I had a circuitous career path.  I dropped out of college due to lack of funding and worked in pharmaceutical, a bank, a diner, a department store, and an environmental consulting firm doing lab and field testing of water and air.  I would work two jobs, go back for a semester keeping the half-time job, and then drop out again to earn more money.  But struggling like this, I had no question that I wanted to be in school. 

Finally, I went back for two years and finished undergraduate school, working half time for a professor and living on the cheap.  It was only by working in a lab as a student that I discovered that people usually do not pay for graduate school in the sciences - they receive a package that covers living expenses, tuition, and fees.  I also learned that university professors spend most of their time on research and found myself getting excited when they talked about their research during lectures.  The world of curiosity-driven research was something I had never encountered.  I remember one transformative moment in particular, when my zoology professor, who had shown beautiful slides of animals all semester, showed a slide of tide pools with his wife and child in the picture.  A light went on and I realized that studying animals in their natural habitat is not just a career - he had taken all of those other pictures, too, which meant he had been to all of those places, so it was really a lifestyle!

I remember lying outside during the summer as an undergraduate student. It was lunchtime and I was studying for a chemistry exam, which I was not happy about.  A tiny katydid nymph crawled across my textbook.  Its long green legs and perfect, plant-colored body were exquisite.  It had a cone-head and bright red eyes flanked by long, threadlike antenna.  Its  long, cartoon-like legs had knobby knees and herringbone markings.  It was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen and I knew right then that I had to take some natural history classes - entomology and ornithology and the other "ologies" that I could not name - just to learn more about the creatures that live in this world.  The very next summer I was taking a field course in Montana, where I took animal behavior and did an independent study of digger wasps.  I spent the whole summer kneeling with my rear end up in the air staring at wasps carrying prey into holes.  I watched a Calliope hummingbird nest through its whole cycle.  I tested whether crab spiders prefer flowers that match their abdomen color.  I learned that many of the ideas we get from studying animals also tell you a lot about human behavior.  I was hooked.

There are many barriers to getting an education, but if you have the desire, it is worth pursuing, because it's something you will always have and nobody can take it away from you.  It opens doors, makes you see possibilities you didn't know existed, and gives you a faith in yourself that comes in handy when things don't work out just the way you've planned.  You have options and that is an incredibly powerful thing.

Janis