(Thanks Amy Warren!)

Even though I grew up in the Seacoast and was familiar with the sight and sound of gulls, I had never truly experienced gulls until seeing them during breeding season on Appledore Island. They take over the island, nesting everywhere. And they are very protective of their nests and chicks, so that visitors are well-advised to carry a gull stick to hold overhead, to serve as a target for the gull instead of the top of your head… Read More.

Photo by Jim Cerny.

Registration closes on April 16th 2010.

Well, it turns out what I heard was right, but not completely. Great food? Freshman Fifteen: meet the Appledore Eighty. Rampant gulls? Snow White, forget animals that help you clean houses: meet the birds that will peck, dive-bomb, or crap if their chicks are approached. And, believe me, they don’t whistle while you work. Nor when you sleep.

What I didn’t hear about or expect were the people I would meet. It always pleases me to find peers as weird as I am, willing to talk about everything (what are aquacultures? what was it like working at an aquarium in Thailand? do baby gulls have unique calls?) and nothing (who confused cream cheese with butter? that cloud looks like what? you got gull crap where?). Even though the dominant major here is unarguably biology, the students here are surprisingly diverse in their interests: everything from music to marionette-making enters dinner conversation. But we all share a common passion for nature and what the planet’s oceans have to offer us.

As for the faculty: I took the Forensic Science for Wildlife Biologists course, and they were amazing. None of the professors pretended to be authorities on all things forensics-related, but each stuck to their own strengths. They were easy to talk to, always ready with two mouthfuls of previous experience to tell about, knowledgeable but willing to admit when they didn’t know the answer, and extremely entertaining. The result was a Justice League-esque collaboration of faculty. And an education worth two Batmobiles. And Superman’s cape.

My grades do not depend on the previous paragraph.

I can’t write this without mentioning the natural beauty of Appledore Island. When I look out off the porch of Hamilton or Laighton and see the ocean, or take a short walk to Celia Thaxter’s garden and spot three baby gulls cuddled together, or fend off sea sickness by looking out at the horizon, I smile and revel in how gorgeous of a world we have been given.

So right now, as I write this, the sunset bathing the Commons in orange light, a line of gulls silhouetted in the glowing sun, and thirty-one and a half pairs of soiled socks dripping with what I hope is water but smells otherwise, I can’t say that I expect anything more out of Shoals, or that I can think of somewhere else I’d rather be.

-Albert Zhang