Fellowship Experiences

The Friday before classes start holds a mixture of excitement, nerves, and anticipation. Each year on that day, the geology department holds its graduate orientation, an all-day event where first-year to fifth-year students come together to learn not only about policies, but also about each other.

“Are you suffering from plant blindness?” my teacher, Professor Andrew Baldwin, asked the class.

A lot of plants, animals, and other critters call the Chesapeake Bay watershed home–maybe even you! Some organisms spend their entire lives in the Bay while others travel in and out of the Bay at different points in their life cycles. The river herring are the latter, travelers.

Every Saturday morning, I head to College Park parkrun, a free 5K community event. I moved to Maryland last year in the height of the pandemic and wanted to comfortably meet people in my new home. I was welcomed into the parkrun family with open arms, and it didn’t matter my pace—participants can run or walk.

Every year, the American Fisheries Society (AFS) hosts a national conference to gather scientists, managers, and interested parties from around the country to share their research and network. Because I am a graduate student, and the scientists who attend these meetings are typically extremely accomplished in their field, these types of conferences seem daunting.