Hello friends and family, Stathi here back for my final blog post of the trip. After an adventure filled day at Dunns River Falls and Ocho Rios it was time to get down to business. From the moment we all woke up there was only one thing on our minds…..the dreadful ID exam. What is an ID exam you might ask? Well basically you are shown either a picture or live specimen of a fish/invert/algae and you are responsible to produce the common and scientific names of that particular species. While at first glance that might sound easy, I assure you it’s no walk in the park. However, luckily for us we have been compiling a list of all the species we have encountered on our trip on the big black board in the cafeteria.

That’s a whole lot of names

On top of that Shay and Lea were nice enough to create study guides for us which made it that much easier to study. Going into lunch morale was high. After all the exam wasn’t until 5:30pm and there was still the afternoon to address any uncertainties. That is when the professors threw us a curveball and announced that the exam would be pushed up to 2pm. [Ed: Several students requested an earlier ID exam so they would have more time for studying for the lab practical exam and we put it to a vote of the students.] With about 40 minutes till exam time everyone dropped their plates and headed to the conference room for some last minute cramming. Finally judgment day arrived and it was exam time. We spent the first half identifying pictures from slides in the conference room. Having finished part one the real fun began as we were brought into the wet lab one by one for part two. Once inside you were one on one with either Brad or Joe and asked to identify about 10 specimens. While stressful at the time I can honestly say everyone came out on the other side unscathed. With the exam done and stress replaced with relief, I am sitting out on the dock here at DBML blogging to you and enjoying the rest of my afternoon out in the sun. See you two days!

Not a care in the world

-Stathi