Mariel Ortega

Ecologist Storyteller Adventurer

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In the media:

Audubon National Magazine

UT San Antonio College of Sciences

I recently completed my master’s thesis on plastic exposure of breeding birds in San Antonio, Texas through a participatory science approach. Now, I’m off to my new adventure as a Fulbright Research Grantee to South Korea.

LATEST STORIES

  • The Night before the Fulbright

    The Night before the Fulbright

    It‘s 11PM. The lights are off, and sleep eludes me as I consider that the only thing standing between me and the greatest change of my entire life is six hours. Before the sun has even thought to rise, I will take a physical step to mark the fulfillment of many non-physical steps over the…

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  • The Scientist Remembers Poetry

    The Scientist Remembers Poetry

    I do not know how I ended up here, clicking on document after document in an old abandoned computer folder called “Old Writing.” I guess after months of trying to figure out the statistics for my master’s thesis (i.e., trying to run up a very long, very fast down-escalator), I needed to engage with whatever…

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  • No One Warned Me About the Wasps…Life as an Avian Ecologist

    No One Warned Me About the Wasps…Life as an Avian Ecologist

    I should have turned back when the first wasp nearly collided with my face. I should have closed my car’s back passenger door and just gone back inside. But I had an appointment to make. And besides, how crazy would I have to be to suspect that a nestful of them had infiltrated my car…

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  • Practically perfect in every way…how to find a Mary Poppins Mentor

    Practically perfect in every way…how to find a Mary Poppins Mentor

    Forever in pursuit of equally maintaining my scientific and writing skills, I was applying to some freelance writing positions. As I was looking for writing samples to send in, I realized…my published pieces don’t live on the internet forever. Pieces I wrote over the years on CollegeXPress or Critterfacts have been taken down. Moreover, some…

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  • Microaggressions, Stand-by, and Korean: Diary of an Ecology Master’s Student

    Microaggressions, Stand-by, and Korean: Diary of an Ecology Master’s Student

    There are days when a person just needs to be surrounded by strangers. I don’t mean meetable strangers, like people at a party who might want to socialize with you. I mean, going to an area with people who do not know you and do not wish to know you. Just enough people to know…

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  • Top 3 Culture Shocks Experienced by an American in Korea: What they don’t tell you

    Top 3 Culture Shocks Experienced by an American in Korea: What they don’t tell you

    I’m in the basement. Tanks of nitrogen, scuffed floors, and the printer-like sounds of a machine running. I direct the infrared laser through a piece of plastic I’ve collected from a bird nest (all with proper permitting and training!). With a Fourier transform equation, I can determine which compounds make up my material by gauging…

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