Blooming Life
I have a few hobbies, in the winter I go snowboarding almost every weekend. I also enjoy rock climbing even though I’m not very good at it. I love going on hikes and finding new places in the summer to go cliff jumping and swimming with friends. I also do volunteer work when I can, keeping my options open. In 5 years I will hopefully be working in the field of plant genetics, I am still deciding if I want to go to grad school or not.
The picture below is of Ardie and I, but he’s not my horse. I volunteer at Bit by Bit, they do therapeutic riding with kids and adults with disabilities and he belongs to the barn.
Growing Myself
I went to trade school thinking I wanted to go into animal science and realized I loved plant science. In my related classes for plant science, I took a botany course and loved it and one of my teachers told me about Oregon State which offered a botany program. I want to do work that can help with our food system and make food more accessible.
Take Opportunities
I have taken advantage of opportunities at OSU, I worked with the dry farming collaborative for a summer where we researched yield weights for tomatoes and corn that were dry farmed. We also did data for water levels in soil trial plots to compare soil management practices. I am currently an employee at the USDA - NCGR in Corvallis where I work with the hops and mint collections to help maintain germplasm. I also am a licensed pesticide applicator and get to work with biological control agents as part of IPM. I also get to do plant propitiations.
Rooting for You
Take advantage of opportunities, ask professors if they need help in labs, and introduce yourself to all of them so you can get good experiences from them. I have learned many more techniques and have learned a lot of lab skills from my opportunities. I got to work in the paleobotany lab as well as in my classes I have learned sectioning and staining techniques.
'Leaf' of Faith
I have had many challenges in college my first year I was working 2 jobs and taking a full credit load. I have a processing disorder and classes at first were very hard for me. I came from a trade school before this where classes were a lot slower pace and I wasn’t expecting to have as many assignments. Luckily DAS was able to help get me test-taking accommodations so I was able to test better. Things like the mole hole and the writing center have also greatly helped me.