My artifact is my 10 gallon reef tank that I had throughout most of my high school career. I set the tank up late in my freshman year of high school because I’ve always been interested in fish and I’ve been keeping freshwater tanks since around fourth grade. Keeping a reef tank seemed like a logical next step for me, however, a saltwater aquarium always seemed too hard to take care of so, until my freshman year, I had only kept freshwater aquariums. The step up from my freshwater aquariums to a saltwater reef tank showed me that if I put enough effort into something, I could be successful in things that might seem hard at first. In addition, taking care of my reef tank taught me to be more patient, hardworking, and consistent. Reef tanks aren’t successful if the parameters of the tank fluctuate a lot so I had to learn to consistently do water changes and to check the parameters to make sure they were stable. Also, taking care of the reef tank has taught me to be more patient because coral grows relatively slowly and it takes a long time to see the payoff for all the work put into the tank.
I’ve always been interested in working with animals, either as a marine biologist or as a veterinarian. Because of this, while I was in high school I started volunteering at the Cleveland Metroparks Zoo in order to gain experience communicating to a wide variety of people, something I knew I would have to do if I intended to become a vet, and handling different animals. This picture was from the summer of 2018 when I was volunteering at the Cleveland Metroparks Zoo in their teen volunteer program, Zoo Crew. This was my third year in the program where I was also acting as a Zoo Crew lead. My three years volunteering at the Cleveland Metroparks Zoo gave me a lot of experience interacting with different species of animals and it also taught me how to effectively communicate with zoo guests, which will help me in my future career as interacting with people is a large portion of many jobs. In addition, my last year in Zoo Crew, in which I acted as a Zoo Crew Lead, taught me a lot about leadership, how to effectively communicate, and how to work as a team.