Retreat! Retreat!

I leave in a few hours for University of Virginia's Mountain Lake Biological Station, where NESCent postdocs are aggregating for our annual retreat. I can't help but think of us a battalion of scientific soldiers, withdrawing from our offices to regroup and plan our next attack.

I'm reminded of many lovely field trips from my time as an undergraduate at Western Kentucky University. Our small class sizes meant that loading students into a few vans and galavanting off for the mountains or Gulf coast was par for the course (pun intended) in ecology and evolution labs.

Thus, I'm actually quite excited to head off to the mountains for a brief adventure. I'm taking some field guides so I can stalk wild plants and mushrooms. I'm also eager to talk about the professional development topics scheduled for the next few days, especially in light of upcoming deadlines for job applications (eep!).