I'm not done because I'm having issues with the academic goals part. I think my first two paragraphs are too long so if you can help me with that it would be great.
I'll be the first to admit that I was never much of an "outdoorsy" person. Sure, I absolutely loved the smell of rain (I still do) and of course I spent my summers days outside as any normal ten-year-old, but the closest I've ever gotten to camping was an overnight summer school field trip where I slept in a tent. So it came as a surprise to my friends and family that whenever they asked me what my major was, I responded with an enthusiastic "Conservation and Environmental Sciences". Believe me, my choice for how I wanted to spend the rest of my life was a surprise to me too and was the result of my friend inviting me to a speaker at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee student union.
Now, I have been to speakers at the union before, I usually end up walking away with some knowledge and facts that I did not know before. I was expecting the same result this time around especially because I would not be able to stay more than an hour because of a previous engagement. At the end of my hour there I begrudgingly got up and left the room wishing I could have stayed longer and went back to my unexciting dorm room because I had senselessly planned on cooking dinner for the girls I lived with that night. How could I have not known my life would be completely altered while I was putting the cheesy potatoes in the oven before leaving for the speaking engagement? Luckily, I was there for the right hour because I heard the one statistic that has forever altered my life, the speaker (who I found out was a man named Derrick Jensen) stated that there is more plastic by pound in the ocean, than plankton. Now, at the time I did not know much about plankton, but I knew that they are small, and there are a lot of them. The big question on my mind as I walked home that night was, 'How is this okay'? That was when I realized I could not be a parasite to the earth anymore, using and using and not giving anything back
Being a product of my generation I soon took to the internet to find out all I could. What caught my attention most was species extinction. Everywhere I read I saw how the earth was losing species every day, stopping this mass extinction is the cause I want to devote my life to. In my planned course of inquiry I have chosen to focus on the Biological Resources track in order to better understand organism and ecological processes that maintain and produce the abundance of biodiversity. Also, in order to expand my knowledge and to obtain experience working in the field I am looking to work for the National Parks system as a biological science aid or forestry aid.
Thanks for the help!
