Antarctic Acronyms

USAP - U.S. Antarctic Program, the United States' presence in Antarctica; sponsored by the NSF
NSF - National Science Foundation, the U.S. gov't branch sponsoring our program
GA - General Assistant, my job title (Operations GA)
WAIS - Western Antarctic Ice Sheet, 800 miles southwest of McMurdo.  I'll be going there in less than a month for a two-week field camp stint.
BFC - Berg Field Center, the dept that provides all the gear and food for field expeditions (tents, pee bottles, sleeping bags, backpacking food, etc.)  Part of our GA tasking has been to work in the BFC food room, repackaging bulk food for field deployment (trail mix, dehydrated potatoes, etc.)
VMF - Vehicle Maintenance Facility (also known as the Heavy Shop) operates on light vehicles like F-350's (yeah, for us that's a light vehicle) as well as heavy equipment and all the tracked vehicles.
FEMC - Facilities, Equipment, Maintenance and Construction.  Kind of like the Physical Plant, repairs stuff around the station, does long- and short-term projects.  If something in your building breaks, you call FEMC.
MCI - Mass Casualty Incident.  If something explodes and a bunch of people get blown up, or a plane crashes, or various other injurious disasters happen, you've got an MCI. Also, I'm apparently signed up as a volunteer stretcher-bearer in the event of an MCI.
SAR - Search and Rescue.  If you get lost out somewhere or caught in a storm or fall in a crevasse, SAR will come and get you.
SSC - Science Support Center.  In the SSC you'll have the Motor Pool, the science cargo, and field safety training.
POC - Point of Contact; sometimes your supervisor or maybe the comms person in your dept.  They keep you informed of important information, and if you head out of town and check out with MacOps (our station-wide comms center), you have to have a POC that knows what you're up to.
SVB - Survival Basics.  Used if you need to, you know, survive here in a storm or something.
FNG - Fucking New Guy; a newbie to Antarctica.
POG - Passionfruit Orange Guava, a juice mix famous in the galley for its deliciousness.
HW - Human Waste.  Literally, shit.  Gained this vocab in my day working in the Waste Dept.
FW - Food Waste.  Part of our waste management system here.  Everyone sorts their trash into very specific bins. 
PL - "Plastics". Part of Waste Management.
NR - Non-recyclables.  Waste Management.