Emily Schumacher’s fascination with sea creatures started at a young age.
As her graduation from Millard West High School approached, she began to understand the challenges of studying marine biology in a landlocked state.
住在内布拉斯加州, there are no actual opportunities for marine biology so it requires those interested in marine life to look elsewhere,这位内布拉斯加州卫斯理大学的大四学生说. "When I was a kid I was always interested in water and marine creatures and that never faded, but I also never thought about it as a career path."
She enrolled at NWU with plans to study biochemistry. She stayed on that track until a talk with her sister, 校友阿曼达·舒马赫(2016届), convinced her to follow her passion with marine biology. Her sister recommended she discuss her passion with biology professor Jerry Bricker.
"I went to speak with him and the moment I mentioned marine biology he gave me a list of things to think about and do, 让我走上了我需要的道路,舒马赫说.
从那时起，鼓励就一直存在. The biology major commenced studies on marine life, got a job in a water lab at the University of Nebraska, and enrolled in Bricker’s “Applied Marine Biology” course, 带学生去洪都拉斯.
后不久, she was greeted with another opportunity she couldn’t turn down: a summer internship with Oceans 研究 in Mossel Bay, 南非. Oceans 研究 offers research training on marine and terrestrial wildlife along 南非's coast.
"I don't get many opportunities to travel outside of the country but this gave me the opportunity to travel to another continent and 经验 a culture different from my own while working with creatures I'm most passionate about."
后不久 arriving to Mossel Bay, Schumacher and fellow interns were thrown into the deep end. The group completed hands-on projects through collective efforts and self-teaching.
"We got to do basically everything,舒马赫说. "A field specialist was there for guidance, but we actually did everything on our own."
“一旦我们知道自己在做什么, we could really have fun and appreciate how much we were going to gain in knowledge, 经验, and even the personal relationships we were making with each other,她补充道。.
Oceans 研究 leads multiple research projects so interns had a variety of 经验s from tracking dolphins to analyzing ocean sectors for species diversity to studying starfish movement patterns.
"We saw a lot of the bad things humans are responsible for in the ocean, and it made me more passionate about the state of our oceans and the precious creatures that reside in them,她说. “我想成为他们的倡导者, and I want to be a person that helps conserve and preserve this huge and abundant ecosystem."
在她五月份毕业之后, Schumacher will head to a graduate school along the coast to pursue a degree in marine biology. She hopes to work in research and marine animal rehabilitation, specializing in marine mammalogy.
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故事由公关实习生奎因·胡利特(Quinn Hullett)讲述.