AMP'D Blog: Sayali Mulay

​As we got off our boat ‘Farm’ that took us safely and steadily to Ny-Ålesund from Longyearbyen, I looked up and tried to digest the fact that after so much hustle and bustle we were finally standing at 79°North! With all the snow-clad mountains and pretty pink sunsets, I was surely already in love with this place. 

​Cut to day 3, when the wind was howling at a speed of 35 m/sec blowing piles of snow into our faces. We were pacing ourselves to set up our lab. As you can tell, today wasn’t the most pleasant day in Ny-Ålesund. There was a snow blizzard outside, and I was dragging my tiny body squished inside my bulky snowsuit to the laboratory. While barely walking to the lab (mostly being carried by the wind), I thought to myself, “How do people do this? What kind of a willpower does one really have to travel to the most extreme places on earth?

How have I even dreamt of walking on Mars one day if I’m struggling just here?” And with all those thoughts flowing faster than the wind around me, I reached the lab. 

We started unboxing the lab instruments, pipette tip boxes, DNA extraction kits and all the other magical scientific equipment to get ready for the big field day. I was looking around and I could see us newly started, fresh graduate students excitedly set up our desks, I could see people discussing experiments and testing instruments, I could hear small cheers here and there with yayys and woopwoops when my friends could find something they were scavenging for in the giant science boxes. And there it was, I had found the secret sauce that drags researchers from different parts of the world to visit such extreme places on our planet. It is the science! I looked at myself in a shiny glass of the laminar flow hood, and I could totally justify that smile I had, “It’s the things we do for science.” I whispered to myself. 

When I walked back to my room, I sat down and paused for a moment. I could still hear the wind gushing, but this time it was out of my window. I gathered all the things I had felt throughout today, and if I had one word to describe those feelings ‘gratefulness’ would top the list. To be working with such great scientists, discussing adulting with the coolest fellow grad students and doing science at one of the most beautiful yet brutal places on our planet is an out of the world experience. And I am eagerly looking forward to the big field day and whatever that comes out of it!​