The macaw painting was a gift from the keepers of the Children’s Zoo, after completing my summer at the Houston Zoo. While the time volunteering affirmed my determination to become a zoo keeper and taught me about animal nutrition, husbandry, and communication, the main thing I learned from that experience was how to adapt quickly. The Children’s Zoo consisted of seven tracks that I needed to learn in the three weeks, while working along side a different keeper every day. This constant variety, while somewhat overwhelming, was proof that I could handle constantly changing surroundings while applying the knowledge from one area to another. So, even though working in the Farm section was completely different from working in the bug house, knowing one track, gave me hints of information to use for the next day. This is a skill that I have used and will continue to use throughout my time at OSU.
This video is from Coffee House at my high school in 2017. This video is from the year that I really found comfort in acting and presenting myself though characters instead of hiding behind them. This performance, while the words aren’t mine, is a good glimpse of my personality, and when I watch it I see myself, and not me trying to portray someone else. This personal accomplishment gave me a lot of confidence in not only theatre, but in leadership as well.
Scholars Event
I got the experience to visit The Wilds with Biological Scholars, this opportunity taught me about animal conservation and well fair, as well as being a really great day with a fantastic group of people! I hope to learn more about conservation and ways that zoos and aquariums can become more proactive in working to save threatened and endangered species through scholars and my course work at OSU.
www.drosera.ohioplants.org
This website link is to one of my final projects for my fall semester Ohio Plants class! It shows all the different plants I learned to identify as well as some history facts about them! This class was my favorite class of last semester, and I am pretty proud of the website I produced!
This collage I made is the result of the proudest accomplishment I have ever done. During the summer of 2020, I had gotten an internship with the Houston Zoo birds department, with the promise that if we wanted to come back for summer of 2021, we could get our internship back. November 1st of 2020, I went to apply and found out all internships at the Houston Zoo have been canceled. After a quick cry session, I went to work applying for my summer internship. I applied to over 16 facilities, and over 20 different positions.
One night (around 3 am) after spending the whole day working on applications, I was on the Indianapolis Zoo website. I first saw the bird internship (which I was totally qualified for), and instead my crazy 3 am brain said “NO! We are gonna go for marine mammals, despite your very limited experience with them…like c’mon there’s a walrus”.
Woke up the next morning laughing at myself that I even applied for that, but a few days later I got an email for an interview. What.
I immediately facebook messaged every zookeeper I knew and asked them how to prepare for the interview. I spent 2 full days preparing for the interview, and when it came I found out I was the first person they interviewed. I felt 50/50 whether I got the job or not, but a few weeks later I got the email that the job was mine, and I sobbed! I couldn’t believe it! I still can’t believe it. So starting May 17th I will be a marine mammal trainer intern working with walrus, dolphins, seals and sealions!