A few years ago, practically every college student could be seen carrying a nalgene bottle... that is, until the public realized that they contained a chemical linked to cancer, hormone disruption, heart disease, infertility, and obesity. Now we've all got stainless steel bottles, and you'd... More »

This past semester tumbled along in such a flurry of activity that I'm almost stunned it's over--I walk around Colby thinking, where did everyone go? There's a stillness on Mayflower Hill that I've never seen before, and the handful of students living here for the summer have... More »

In February, my environmental health professor—the legendary Gail Carlson—contacted a few of us students with a proposal. She’d heard, she said, of a group being formed—a team of young women fighting for safe chemicals in consumer products, in association with the Maine Women’s... More »

This spring I've been lucky enough to serve as an editor for The Pequod, Colby's literary magazine, which has been around for over 40 years. (The name refers to Captain Ahab's ship in "Moby Dick." Ten points if you knew that already!) Over the decades, as you can imagine, we've... More »

Somehow, while Colby’s students were strewn all across the country for spring break, the season turned. The last clumps of snow melted away from the shade of the arboretum, the March rains stopped, and, overnight,we traded our coats for shorts, and our LL Bean boots for sandals and bare feet. I’m... More »

Sometimes I play a game where I go to Miller library, choose a random aisle, and spend ten minutes (or an hour, or an evening) learning all I can about whatever obscure topic I’m surrounded by. (And yes, my friends make fun of me for it.)It’s amazing the stuff you can find, especially in... More »

Just for fun, let’s return to October, when my group was tracking rhinos in the Ugab Desert. Our trackers are Abel, Jonas, and Sam. 25 October            This morning we found a spoor early, just a kilometer or so out of camp.... More »

 (Part three in a series of entries about studying abroad in Namibia. And did you groan at that punny title? I don't know who put it there. Really, I had nothing to do with it.) 15 NovemberIt’s a strange thing that the first time you see an animal out here, it takes a while... More »

(I spent last fall in Namibia's Kunene region; here is an excerpt from my travel journal. This entry is from after we’d returned from rhino tracking, when my group was camping with seven Himba women in the Namib desert—we were performing plant transects to determine the density of certain... More »

  I just came back from a semester abroad in Namibia, with Round River Conservation Studies, where I and six other students traveled through the bush, working with a number of researchers on their projects. I didn't blog while I was gone--no internet!--but I did keep a detailed journal... More »