My first post- welcome!

I've been wanting to start a blog for awhile now, but didn't know what to write about. I've finally decided on a topic-my thoughts as a scientist on the status quo and future.I'll probably end up venting a lot of frustrations about the issues faced by the environmental community.

Before I get started, let me introduce myself. I'm Christine, a 23 year old grad student studying Aquatic and Coastal Sciences. I am so absolutely in love with my major. It combines the ocean, fresh water, and environmental science, and I love the well rounded view I'm getting of aquatic ecosystems.

I've known that I wanted to be a scientist since I was very young; perhaps 7 or 8 years old (before that I wanted to be a taxi driver in NYC for some unknown reason- it probably has to do with the trips into the city that my parents and I made).

I think I started wanting to be a geologist, and I read many books about volcanoes, dinosaurs, and collected those pretty shiny gemstones that you find in gift shops. After my visit to Colonial Williamsburg and Jamestown in the 2nd grade, I had decided that I wanted to be an archaeologist. I would go to the College of William and Mary, and excavate Jamestown. I loved learning about the Ancient Egyptians, and dreamed of going there too. For some weird reason, back thenI told myself that with all of the archaeological findings already discovered, that there would be none left by the time I was done with college! So, I abandoned the archaeologist idea.

Then I wanted to be a meteorologist- I think it was the direct pass of Tropical Storm Bertha in 1996 that sparked my interest. My family and I rode out the storm in a room in the new tower of the Trump Plaza (our windows leaked!) and I read up about hurricanes and weather in books I got in the Atlantic Bookstore in the Ocean One Mall. I would watch the Weather Channel for fun, and through that learned the names and capitals of all of the states. In 5th grade I would either win or tie for first when we played a game with flash cards and identifying the states.

At some point I decided that I wanted to be a rocket scientist, and ultimately somehow contribute to a Mars mission. Once I realized all of the physics courses I would have to take, I was turned off to the prospect of being a space scientist.

When I took AP Biology in high school, I found a love of biology above the other sciences, and eventually decided on being a cancer biologist, due to my boyfriend at the time having lost his father at a young age from cancer.

When looking for colleges to transfer to, I found out about the Aquatic and Coastal Sciences program at Montclair State University, and thought it sounded interesting. I thought back to a summer course in marine biology that I took the summer before freshman year of high school, and realized, 6 years after taking the course, that I had found my niche:
I wanted to study water, and save the environment.