Looking Back Over the Past Year...

On May 2nd, I finished my freshman year at Ohio University. It went by very quickly, as I was warned it would, but that doesn't mean it wasn't jammed pack with new things. I wanted to write this post as sort of a sum-up of the past school year in both my life and my blog.

I am currently attending Ohio University to pursue a degree in Wildlife and Conversation Biology. Upon graduation, I will officially be an ecologist/wildlife biologist/zoologist. As one might guess, pursuing this major makes for a very nature-filled few years. This year I went on birding trips, herping trips, and more. For example, the photo above was taken on one of the Eastern-Fence Lizards trips. On these trips, a handful of undergraduates and I would join a few graduate students to help them find and capture these lizards and then collect field data on them so these graduate students could continue with their research.

Speaking of research, I now have a new job lined up for next school year. I was hired by a professor through OU's PACE program to be a research assistant for one of his graduate students. I will be assisting this graduate student with her research on Red-Backed Salamanders, like the one pictured above. I will be accompanying her to northern Ohio to gather data on a few weekend trips, then helping her analyze the data in the labs down at OU in an attempt to see if there's any reason behind the gradient in color morphs (from the red-backed morph to the lead morph) in Red-Backed Salamanders that is present in northern Ohio.

Eastern Garter Snake

Finally, a little update on the blog itself. Ohio Nature has taken off. It just broke 13,000 views a week ago or so, and currently has 13,389 views as I write this. I can't thank everyone enough for the support I've been given with this. Trying to run this blog has made me take a closer look at the world as I try to find interesting material to write about, and I hope it has made others take a closer look at the world too.

That's it on the update. Keep on the lookout for some new posts soon!