This spring semester I took part in the On the River honors seminar, which consisted of classwork and learning about the Amazon River and its ecology, as well as designing our very own research projects. Then, during spring break we all traveled to Manaus to meet our captain, Junior, and set sail to live on the river for 10 days and carry out the projects that we had designed. Once the trip was over, we came back t o Cincinnati, finished up our projects and presented them to the class and the Undergraduate Research Conference.
To say that this experience was life-changing wouldn't even come close to describing the ways this experience changed me. I loved everything about it, even from the start. On the first day of class for the semester, I went in and was surprised to see two familiar faces. I couldn't believe with the thousands of students on campus, I actually would be traveling with two people I already knew! Our professor, Dr. Shan, came in and we did our introductions and began learning about the Amazon River and the state Amazonas in Brazil. I immediately liked Dr. Shan; she was so full of energy, and was able to keep me awake even at 3 pm! With her and Debbie, our other faculty leader, even regular class was a lot of fun and engaging; I'm sure that if we had different professors, the class portion of the experience would not have been as much fun.
As part of the class, each of us had to design our own research projects to carry out while we were in Brazil. I decided to do a project on music with Taylor, someone who, despite not being in CCM, had a passion for music and a real talent at creating it on garage band! Our original plan was to compose different pieces of music based on traditional Brazilian music as well as an electronic composition of rainforest sounds. In the end, however, we shifted gears quite a bit, turning our project into presentation of how the sounds of the river and forest changed in decibels, depending on location. We found that Howler monkeys actually were the loudest part of the forest - they can roar so loudly that they can break the human pain threshold! Thank goodness we didn't actually get close enough to find that out for ourselves. For the second part of our project we created a fake day on the Amazon, taking sound clips from throughout the whole trip and putting them together to recreate a day that we could have potentially had during our trip on the river.
Anyways, that's the project part of the class. The real fun, and the best part of the experience, was actually getting to go to the Amazon and live on the river.
To say that this experience was life-changing wouldn't even come close to describing the ways this experience changed me. I loved everything about it, even from the start. On the first day of class for the semester, I went in and was surprised to see two familiar faces. I couldn't believe with the thousands of students on campus, I actually would be traveling with two people I already knew! Our professor, Dr. Shan, came in and we did our introductions and began learning about the Amazon River and the state Amazonas in Brazil. I immediately liked Dr. Shan; she was so full of energy, and was able to keep me awake even at 3 pm! With her and Debbie, our other faculty leader, even regular class was a lot of fun and engaging; I'm sure that if we had different professors, the class portion of the experience would not have been as much fun.
As part of the class, each of us had to design our own research projects to carry out while we were in Brazil. I decided to do a project on music with Taylor, someone who, despite not being in CCM, had a passion for music and a real talent at creating it on garage band! Our original plan was to compose different pieces of music based on traditional Brazilian music as well as an electronic composition of rainforest sounds. In the end, however, we shifted gears quite a bit, turning our project into presentation of how the sounds of the river and forest changed in decibels, depending on location. We found that Howler monkeys actually were the loudest part of the forest - they can roar so loudly that they can break the human pain threshold! Thank goodness we didn't actually get close enough to find that out for ourselves. For the second part of our project we created a fake day on the Amazon, taking sound clips from throughout the whole trip and putting them together to recreate a day that we could have potentially had during our trip on the river.
Anyways, that's the project part of the class. The real fun, and the best part of the experience, was actually getting to go to the Amazon and live on the river.
It was amazing knowing that I was literally in the middle of no-where; our crew and teachers said that we had to be safe, because if one of us got seriously injured there was really no quick way to any hospital. That definitely puts things in perspective! Also, we didn't really have many amenities. It was, however, a welcome change to be unable to use my phone for a week, to just be unconnected. It was quite refreshing, and I'm glad that I didn't miss technology too much!
I thought it was funny how, even though pretty much all we did was sit in canoes or in the boat, everyday we all ended up completely exhausted. I think that this was mostly because of the sun and how hot it was, it was super easy to become dehydrated. That being said, every day we all looked forward to our mid morning -afternoon siesta!
The food on the boat was another thing that was absolutely phenomenal - the chefs were great! It was all incredibly fresh, too. While we were out on excursions in the canoes, some of the crew would go buy fresh fruit from markets nearby and would fish for our meat. It was amazing! I definitely missed eating that fresh as soon as I got home, and I could immediately tell a difference - that my body doesn't like processed foods as much as real, fresh foods! That certainly put things into perspective.
All in all, this was a completely fantastic and life-changing adventure. I would go again in a heartbeat!
Lastly, here's a look of my, and Taylor's, final project.
I thought it was funny how, even though pretty much all we did was sit in canoes or in the boat, everyday we all ended up completely exhausted. I think that this was mostly because of the sun and how hot it was, it was super easy to become dehydrated. That being said, every day we all looked forward to our mid morning -afternoon siesta!
The food on the boat was another thing that was absolutely phenomenal - the chefs were great! It was all incredibly fresh, too. While we were out on excursions in the canoes, some of the crew would go buy fresh fruit from markets nearby and would fish for our meat. It was amazing! I definitely missed eating that fresh as soon as I got home, and I could immediately tell a difference - that my body doesn't like processed foods as much as real, fresh foods! That certainly put things into perspective.
All in all, this was a completely fantastic and life-changing adventure. I would go again in a heartbeat!
Lastly, here's a look of my, and Taylor's, final project.
sounds_of_the_amazon.pptx | |
File Size: | 8577 kb |
File Type: | pptx |