I trace my interest in the environment to my childhood attempt to run away from home. I made a daring escape from the first story window of my rural Ohio home. I then made a dash to the woods behind my house where I remained until hunger drove my prodigal self back home. As a child I always wanted to escape into my backyard, with its open plain, creek, and mysterious woods. As I aged this passion matured, but I never want to lose sight of a little boy that lowered himself from his window with the intention of never leaving the woods. This passion manifests today as a desire to study the natural environment. During high school I got the chance to help out with aquatic ecology research, which lead me down a rabbit hole of ecological research. Today I study Ecology and Evolutionary biology at the University of Pennsylvania, and though I don’t know exactly what I want to do within this broad field, I know that I want to work to understand the natural world as a field researcher. This desire, along with a distinct lack of field research opportunities on Penn’s urban campus lead me to apply to OIMB, where I hope to narrow down my ecological interests and to learn how to conduct field research. My first week at OIMB has far surpassed my expectations. I am an avid runner and love to run along the coast and forests through a landscape with which I am utterly unfamiliar (see photo below). I also am an avid rock climber and backpacker, and hope that I can explore these passions as well during my visit, yet my greatest sense of excitement stems from research. My visit began with a trip to the South Slough National Estuarine Reserve, where I will study the invasive European Green Crab (Carcinus maenas). After getting a bit more familiar with this system I have spent a lot of time working with my mentor, Bree Yednock, on narrowing down a focus for my research here at OIMB. This process has been exciting, frustrating and hopefully transformative. I first had to get up to speed on crab biology, an area in which I have a lot to learn. After doing some background reading I began to consider some questions: how do green crabs find food in the estuary? why don’t researchers find green crab larvae in the estuary? and where do green crabs live in the estuary? Being an uptight white boy, I naturally wanted to immediately figure out my question ASAP and move on to the next step and was frustrated by roadblocks that seemed to continually appear, yet today I managed to shift my perspective. I began to simply be excited by these populations, and the research process, with which I can chip away at a question that no one has ever figured out the answer.
1 Comment
Joy
7/6/2018 11:03:07 am
What an amazing opportunity!!! So exciting to see where this opportunity takes you!
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AuthorI’m a rising junior at the University of Pennsylvania studying ecology and evolutionary biology. When I’m not doing science I love doing pretty much anything outdoors. I’m an avid backpacker, runner, paddler and rockclimber. Finally I love to read fiction in pretty much any form. Archives
August 2018
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