Tales from the Lab #7: A Microbiologist on Vacation

As much as I didn’t seem to know what I was getting into when I decided to pursue a degree in microbiology, I did learn along the way that I have a strange fascination with fungus. Most of my education focused on bacteria and viruses (the school I went to didn’t offer mycology classes to undergrads), and most of my professional work has been spent working with bacteria. I was introduced to the world of fungi during my time spent in the clinical lab, and I was immediately hooked. Fungus is so different from the other microbes that learning to identify it by sight requires learning what feels like a whole new language. It’s by far my favorite part of microbiology, and one few get the experience of learning in the biotech world.

Anyway, fungus is fascinating, and I’ve learned I have a tendency to spot it “in the wild”. On hiking trips, in my yard, even when we are on vacation. I usually have a camera with me on trips (we have a pretty sweet DSLR with a huge zoom lens that I like to play around with, and more recently, I’ve been tinkering with the macro lens a bit).

Since it’s almost summer and things are starting to feel like they’re going back to normal, I’ve been thinking about vacation. And one of the things I do on vacation is take a lot of pictures – even pictures of fungus. So, this isn’t technically a story from my lab work, but just a collection of pictures I’ve taken that I thought were pretty cool. I can’t speak for other microbiologists, but it seems I can’t avoid finding microbes, even when I’m on vacation.

Anyway, it’s been a busy week at work, so I had to keep this post short, but thanks for reading! You can read more Tales from the Lab here.