My Seymour Experience

Gabriel Avritscher

Mr. Roddy/Dr. Ott

A-Term

My Seymour Experience

Going into this trip, I didn't know what to expect. I had never been to nor heard of Seymour and I had no prior experience with the field of paleontology. As to the town itself, I'm not gonna lie and say that I wish I could live there because it's really not the greatest of places. There's really not much to do (save for a museum and a small, makeshift movie theater), but what was by far the best part of the town, and the trip, wasn't the infrastructure or buildings. It was the people. From the always smiling Karl Porter to even the non-residents of the town, Dr. Bakker and Mr. Temple, that's what really made this trip unique. Well, there's also the whole paleontology thing, but I truly think that it would have been a much different, worse trip had we not met or conversed with these people. As great as paleontology is, there's no way to sugarcoat the fact that you're simply gonna not find things for a long stretch of time and you're just gonna be excavating dirt, and that does get boring and tiring. So, without these people at the field with us, the boredom would have been a lot more present. From Dr. Bakker's joke about prison or community service to Mr. Temple's hilarious Air Force stories, it was truly the people that made this trip exciting and enjoyable. Again, not to say that paleontology isn't any of that, but there are stretches of time where your mind begins to wander off and you start taking more breaks, which is something that I believe is just part of the paleontology experience, and being around fun people is probably the best way to manage it. But what's really unique and special about paleontology is when you do find something, When it came to my most exciting find, a Dimetrodon jaw, I didn't really know I had found anything for a while. I almost threw it away, too, but luckily, I didn't. Overall, I really enjoyed this experience, from the large amounts of food to skipping rocks on the Brazos River. Although some things may not have gone as planned during the length of the trip, it didn't take too much from the experience as a whole, an experience which I don't know yet whether or not I'll choose to partake in again.