What a year! 2008 has been full of the new experiences, the likes of which I hardly could've imagined a year ago. I have had so many opportunities--mainly through work--to participate in everything from classroom teaching with live animals, to living immersed in nature on a mountain for nearly a month, to traveling around and outside the US to present my research. It has been probably the busiest year of my life. And certainly the most fun!
Through my work as a grad student in ecology/evolution, I became involved in an educational outreach program for amphibian and reptile biodiversity in Alabama. We have visited several elementary schools in Tuscaloosa, a kids' fishing derby at Payne Lake, and even a creationist Southern Baptist meeting, showing live amphibians and talking about amphibian biodiversity and decline in our state. My background is in elementary education...and I still love teaching...so this program has been the ideal opportunity to integrate my two passions--biology and education--while avoiding all the policies and red tape that pushed me away from classroom teaching in the first place.
While the outreach program is certainly fun, the most exciting part of this past year has been all the travel. Before this year, my only major travels had been to Mexico City; I always arranged my stay with friends there and was dependent on them for everything from a bed to food to transportation. This year, many of my trips (including the one out of the country) were solo and I was completely on my own. While spending time with people in cool places is certainly fun itself, traveling alone also has its perks. I am a very independent woman, and spending so much time depending on myself out of state and abroad has tremendously helped me build self-confidence. This year I had the utmost pleasure of spending almost a month in June living at Mountain Lake Biological Station (on a mountain near Blacksburg, Virginia), hiking and exploring nature with my advisor's two young children while she taught a class. Also during the summer, I spent a week collecting morphological data from preserved frogs at the National Museum of Natural History in Washington, DC, and traveled to Milwaukee, WI, to present my research at the national meeting of the Ecological Society of America. Earlier in the year, I spent a few days in Gainesville, FL, collecting data at the Florida Museum of Natural History and also giving a talk on my research at a herpetological meeting hosted by the University of Florida. Finally, and most exciting, I traveled to London, UK, the day after Thanksgiving for a few days of exploring and to attend a Systematics Association meeting. The meeting was specifically for grad students and postdocs, and my research poster won the prize for best poster (100GBP in books from Cambridge University Press...which is a fantastic deal!).
So now it's back to work, spending all day in the lab exploring and trying to figure out two new computer programs that will shed some light on the ecology and evolutionary history of the southern leopard frog (and other amphibians, if my lab ends up using these programs for other projects). It's challenging, but challenging is fun, and I wouldn't have it any other way.
As a sidenote, I'm finishing this post as I watch the Sugar Bowl, my last game as a student at Alabama. Naturally, it's bittersweet, and I'm glad I'm alone because it's actually a bit embarrassing just how surprisingly emotional it is for me to be watching my last Alabama game. Tuscaloosa has been my home for 24 years--my entire life except the first 6 months in Baton Rouge (I have no love for LSU)--and as eager and excited as I am to finally get out of here, I realize it won't be easy.
Onwards and upwards, my friends!
The reported benefits and dangers of chiropractic
17 hours ago
