Back in college!

Last week I re-enrolled back into college at Penn State - University park. Due to a lot stressful of things going on in my life, I had to withdraw from college last spring semester and took a semester off in the fall. Now that I am back on track, I am very excited about school! In the time spent away from school, I re focused myself and found the correct major. If you can't tell by the title of this blog, I want to become an entomologist. Unfortunately, there are only about a dozen or so colleges in the country that offer an undergraduate major in entomology. Penn State has a renowned entomology department. However, the undergraduate entomology program was disbanded a few years ago when only a small number of students actually majored in it. I've spent the last couple years trying to find the right major that would best suit me for a graduate program in entomology. I looked at biomedical engineering, forensic science, biology, and agricultural science majors before an agronomy professor suggested I look into a major in agroecology.

Agroecology is the study between different organisms and their environment. I had begun an agroecology class and really enjoyed it. Over fall semester, I began to look further into the major and realized it was a great fit. The agroecology major had the science I really loved (life science, genetics, sustainable agriculture, horticulture, agronomy, agroecology and of course entomology) without the really advanced math that I had struggled with so much in past semesters.

When I graduate with a B.S. in agroecology and a minor in entomology, I hope to attend graduate school at Texas A&M in College Station, Texas. Texas A&M has an incredible entomology program and is one of the top 10 best research universities.

I absolutely love to do research in entomology. Even though Penn State doesn't have an undergraduate entomology program, I have been doing research in their department since I was a freshman in college. In the past, I have conducted research on Helicoverpa zea caterpillars. I am most interested in arachnids. However, because spiders often aren't pests (they usually kill the real pests), there is few research opportunities available on them. I am also interested in forensic entomology. I haven't really figured out what type of entomology I want to go into but I am open to getting involved with a diverse range of research in entomology and relating topics.