Being Jon’s PhD student
I did my undergrad and Masters in Biology and Environmental Toxicology in Italy, and I met Jon in 1999 after I had come to Newfoundland for a PhD. I studied with him until my graduation in 2007. Like a lot of people, I met him for the first time at the Whale House, alias his office and lab. I was still looking for a project, as when I first came to MUN that was something of a blur. Jon received me in his office amidst mountains of papers, gadgets, whale bones and other whale paraphernalia. He was no ordinary professor as the Feng Shui of his office clearly demonstrated. He was wearing one of his battered Whale Research Group sweatshirts. I was so used to stuck-up, god-like Italian University Professors that I was really astound. Nonetheless there was immediately a good feeling between the two of us and I knew immediately I wanted to wear one of those shirts (in the years to come my sweatshirt definitely became like that). Jon agreed to co-supervise me in a biochemistry project trying to measure stress hormones in the blubber of cetaceans. During my first summer in Newfoundland there was an episode that clearly demonstrated Jon’s character and his relationship with the students. As I was waiting for samples to analyze, the opportunity showed up when an orca whale stranded dead somewhere in the Southern Shore. He called me and said that we needed to go and also to bring some help. So I got my friend Neil (a MBA student!) to come with me and we went to meet Jon at his farm. When we got there he said: “Here are the keys of the truck, here are the knives, go get blubber samples and the gonads”. “You are not coming?” I went. I had never seen a stranded cetacean before and, for sure, I had no idea where its gonads where or how they looked like for that matter. “No I am not, you have to do it yourself” he replied. So I went “Jon I have never seen a whale inside before!” And Jon affably: “Don’t worry they are just like cows.” (i.e. Jon grew up in farms.) “Jon, I have never see a cow inside either, the most I have dissected is a crab!” I yelled back. Anyway, as you can imagine, off we went – alone. Fortunately, for us, the corpse of the whale was in bad shape and decomposed. So we just got some blubber samples and some of its teeth. To end the story well, we got stuck on the beach with his truck because we had driven right to the animal, and we had to get towed out. I think this instance perfectly exemplifies the relationship Jon had with his students. Jon believed in people and in their potential. He wanted to empower his students, he never wanted to spoon feed them. Sometimes he would give them hard time, but only because he considered Grad School a proving ground and he wanted them to give their best and grew up independently. For me the most moving thing he once said, is that he considered his students as part of his family, just as if they were his grandkids. When you were with him there was definitely a sense of belonging and you knew at all the time that he was keeping a benign eye on you. After working for one year at my biochemical project without any appreciable results, I definitely knew I wanted to stick with him and delve more into whale research. So for my PhD I started studying the behavior of humpbacks and the effects of commercial whale watching on them. Quite a shift from crabs!
This post was submitted by Claudio Corbelli.