Onward to San Diego - Day 1

I should have anticipated when I started this blog how difficult it can be to motivate oneself to write while keeping up a college schedule.  The semester is over now, and I should try at least to bring everything up to date and elaborate later.

My career in the zoo world in brief:

• Summer 2007 - started volunteering as a junior docent in the children's area of the Jackson Zoo
• Summer 2009 - discovered Rhodes College across the street from the Memphis Zoo
• Summer 2010 - graduated from high school and finished my work at the Jackson Zoo before heading to Memphis for college
• Fall 2010 - received my first position at the Memphis Zoo in the research barn preparing snow leopard samples for hormone analysis
• Summer 2011 - held a brief internship at the Jackson Zoo during which I shadowed the vet tech and keepers and worked with nearly every species in the zoo
• Fall 2011 - began research with my advisor taking behavioral data on elephants at the Memphis Zoo
• Summer 2012 - held a research fellowship under my advisor to continue the elephant project taking data from video recordings
• Fall 2012 - began a second project taking data on the Memphis Zoo hippos while continuing elephant data
• Spring 2013 - applied for and received a summer research fellowship with San Diego Zoo Global

That pretty much brings me up to the present.  That list only tells part of the story, and I hope to fill in the gaps in future posts.  Currently I am on my way to San Diego for my fellowship and have completed the first leg of my trip.  I'm visited my aunt and uncle in Bartlesville, Oklahoma, and we plan to see some of the local sights tomorrow.  It's already been a very surprising city.  For a town of only 30,000, it has a downtown that could rival a much larger city:

Photo: city-data.com