Summer internship

I have accepted a summer position in the Smoky Mountains. It seems like it will be pretty cool, and consists mostly of invasive (plant) species monitoring and removal. It wasn't my ideal position, but it's certainly good enough. I would have liked to get a 6 month position just to keep myself occupied a little longer, but this just means that I'll have to search for something else in the fall instead of the winter. In theory that should be a little bit easier. There was also a really cool 2 month position that paid really well, and I would be doing amphibian population monitoring, but I wasn't guaranteed that and I sort of wanted to be on the safe side. I was in the top third of their applicant pool, but not in the top 3, who were being contacted first. I was competing against people with more experience than me though, so I don't really feel super bad about it. I just wish I could be doing stuff with amphibians instead of plants and insects.

However, even though I wouldn't be officially researching them, the Smokies are pretty much the center of caudate diversity in the world. So I'm thinking that in my free time I will probably poke around and try to find and ID as many different salamander species as I can. And the actual work that I'll be doing will be good. GSMNP is one of the most heavily visited national parks in the country, and with lots of visitors comes a greater chance of introduced exotic species. And I guess in some ways it might be good for my first internship after graduation to be just for the summer. It will potentially be an easier transition, especially since it's closer to home than a lot of the other positions that I was looking at.

Anyways, I'm tired now and should have gone to bed a half hour ago (there was no reason not to) so I'm gonna do that now.