Life at Friday Harbor Labs

By Lauren Greenleaf

Tucked away in the San Juan islands lies Friday Harbor Labs (FHL) – a unique part of the University of Washington’s (UW) marine biology program. Students have the opportunity to spend a quarter doing in-depth, hands-on research while living on the campus. The students and faculty form a tight-knit relationship as they spend most of their time immersed in labs and research projects together. When you first step foot on campus, it feels like arriving at summer camp. The dorms are set up in cabins and single room units are dispersed throughout the woods with paths all connecting like tributaries into the main river leading to the dining hall. Professors, grad students, and undergrads alike bustle between buildings and laboratories, hands full of textbooks, coolers filled with baleen, baby octopi, kelp samples, and so much more.

As opposed to the often-repetitive daily life on UW’s Seattle campus, students rarely find themselves in a classroom at Friday Harbor. Instead, their days are spent doing hands-on activities such as taking CT scans of fish or hopping on a boat at 10pm and night lighting to catch specimens until 2am. The immersive education that Friday Harbor Labs provides is unparalleled. Nowhere else would you find undergraduates collaborating with research labs around the country to collect and synthesize data or designing and running their own marine-focused experiments out their back door. Students are given significant freedom and responsibility. Megan Vandenberg, an FHL student, says “Everyone has their own niches and projects they are working on, which pushes you to work harder, but it’s also amazing because it allows for collaboration and learning from your peers.”

Everyone follows the same basic schedule, since the campus is so small. Breakfast is served from 7:45 to 8:15am in the cafeteria. Here, staff and students can be found sharing tables and talking about their current research projects. After breakfast, it's class (if the professor decides to run class that day) until lunch is served for half an hour starting at noon. Afternoons are spent running independent research projects or working on lab techniques. Dinner is served at 6:00pm and once again, students and faculty all join together to share a meal. After dinner, you will probably find students watching movies and playing games in the dining hall or throwing a bonfire down at the beach. It’s not uncommon, however, that students will be in the lab working on their research projects late into the night – sometimes even until 2am! “I stayed up until 5am once to use the CT scanner since that was the only time it was available,” says Megan.

Life at Friday Harbor labs is very different from life on the main campus. As difficult as conducting your own scientific research can be, according to Emily Duque, “The community is super friendly, and everyone is always willing to help.” It is also an incredible experience and opportunity to get a hands-on education. If you are interested in marine biology and doing research of your own, the students we interviewed highly recommend checking out a program at Friday Harbor Labs. You won't regret it.