My story begins last fall, towards the end of my first ever botany class. One day my professor, Dr. Anna Monfils, asked a classmate, and friend of mine, and myself to stay after. Invariably I thought the worst and readied myself to be chastised for some unknown cause. In fact the exact opposite happened, she offered both of us jobs in her lab! I am very interested in both invasive species and aquatic habitats so when she gave me the option of working on the AIS grant I jumped at the chance. Fast-forward to the beginning of this semester; first the whole lab met to get to know each other then all of the individuals working on the AIS grant met to learn our process and pick plants. As I read through the plant list as soon as I read the words curly-leafed pond weed I knew I had to do that one. Over the summer part of my job was snorkeling in the middle of mats of aquatic weeds, I have distinct, murderous memories of this weed and how irritated it would make my skin when I inevitably brushed against it. Knowing that a large part of this project was learning about management methods I thought the perfect way to exact my revenge was to learn how to kill it and help provide that information to as many people as possible.
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| A non-flowering piece of curly-leafed pond weed or Potamogeton crispus |
The first step of the writing process as outlined by our graduate student supervisor was to collect as many publications as possible. I fear I did this to the word and without enough discrimination for content. After uploading dozens of articles it was time to annotate them into an annotated bibliography. I had never written an annotated bibliography before so it took me a few tries before I truly understood what I was suppose to be doing. As I annotated the many papers I had retrieved I realized my mistake of getting as many papers as possible with no regard to content. I began quickly screening the papers before I read them and would only annotate those that had information that was not covered by another paper and was relevant to the task at hand. As I read and annotated scientific paper after scientific paper I began to hate this project I had signed up for. There is no duller, more technical, harder to read writing ever written as a scientific paper; but I plugged on knowing that soon I would be able to start writing my first draft. As I read, annotated, read, annotated, and read some more I began to realize the papers were getting easier to digest. Technical terms became common knowledge, experimental techniques became basic procedures, and those big words I had to look up began making their way into my vocabulary. I finally felt like I could confidently read, understand and annotate an entire paper the first read through when I found no more papers to annotate!
The next step was to begin my first draft. I am a painfully slow writer, I can never decide what wording sounds best and where to put what detail. As I began the process of writing my draft I found many places where the knowledge gathered from the papers I had retrieved lacked and found myself going back through papers and finding more sources and clarifying facts that other papers left questionable. This began the confusing process of write a little, look up a paper, correct what I had written, then annotate the new paper I put in my draft. I found the hardest section to write being the life history section, mainly because my species had a life-cycle very different from other plants. Really, what plant goes dormant in the summer, germinates in the fall, and grows in the winter under the ice? but that is what by nemesis Potamogeton crispus does. It does so through the use of its dormant summer form pictured above called a turion. After writing the life history the rest was fairly easy, and then I finally arrived at the methods of control section. I had spent most of my time learning about ways to kill this plant and was to excited to beginning writing about all of the methods I had learned. I don't know what method of control was my favorite; mechanically cutting it down in the prime of its growth before it can reproduce, poisoning it before it has a chance to reach the surface, or essentially starving it to death by cutting it off from the sunlight above. After I completed this section, I read through the whole, thing and felt a great sense of accomplishment; I had done it, my first draft was done! I turned it in to Rachel and got back a highly marked, changed, and critical review. The shear amount of changes and suggestions on the corrected draft was extremely discouraging as I though my draft was perfect. As I worked through the paper again, comment by comment, I found that most were simple comma changes, sentience re-wording, and questions or clarifications. I quickly found that I had finished these edits and again felt a sense of accomplishment because most of the content of my paper was acceptable. Now that only the final edits remain I find myself excited to start working on another plant, and now that I know the problems I faced with my first one I am confident this time around I will be more efficient.
Even though my ultimate goal was complete Potamogetion crispus annihilation, learning about this plant gave me a new respect for it and for life itself. This plant grows in the harshest conditions of winter, can survive high concentrations heavy metals, fast moving water, and countless other pollutants. In many areas this plant is loved as it has that ability to accumulate toxins in a water system and return that system to relative health. Potamogeton crispus grows during the harshest part of the year just so it can have a leg up on the plants of the next season. Writing this plan showed me that while we may hate something for a wrong we feel has been inflicted upon ourselves, there is often more to the story that has not been considered. I also confirmed my belief that life is amazing and will find any way to thrive, even if it means being subjugated to the worst possible conditions just to survive.
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