Blog

  • 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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  • ChatGPT Predicted my Future: Career Preparedness and Ethics of AI

    ChatGPT Predicted my Future: Career Preparedness and Ethics of AI

    Earlier this week, I asked ChatGPT to forecast my future. 2 years… 5 years… 10 years… 20 years. From a Fulbright scholar to a PhD student to a professor. At each step, carving out a research niche for myself at the intersection of ecology and social meaning. ChatGPT was Right… How could ChatGPT forecast my

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  • The Day Began with Poop—and Ended in a Shed

    The Day Began with Poop—and Ended in a Shed

    Today was the kind of day where I was so busy I forgot to eat. The kind of busy where my brain fails to send hunger signals through my body because I’m so focused. The kind of busy that changes life from monotonous to wonderfully adrenaline filled. That feeling when you’re at the start of

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