, the leaf-miners emerge as teeny, tiny moths that look like this:


fascinating, right? you're all reading on the edges of your seats, I know.

in addition to photographing leaves during my dozen trips to the sierras, I also had to slave away doing really arduous tasks like:

swimming in lakes:


snowshoeing across my site:



spending time with my dog:


camping in campgrounds that jake and I had all to ourselves:


oh yeah, and occasionally conducting experiments:


thesis-writing amy is sooo jealous of data-collecting amy right now. if only finishing my thesis meant reliving all that. sigh.