I'm Anne Hobbs and I didn't get to the Cornell Lab of Ornithology by any direct route, I can guarantee.  I'm a retired middle school language arts and health teacher and lived in Asia for many years.  In 1989  was living in Nepal and made a trip to the south of that country with a friend.  While riding on an elephant through the jungles (true story), I saw two beautiful birds. One was bright red with some black markings; the other bright yellow, also with red markings.  They were the male and female Scarlet Minivets.  I was hooked from that point onward.  I traveled to see birds, watched them in my yard and encouraged my students to learn more about them. 

      When we returned to the United States, I asked myself what I wanted in a job.  I wanted my work to be interesting and have a service component to it.  I'll always be an educator at heart but I'm also a lifelong learner so the job had to have space for both of these things too.  I got that job.  I'm the public information specialist here at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology.  I spend my days answering questions that people send by email, phone or letter.  The longer I work here, and it has now been five and a half years, the more questions I can answer without doing any research.  But one of the joys of the job is finding answers to unusual questions. 

      There are many ways to find satisfying work and not all of them are direct.  It helps a lot to think about what you want to do and then see if you can find something that allows you to do it.  I can't imagine myself being satisfied taking a job that wasn't interesting or intellectually stimulating.