Adaptation

2013-05-20 05:10:31.000 – Tom Padham,  Summit Intern

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Things have been very busy at the observatory this week, with this weekend feeling like the first real summer weekend on the summit. The museum saw many visitors this weekend, which allowed for my first hours helping out to maintain the museum. Our new intern Luke also came up yesterday, which was nice because it meant we would have another helping hand.

In addition to this being the first summer week it seems even busier because of my somewhat hectic schedule. Our normal night observer Mike Dorfman is on vacation, and after training a bit last shift I’ve been taking over for him. Working the night shift is a very interesting experience, as it seems like an entirely different place working on the summit alone at night. Overall I’m happy that I’ve had the opportunity to learn so many new things already in just a few short weeks, and look forward to hopefully much more to come this summer.

With so many things to do this week, it’s been pretty important to be able to adapt to make things go smoothly. Adaptation is a trait humans have used throughout our history in order to become the successful species we are today, and it’s also certainly a good ability to have when working at a mountaintop weather station like Mount Washington. Often if something breaks and needs to be fixed, the first and simplest solution is if one of the handful of people working on the summit can fix the item or find a replacement. We have many different backups for any of our recording instruments in case of failure of one or even multiple instruments. Hopefully if I’ve learned anything from this week it’s that being able to be flexible and adapt when a new challenge arises is a key to having success in almost anything you do, whether that be climbing Everest or simply trying to stay awake through the night shift.

Tom Padham,  Summit Intern