This was the best summer ever

And it's over (yeah, quarter system schools start October 2nd, how weird is that?)

Granted, my last two summers were spent bedridden. But still.

This summer:
I turned 21 in June, and did a bunch. I partied, went to a casino, and went to New Jersey and New York to see family. I saw the Natural History Museum in New York and it was incredible.
I started fieldwork. I've never done legit fieldwork quite like this, and it was one of the coolest experiences. I caught rodents with one project, and caught watersnakes with another. I had so many cuts and scratches by the end of the day, but they made me feel so accomplished.
I also had to enter pages and pages of data for said fieldwork and never want to do that again (but of course I will) and I've learned that it can't all be fun animal wrangling. 
I worked in a lab testing blood samples and fox kidneys. Previously I had only worked on getting the samples/separating the DNA, but now I learned how the really technical PCR lab machines work. If I thought getting DNA was terrifying, this is worse.
I have always been an intern at the taxidermy museum that I've been at, but this summer it actually became a paying job. My boss said he was so happy to reward me for my hard work. I worked on huge, beautiful ducks, and even a juvenile mountain lion. They turned out really well.
A friend of mine at the museum also got paid, so we worked the same days a lot and had tons of fun shenanigans. We even jointly started a comic about the museum.
I also got out of town a lot! I went to conventions, I helped save a museum, and I collected data with my fieldwork team a couple times at some unexpected and far away locations (...like a water treatment plant. what).
And when I wasn't busy I drew or watched anime, which I hadn't really done for a while so I really enjoyed my free time.

Nearly every single thing I did was amazing. Even if I was up at 4 am.

The sad thing is that all of it is over. Classes are starting so there's very little time for 4am weekday fieldwork, or the grants have run out, or the project is over because they have all the data. I'm still a museum intern but they're stopping my pay because their funding is up (that was short lived!). 

But that's okay. With classes, things have to change. I'll still do little things but it's time to focus on my studies now and that's for the best. This is my last year before graduation, and I'm not quite sure what to expect after that. But I've found that I'm happy doing a variety of things.