Moving to New York City from Bloomington, Indiana has been full of challenges. After 15 hours of driving and exiting the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway, I was immediately rear ended, though this is New York and this doesn’t qualify as an actual accident. Learning. I had a day to settle in before I had to go to the internship training in Chapel Hill, NC. The training itself went fine, the North Carolina Botanic Garden staff were fantastic hosts. We made a couple collections and ate quite well the entire time we were there. Unfortunately, the week came to an end and we had to return to NYC.

Upon arriving at the airport in Chapel Hill, I received a text from my roommate letting me know my whip had been towed. Great. I had left my car with my new roommates to move my car due to the twice a week street cleaning. They moved my car, though I found out it was to a no standing zone. So after a couple hours dealing with the Brooklyn Navy Yard tow people (they had no record of my vehicle), I finally got my car out, but not before $400 in fees and an additional $230 in tickets were paid. Learning.

The internship has otherwise gone okay. I don’t know my species as well as I would like, though that is fixable. I’ve learned that tents don’t actually keep you dry and when it rains (frequently), sleep is hard to come by. I’ve been to Long Island, New Jersey, and Delaware so far, all new places. I’ve explored unfamiliar habitats and been exposed to plants previously not encountered in my home oak-hickory forests. I get to hike most days and spend plenty of days on the beach. As a group, we’ve made a handful of collections. I believe the count is currently five, so only 295 more to go for the season. It’s a seemingly daunting number at this point, though I’m sure easily obtainable as the season progresses.

While this month has been one of my most trying, full of financial despair and exhaustion, I have to imagine it should get better. Things can’t go wrong all the time, right?