This is the field trip component of the graduate student core course for the Ecology, Evolution, and Marine Biology Dept. at UCSB. Each year I take the incoming 1st year grads and some continuing grads to a UC reseve the weekend before school starts. The trip serves to form social connections among incoming 1st years and between new and older students, which is critical for their success; it also acquaints them with a field sit they might use in their thesis. The trip is very unstructured, and is mostly just hiking and natural history, cooking meals together, and playing getting-to-know you games. I have led this trip for 6 years, rotating among Sweeney Granite Mountains, SNARL, and James Reserves, and it has gone splendedly. Next year, I would like to take the students to their own backyard here at Sedgwick.

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