Wait for it....productivity!

Behold! We've collected our first data. It was crappy data, but it was data. Getting the DIDSON to 1. work and 2. download it's memory (albeit very, very slowly) is the vast majority of the battle and one I always seem to lose. But, it went off without a hitch. The data we got was pretty fuzzy and had a ton of background noise; we're waiting to pull the camera up from today's deployment momentarily so we'll see how the adjustments we made changed anything. Hopefully the logistical nightmares have ceased so that we can deploy twice a day. I still feel like I have NO idea what's going on, I'm hoping to shake this feeling sometime before the end of my time on this ship (which is thankfully in 6 days. I'm not a fan of ship life). Actually, I'm hoping to shake this feeling sometime before the end of grad school. I constantly go back and forth between being extremely confident (hey, I can explain my research in a coherent manner!) to being convinced they're going to kick me out at any moment (hey...everyone here is WAY smarter than I am...). Peter keeps telling me to "take notes" for when I'm chief scientist...HAH. For now, I'm just going through the motions of assembling, disassembling, charging, downloading, etc. Today was pretty boring...it's a lot of "hurry up and wait." I rush to get everything prepped and ready to go....and then have nothing to do once the divers get it on the boat. This should get better as time progresses and I have more data to pick through, but that also means I'll see the light of day less (I've been outside twice in the last four days). Anyways, off to recover the camera and begin the long process of downloading.