So far, I’ve survived over eight weeks of the semester with my grades and sanity (mostly) intact.

For that, I’m quite proud of myself, especially since I’ve committed myself to learning STEM in college, so that one day I can apply it to a worthwhile career. What that career may be? I’m not sure. But, I’ve got plenty of time to figure it out. 

In the meantime, I’ve discovered that I really, really enjoy Biology. Sure, the class itself can be tough, not because the material is hard (it’s not, there’s just a lot of it), but because I don’t enjoy being around my peers in that class. Oh well… that’s just life. 

Everything else, however, is very, very interesting to me. 

As the leaves on the trees finally start to change, I’m reminded that the leaves aren’t changing just because the temperature is finally to cool off, but because they’re getting less sunlight. And as leaves get less sunlight, they’re getting less of the energy they need to survive, which means they have to turn the chlorophyl in their leaves (which is what makes most plants green) into energy, revealing all of their other light-reflecting pigments. Eventually, the leaves will eat the yellows, reds, oranges, and purples left behind in their photosystems, and finally fall to the ground, unless the frost finally comes around and kills them first. 

Also, now that it’s well into fall, all of the bucks in the Valley have scraped the velvet off their antlers, and have been getting increasingly frisky. When the rutting season rolls around between now and late November, they’ll fight each other, potentially to the death, for harems of does to breed. 

By January or February, the bucks will have lost their antlers, because they’ll have burned through all of the calcium stored in their cells by then, causing their bodies to digest the calcium ions that held their antlers in place. And, when spring arrives and the bucks restore all that calcium to their bodies, their antlers will grow back again, bigger and better than before. However, the bigger their antlers grow, the sooner they’ll drop them come winter.