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Well, this Monday concluded what can only be expressed as one of the most bizarre ventures of my life. I must say that up until the final week of this course, I still didn't understand what it was all about. When I first saw the course, I expected it to be a directed research project where we would be divided into teams and given specific topics to research and come up with ideas for. To an extent I was right, but I didn't expect us (the students) to be coming up with the teams.....
In retrospect, our division of teams was atrocious. If we had more of a clue as to what we were trying to accomplish, we probably would have started with groups more similar to those we ended with. As it turned out, the science groups (i.e. flora, land, water, fauna, air) were not a huge driving force to the final presentation except on an individual effort. Ultimately, even though we didn't recognize it at the beginning of the term, the final presentation would be dominated by the “PR” and Socio-economic groups. Within the land group, my research became progressively (and frustratingly) less relevant to the project. The majority of my research effort was spent trying to find out what the land of the Amazon Rainforest was like. With some difficulty I uncovered a table citing data from over 1000 sites across the Amazon. From this data we made conclusions that we were having difficulty absolutely verifying in other sources. We found that the soil is acidic and nutrient-poor, and the nutrients that are within the soil are found with the top few inches (i.e. about 5-8 cm) of the soil. As samples were taken at greater depths, nutrient deficiency increased and particle size decreased, creating a largely infertile, clay-dominant layer. With a basic characterization complete, I turned my attention to exploring the possibility of large-scale reforestation within the Amazon Basin. However, as my research progressed it became clearer that conditions within the Amazon would not make stand-alone reforestation feasible. Once an area is deforested tree roots rot, decreasing the stability of the soil. The topsoil is more prone to erosion, leaving the infertile clay layer behind. Proper reforestation (i.e. back to natural jungle) is difficult at this point. While it may be possible to reforest the infertile area, the process would probably take upwards of thirty years. Reforestation as a solution, therefore, is futile and is akin to patching the basin with duct tape. Research was put on hold as our massive reorganization attempts began and everyone was panicking. The small group meetings, I think, turned out to be an invaluable resource. While they had little direct effect on the progress of the class (at least until about Nov. 11), they provided the basic backbone for how we wanted to tackle the project and the presentation. After November 11, however, all chaos broke loose. With the beginning of our “proposals” for the restructuring of Mission 2006, it was incredible how much animosity was generated among the students. After a week of backstabbing and confusion, some slight order was brought to the chaos and we had some (unclear) direction as to where we were going. Regimes came. Regimes fell. Some people stepped up to take the reins, but no one could stay on for long. By Thanksgiving, panic started to set in. Thanksgiving in and of itself was a strange time. I have never seen anything shut down so completely that Thanksgiving day as Boston did. Anyway, battling a cold I (unsuccessfully) tried to put significant hours into the Mission 2006 web page. (The “Project Amazonia” name wasn't developed until Sunday night.) By the time the web page team returned, only a basic structure had been compiled. We were still waiting on documents from many of the groups within Mission 2006 to put the web page together. Nevertheless, by 7:30 am Monday, we thought we had a decent web page ready to upload. If only we had the directory permissions to do so.... ....But we were wrong. We knew that the documents in the web page were not that well written, but under the time constraints and circumstances we didn't have the energy nor time to deal with it. By Monday evening, we had our hands full tackling with FrontPage and trying to make updates to the web page. And oh how I hate FrontPage! It is impossible to put Flash objects into FrontPage code! Ultimately, I resorted to using a text editor to edit FrontPage's code and insert the Flash tags manually. This led to compatibility and formatting issues. (Did I mention how much I hate FrontPage?) After many long hours of coding, we discovered that trying to re-open the documents in FrontPage would completely mess up the pages rendering them completely useless. Nevertheless, after another late night and more coding, another version of the web page was posted on Tuesday (Wednesday?) morning. The chaos continued. Unimpressed by the lack of coherent writing and misinformation, higher authorities required us (rightly) to revisit and revise our pages. After a hectic class in 16-168, tasks were divided up and an enforcer was (self-)appointed. Everything was running smoothly, documents were coming in on time, and we thought that everything was going well. Unfortunately, much of the editing that was done was sub-standard to what would have been preferred. Unfortunately, after reverting to a previous version of the web site to increase the efficiency of our editing, we did not have the time to edit the documents ourselves. Now I know what an “all-nighter” feels like.... Dragging on and on, I rushed back to my dorm to try to get the new web page on-line by 4pm (Thursday). Unfortunately, even with the help of Will, who was integral to getting the FrontPage and Flash to work, we were not able to get the web site up until 6 pm. Finally, after the craziest week in my life, I was able to rest....and get to my paper due the next day. Even after “completing” the web page, I was extremely nervous about the state of the presentation. However, it would turn out that my fears would be (largely) unjustified. Somehow, those wonderful people in the presentation group pulled together a miracle in one week. I still find it mind-boggling. So the question I've been hearing a lot is “would you do it again?” Frankly, I don't know. After going through that week and the stress within the Mission 2006 class, I don't know that I would want to tackle it again. A lot of it would depend on the “mission.” I found this year's project a little to socio-dependent. I don't think that, as freshmen, we really had the experience to be able to foresee the problems we would face. However, in the face of a more science-related mission, I would probably reconsider.... In any case, this has been an incredibly fascinating term. I've never had such a conflict of emotions arise over one subject before. I'm quite curious to see how the class will turn out next year..... 'Til we meet again. Jonathan Rhodes |
