I warn my aquatic entomology students that they need to wear close-toed shoes that they don’t care about on field trips because they are going to get muddy, really muddy. The first field trip is the worst because A) they never take my warning seriously (sometimes they wear flip flops or dressy flats! Oy… ) and B) the first trip has the worst mud. Maybe I should just show them this photo, taken during our lunch break, two stops into the first field trip:

Muddy. And notice the canned corn. I have a lot of students that eat cold canned corn on that first field trip every year. Is this some sort of standard field food for ecology undergrads?

This student rinsed her legs/shoes off at each site and never fell into any of the ponds, so this is about as good as it gets on that trip.  I am always considerably worse by the time I get home!

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