It’s nice to know that I still have the ability to ace a test. Seven months out of college and I haven’t lost my edge. *pompous shoulder brush*

But do you know that weird feeling you get when you’re the first one to finish an exam and you think to yourself, “Ummm did I miss something?” I had that feeling. There were like 45 minutes left and I didn’t know if I accidentally skipped a page or what. Turns out I was just fast. The advantage to being a young person is that you’re really good with computers and search functions. (Half the exam was based on if you’re good at looking up various information on the Smithsonian webpage. I used the keyword search like a boss.)

The exam took place back in the computer room of Natural History. So afterwards I went upstairs to look around the exhibits before I could get my paperwork done for my volunteer badge. (The security office didn’t open for another hour, so I had some time.) The first thing visible once you get off the escalator is the Sant Ocean Hall, which opened in 2008. Well, the last time I had visited Natural History was in 2007 for Spring Break (yup, you know you're a nerd when...), so I decided to look around. The one thing you can tell right of the bat is that everything looks shiny and new. Oh and of course the fact that there’s a giant whale hanging from the ceiling. That’s pretty obvious too.

I must apologize for the terrible size and resolution my pictures this week. Idiotically I left my real camera at home and had to resort to using my camera phone.

Now it is known that we know more about the surface of the moon then we do about the bottom of the ocean. (Mind blown!) It holds more than half of all the animal species on earth. It is the first place life developed AND it makes the atmosphere and things like the weather possible. Hence, the ocean is a big deal and the Sant Ocean Hall does it justice by having a ton of really interesting stuff. There’s a live aquarium with corals and Nemo and Dory fish, giant shark teeth, fossils of extinct semi-aquatic descendants of whales, and specimens of weird looking fish. They even have a narwhal horn. Not kidding. I didn’t even know narwhals were real. I thought they were fictional creatures made up because a dolphin unicorn hybrid was cute idea. (Please don’t make fun of me because of this. Haha.)

To think, they exist in real life….aWWWWW!

Not only did they have educational fish displays, they also had artistic ones. In fact, there was a whole wing dedicated to these really pretty X-ray fish photographs.

so many little bones…

Overall the displays were really cool, fun, and educational. The only thing that was ...kind of the biggest disappointment ever, was their lack of jellyfish. Literally during the whole walkthrough of the exhibit I kept thinking to myself, “Where are the jellyfish?!?!” I’m not even 100% sure why I thought that today would be the one day I would be obsessed with jellyfish. I guess because they’re really fascinating. A lot of them are bio-luminescent (but they weren’t in the deep-sea twilight zone wing at all. All that was there were some squid, fish, and this itty bitty angler).

"The deep sea anglerfish has no reason to be happy but it has no frikkin idea what else to be..." -Hank Green

Jellyfish are also one of the few species in the ocean that benefit from over fishing. They also kill a lot of people each year with their stinging poison. So why were there practically no jellyfish in this exhibit?!?!! COMPLETE Outrage! All I found was this plastic decorative model of a jelly…

I admit it's pretty.

…and this one really ugly jelly in a jar.


There are so many more really beautiful jellies in aquariums and stuff (I know! I’ve seen them!). So disappointed.

However, what the Smithy didn’t lack in was their supply of squid. They were literally fracking everywhere. You got your little squid, you got your giant squid, you got squid models, you got your female squid, and your male squid, and you got squid in your gift shop…

Gift shop find! It was actually quite an adorable little plush. Aw!

So yea, we now know what Natural History is obsessed with. Below is a picture of the tank that they keep the female giant squid specimen in. As you can see, it was so big that it didn’t even fit in my camera phone view frame.

This is what she looked like up close.

I love how on the sign above here head is said, “Is it real?” Well clearly it is. The again I shouldn’t make fun because I didn’t know that a narwhal was real.

Here’s a male squid that looks like it should be in some horror movie because of the poor lighting.

After my walkthrough I decided to go on a docent lead tour through the hall. My docent this time was a kind of younger dude named Matt. He was really good actually; very knowledgeable, engaging, and full of cool facts (that I kinda already knew, YAY bio minor!) However, that was all up until he got to the salmon display. There his true colors were shown and he revealed himself to be a dick. Now prior to that I had a sense that he was kind of a jerk, but most guys are; so I didn’t really think anything of it. I mean when you’re really surprised when everyone on your tour knows that in the animal kingdom men are often smaller and less useful then women…yeah. That just shows you have a preconceived notion that you think that everybody thinks that men are better than women (at least that’s what I get...I could be thinking too much into this). And also he kind of embarrassed me when I got the answer to his question wrong when in actuality his question was poorly worded. (I mean if you were asked, “What would happen to phytoplankton if they didn’t have the sun?” Automatically they would die unless they mutated in order to get food from something else. You wouldn't think that they would move to a place that had sun. The question should have been, “What would happen to phytoplankton if they couldn’t get access to the sun’s rays?” Then we can talk about migration…jerk.).

But back to the salmon! We were talking about how over fishing has lead some species of salmon to extinction and how Americans in the pacific who fish for Alaskan salmon are cutting back in order to preserve the species. Apparently the Atlantic salmon are already on the verge of extinction so the fishermen have taken the initiative to be responsible. That’s good. But he didn’t stop there. He HAD to keep going and start trash talking the Japanese about their fishing habits and how unlike Americans, they are unwilling to curve the amount they fish. And it’s not the fact that he presented us that information. It’s the way he presented the information.

Right way:

“The Japanese however are the largest fishers of seafood in the Pacific and have yet to implement better fishing habits.”

Wrong way (aka: Matt’s way):

“You know who are the largest fishers of seafood in the Pacific? The Japanese. They the prime culprits of over fishing because they just LoooooOOOOOOOVE their seafood.”

What the hell man? It may be true, but why are you trying to force the idea that Japan is the bad guy? 1) You’re not allowed to show personal feelings like that as a Smithy volunteer. I know because I just took the exam and that was one of the questions. 2) How do you know I’m not Japanese? I could have taken offence to that comment. 3) Have you ever thought of why the Japanese are the over fishers of the Pacific? Uh it’s because they have no other protein in their land. They are a tiny island nation. There are no chickens, pigs, and the only cows they have are UNGODLY expensive because there is no land for them to graze. And do you know the population density of Japan is insanely compact. There are tons of people there that need to eat. Of course they’re going to fish a lot. Plus you JUST SAID that Americans have fished he Atlantic salmon to almost extinction. Japan is not the only bad guy here like you make it out to be in your jerk-ass tone. Next time, let’s discuss how Americans almost hunted the buffalo into extinction because of sport and also the passenger pigeon. Then we can talk.

Sometimes I feel like I could take the training courses to be a volunteer docent, but then I would have to deal with visitors, like myself, that know too much for their own good and are aka: smart-asses. And unlike me, they won’t keep it to themselves until they can get home to bad mouth and comment on the Internet about it, they’ll say it to my face to embarrass me in front of a complete bunch of strangers. That worries me. I’m better off sticking to the art museums. You can never be truly wrong about those.

Speaking of art museums, I got assigned my volunteer station for (at least) the next three months. I will be volunteering every other Saturday afternoon at the National Museum of African Art. I’m pretty excited because 1) I really wanted an art one 2) I wanted one on the mall and 3) I have never been to this museum before. So it’ll be interesting to go through and learn everything afresh. I’m only slightly disappointed I didn’t get Freer/Sackler or Hirshhorn (they were my top pics), but I’ll see how these next 3 months work out and if I want to stay, I will and if I want to switch, I will. All the same I’m an official volunteer now. WOOT WOOT!

Ok, time to watch Finding Nemo now. Need to get my jellyfish fix from somewhere.

P.S. Next week I won’t be at African Art just yet. I’ll be back in the Castle for 6 HOURS of transition training. There I will be working behind the info desk and interacting with visitors for the first time. EEEEEee! Excitement. Wish me luck!

P.S.S. A big thanks to Kayla for helping me out with the pictures this week. Her blog is http://im-sorry-but.blogspot.com/

Check it out. It’s really funny because she likes to outrage about stuff :P