Dyche Mullins in the library of the Stazione Zoologica, a marine biological station in Naples, Italy, that inspired many of the MBL’s founding investigators.

Physiology course co-director Dyche Mullins, in a delightful/witty post on his blog, ruminates on the Lillie Auditorium “initiation” of Physiology students, how life-altering the course can be, and what it means to become a member of the global MBL tribe:

With little more than a week left, my Summer at the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole is winding down. Six weeks ago Clare Waterman and I launched the 2012 Physiology Course with a pair of orientation lectures. We followed our customary division of labor: Clare explained the nuts and bolts of the course and I described its history and philosophy. The incoming students, primed by tales of long hours and difficult experiments, listened nervously —their attention broken only by occasional attempts to get comfortable in the charming but uncompromising wooden chairs of Lillie Auditorium. For me, this annual ritual is a sort of Proustian, madeleines-in-weak-tea moment … read more