I was 12 years old the first time I went to a museum. My family had taken our first day trip into Chicago on a “free day” - where Illinois residents could go to the zoo, aquarium, and museums with no charge. Looking to save some money and keep the kids entertained, my parents took us to the Field Museum. I had a strong grasp of the concept of death by this point, and knew that the specimens and fossils were long gone, yet it struck me how alive it all felt. I had never seen so much life, across hundreds of thousands of years, all at once. I had been to zoos and aquariums but this was different. It felt like a scene out of a cheesy adventure movie - when the kid opens up an unassuming door to be greeted by a glowing light. Even though the audience doesn’t know what the kid is seeing, the child’s expression is of pure wonder. I was overwhelmed and forever changed.

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I went to an elementary school, now recognized as a STEM magnet school, while living in Colorado. Back then though, we were just an odd primary school that spent a lot of time on science. I was learning about things like why the Challenger explosion happened, dissecting various sea creatures, going to the new butterfly pavilion, and learning about the native flora and fauna. I was 10 when my family moved from Colorado to Illinois - a place we went every summer to see extended family. I spent the rest of my childhood in Aledo, Illinois - a small farm town 3.5 hour drive southwest from Chicago. While it was nice knowing all of my classmates and being able to walk everywhere I needed to go, it did have some severe draw backs in terms of opportunity. By my second to last year in secondary school, I had taken every science class my high school had to offer. I tried to convince the administration to let me go to a near by community college or another high school that had more to offer, but with the nearest opportunities being 40+ minutes away, I was denied. I had not been back to the Field Museum since my first visit - between my parents working themselves to the bone, my brothers travel baseball games, and how tight money was, it just never worked out. Since my town was so sports heavy and my parents pushed me to choose a career that would make good living and was in demand, I tried to set myself up to be a physical therapist - putting the museum out of my mind. When I wasn’t playing sports myself (volleyball, softball, and a season of track), I was learning from the school’s athletic trainer (AT), helping her out at football games and practices. During wrestling season, I was the statistician and “blood girl” - tending to open wounds, taping up ankles and wrists, and sanitizing the mats at all practices, meets, and tournaments. I was so ready for the next phase of my life that when my peers started applying for colleges, I had already gotten acceptance letters with scholarships from universities looking to entice me over their competition.

Coe College is a very small private college in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. The perfect stepping stone from my high school with roughly 350 students, to my small college class of roughly the same size. I chose to do my undergraduate degree at Coe for a number of reasons but, as a first generation college student, the tight-knit environment and dedicated support from the academic achievement program gave me the support I would need to succeed in the rigorous academic environment. As part of the AT program and pre-med track, we were required to take the two introductory biology classes: Cellular & Molecular Biology and Organismal & Ecological Biology. Despite taking every possible science class that was offered in high school and graduating as one of the top five students in my class, I was deeply unprepared for those classes. My experience had not prepared me for success, especially compared to those who had access to advanced placement courses before starting undergrad. But I didn’t let that stop me. I was taking my first AT course while going through Organismal & Ecological Biology. I thought I should’ve been excited at the prospect of learning more about taping techniques and various stretches, but I couldn’t care less. Learning about ecosystems, keystone species, and behavioral ecology had stolen all of my attention. Our final AT project that term was a report explaining which athletic training specialization we might want to specialize in. My closing sentence to that paper said it all.

“Throughout this project, I learned that I don’t actually want to be an athletic trainer - I want to be a biologist.”

When I turned in my final exam for O&E, I met with my professor and asked for his help switching majors and picking the right courses. Since I was interested in animal behavior as potential research topics, I decided to double major in Biology and Neuroscience. Once I started studying things I was actually interested in, college became so much more interesting, exciting, and enjoyable. My parents were extremely upset when I told them I wanted to be a biologist and said that I was making a mistake, but they warmed up to the idea that I would also be majoring in Neuroscience. By senior year I had gone to the Wilderness Field Station for a summer course, was deeply involved with the Coe College Bailey Museum, and started doing my own independent research project. Even though I was just learning about the concept in one of my psychology classes, I was pretty sure I reached self actualization. I graduated from Coe College with a Bachelor of Arts degree in Biology and Neuroscience in the spring of 2018.

After a couple years, I decided to go back to school to get my Master’s degree. I was accepted into the Biology Master’s Program at American University in Washington D.C. in March of 2020 -just before the Baltimore/Washington D.C. area went on lockdown. Since Covid-19 was still running rampant in the United States, my first fall semester of my masters degree was done online. It was easily the hardest thing I had ever done (academically). I thought perhaps I wasn’t cut out for graduate school and told my advisor, Dr. Christopher Tudge, that I was going to drop out. Both he and my other professor, Dr. Fong, insisted that I not drop. They thought perhaps I was struggling because I was having to do school online and encouraged me to just take a semester off and return the following fall when we would hopefully be in person. I took their suggestion to heart and put a pause on my master’s degree. I spent that time thinking about what I wanted to do with my life and where my place was in this world of academia, or if I even deserved to be there at all. While brooding, I realized that one of the huge reasons why I was so much happier and fulfilled in undergrad was because I had the museum. Caring for specimens, running around campus to collect them all, organizing and reuniting specimens with their documentation, digitizing those records - I missed it. Unfortunately, because of the pandemic, the Smithsonian Museums were all closed to visitors, volunteers, and researchers. I decided to reach out to all of the Museum Collections Managers at the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History listed on their website anyway, hoping someone would be willing to let me learn from them. Chris Milensky of the Bird Division in the Vertebrate Zoology Department was the only one who emailed me back. He said that even though they weren’t technically hiring volunteers at the moment due to the pandemic, he could use some help with digitizing accession numbers from photos of old catalogues. I was over the moon. Sure it was online, but at least it was something for now. When I told Tudge about my revelations and plans, he sent me information about a post-graduate level course on the Care and Management of Museum Collections - a class that was usually taught in Europe that was being offered online because of the pandemic. It was two weeks long and would end right as my fall semester would begin. I decided to fork over the money and take the course. I learned so much in those two weeks and was so happy I took the course. That fall I resumed my masters education, in person, was TAing again, starting my own research project, and was virtually volunteering with the Smithsonian’s natural history museum. I was back and felt better than ever. I, a first generation college graduate, graduated American University with my Master’s of Science Degree in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology in December of 2022. One of my proudest moments to date. Since then I have been at the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History with Chris Milensky, learning everything that he and the rest of the Bird Division are willing to teach me.