Antarctic Perils!
Here are my top 5 risks of life in Antarctica:
Raccoon Eyes
It doesn’t take long to learn that you need to wear sunglasses here all the time. With 24 hour sunlight and blinding white snow and ice all around, sunglasses are key protection against snow blindness (basically, sunburn inside your eyes!). But the downside of this is the raccoon-eye look – Pasty white around your eyes, and a deep tan on the rest of your face. Even worse is the inevitable sunburn – that day you forget to wear sunblock and end up lobster red everywhere but your eyes!
FOMO
Antarctica sounds like it would be boring, but it isn’t. There are parties, events, lectures, travelogues, classes, clubs, outdoor trips, concerts, and tons of other community-organized activities. The first year especially can be hard – it feels like you have to do everything and experience it all. Eventually, you find you haven’t slept, showered, or done your laundry in days due to Fear Of Missing Out.
The McMurdo 15
There’s only one place to eat in Antarctica and that’s the cafeteria. It’s a huge buffet 3 meals a day, and the meals are high-calorie and high-fat for those that work hard manual labor or who work outside all day. We also have amazing bakers that create a big selection of homemade breads and yummy puddings, cookies, and pies at each meal. For those with more typical jobs or once the weather warms up, gaining a bunch of weight is almost unavoidable. And then you get back to the real world, where you can eat any delicious type of food you want, where it gets even worse…
Bureaucratic Insanity
What happens when you combine the epic bureaucracy of a large government agency, a huge defense contractor, and a branch of the military? Well it isn’t pretty, and your typical Dilbert strip can’t match the head-shaking decisions our management often make.
Just One More Year
I’ve heard it called “getting ice in your veins.” People think this will be the last season they spend in Antarctica…until it comes time to apply again. Then they tell their families “it’s just one more year…” We even have t-shirts to commemorate this often-repeated phrase.
