Women in EECS@UCF Field trip

At the first gathering of female graduate students in EECS, we decided that it should not be the last one. With the summer coming, and so many beautiful beaches around, we decided to organize a field trip to Fort De Soto, FL on June 3rd 2007. The weather for that day did not seem promising. The day before we had seen that there were thunderstorm warnings. We decided to check the weather forecast the same day before canceling the trip. After waking up to a sunny day in Orlando and checking the weather forecast, we were hopeful that our day was not going to be ruined. We met at a UCF parking lot, a couple of girls volunteered to drive and we even had one of our male classmates volunteer his car for the field trip, to his misfortune, he was not invited.

We safely arrived to the beach, and the weather was great. It was a little windy, so we had some trouble putting up the umbrella, at one point the umbrella was even blown away and some of us had to run after it. Bringing the umbrella back was not easy since the wind was blowing against us. We enjoyed playing voleyball and throwing the frisbee. We even tried to play soccer, but we injured ourselves just after thirty seconds of starting the game, proving that we could not play soccer without shoes.

Some of us stayed to see the beautiful sunset and relax. We decided to gather sea shells, which turned out to be an addictive task. Apparently, we seemed to be intrigued by the complexity and room for variation in sea shells, concluding that we could always find an interesting sea shell. Actually, we were interested in finding similar sea shells, so we could later make earrings, necklaces, and greeting cards with them.

Author: Rosa I. Enciso

Field Trip to the Beach...