I first fell in love with Hopkins Marine Station a year and a half ago, when I participated in Stuart Thompson’s Sophomore College program here on the Monterey Peninsula. Stuart, who is now my adviser, based his class at the marine station but took us journeying along the entire Big Sur coastline to the south, where we were immersed in air freshly filtered through fragrant bay trees and we slept in the presence of redwoods that have enjoyed hundreds of thousands of those beautiful Big Sur sunsets. Stuart led us out into a rugged paradise, then taught us about the natural and local history of the land we were experiencing. It was a perfect educational trap: having fallen in love with the place, we were all ears when he began talking about the environmental efforts made to protect it. Well, he got me!
My plan after that was simply to go back to Hopkins. Marine biology has been a passion of mine since about as far back as my memory extends. I was raised picking and eating crabs and shrimp right out of the river with my grandparents, and I remember exploring mudflats and oyster beds under the shelter of bridges while our little boat waited out the summer thunderstorms that materialize in Georgia’s August skies. Marine biology is in my blood, and I decided that after a quarter of romping through the Belizean rainforests, it would be nice to ease back into the Stanford scene with a winter quarter at Hopkins. And look at me now: I’m back this quarter for my third Hopkins experience. If life is about going after what you love (which I believe it is), I suppose this is exactly where I should be.
I just returned from my first seminar in George Somero’s class, The Philosophy of Science. This class flies in the face of the modern establishment of biological academia, raising ethical challenges that every aspiring biologist must face. The most unique aspect of today’s lecture was the range of opinions generated from undergrads, grad students, postdocs, an associate professor and even Somero himself, whose scientific experience extends back to his own undergrad days at Stanford. We spent a lot of time discussing the priorities of Stanford biology faculty and the importance of good teaching as opposed to acquiring money for research grants. As an earth systems major, I think the greatest value of the lecture was to get a glimpse down a possible path for a scientist.
There is no other community like this one, where every Friday evening, after a week of classes, research and an exciting speaker or two passing through, all the students and faculty gather on the beach right below the classrooms for some barbecue and a few beers, laughing and chatting about anything from the last local great white sighting to the best surf spots around the bay. Exploring around Hopkins, I might run across the rare bluefin tunas whipping around like 1,000-pound bullets in Barbara Block’s research tanks, or catch Stuart shooting gold particles coated with tiny bits of DNA into the nuclei of developing stem cells with his “gene gun,” or just spend hours poking around the tide pools while the harbor seals gurgle and slap the water, trying to get my attention. It is a fabulous place.
Mary Ellen McKee, ’03, is from Savannah, Ga.
