Bubbles in the Bathtub

I always remember having a fascination with marine animals. I don't recall that sea turtles stuck out in particular. But, in general, I always felt that studying marine animals was a lofty goal that very few people reached. The stuff of Animal Kingdom (remember that old 70's show) or the Discovery Channel.

When I started college I was intent on becoming an aerospace engineer. Then came Linear Algebra. I don't know for sure if it was the instructor (he was pretty bad) or me, but that pretty much did in any interest I had in engineering. I was a sophomore at Drexel University in Philadelpia at the time and started scouting out new majors. All I really knew was that I wanted to stay in the sciences. I decided to try biology and happened to enroll in an ecology class taught by Dr. James Spotila the very next semester. I believe Dr. Spotila was relatively new to Drexel at the time. In any case, he was an excellent instructor which I think did a lot to foster my continued interest in biology. He also used lots of sea turtle examples in class, thermodynamics and thermoregulation and such. For some reason those examples made me realize that studying marine animals was not some distant dream, but something that anybody could do with interest and persistence.

I didn't stay at Drexel for long after that, for unrelated reasons (safety being number one). I transferred to the University of Florida to complete my undergraduate degree in the Zoology Department. As graduation closed I went looking for graduate programs where I could study sea turtles and ended up at Texas A&M University. A true story of persistence for another time.

The take home message. Anybody can do it. No subject or career is off-limits to you. With enough interest and persistence anything is possible.