Just some background...

So just the basics- my name is Brittani and I am a senior (kind of) at NAU. My roots are in Phoenix, Arizona although I have managed to live and travel to quite a few places. 

As of right now, I'm about to start my second full day in Saipan, CNMI. So while most students go abroad to study in the big European countries…here I am somewhere in the Pacific over near Japan on an island that is about 45 sq. miles in area. I actually had not intended to travel abroad during my undergraduate career. I had taken off some time before college and wanted to get my four years over ASAP and as cheaply as possible. However, things fell into place perfectly.

I was beginning my second semester at NAU and was intending to do pre-pharmacy. I was signed up for human physiology that semester to meet requirements. However, about 2 weeks into the class I realized it was not what I was interested in. While I love science, I could not sit through a class that requires memorizing all the bones and major muscles in the body in detail. I withdrew from the course and was uncertain where I would go from there. My academic advisor was not very helpful and I was really struggling trying to find where I belonged and what I wanted to do.

The following semester I signed up for only general biology courses that were required. I knew I wanted to do something science related- but was unsure in which direction I would go. The semester after that I was required to take either microbiology or ecology as my junior writing level requirement course. This decision had lead me to go back to the drawing board and attempt to make a defined decision on where I was going.

I finally settled on ecology and while overall the course was not particularly interesting- the lab for it definitely changed everything for me. The lab TA for the course was this wonderful woman named Nashelly Meneses. The lab gave me a small taste of how to gather data and work in the field as well as working with statistics. I had taken a statistics course previously and was really hoping I would never see or use that knowledge again. However, while challenging- it was just as rewarding to be able to process all of this information. I really enjoyed the lab and the TA. After some talking with her she had suggested I check out this one course a colleague of hers taught… animal behavior.

The following semester, I enrolled in animal behavior with Dr. Benford. I can honestly say I don't remember much of the courses I took that semester other than that one. Towards the end of the semester Dr. Benford offered extra credit to attend a seminar he was giving. After his talk about his beloved Pinyon Jays, he began speaking about something he was working on getting the funding to do out in the Pacific. I was immediately taken with the idea. In the weeks following I began speaking to Dr. Benford about the logistics of the trip.

There was not a concrete date or semester I could look forward to, or even a price range to budget for. So while I put the idea of the trip on the back-burner, I continued to take courses dealing with wildlife and conservation.