Hello! Greetings! Welcome!
I've been thinking about starting a science-related blog for a while, but I've debated what I should focus on. Should I treat it like a grad school road map, as I've seen so many others do? Should I write in detail about the things I find interesting a la In Defense of Plants? Should I write it for my family so that maybe they can understand what the day-to-day life of a PhD student looks like, and why they should learn now, when I'm just starting, why to never ever ask when I'll finish?
I decided that the answer is: all of the above.
But what I want the unifying theme of this blog to be is joy. Joy in the act of learning, in doing new things, seeing new places, trying and failing and trying again. There is joy to be found in those things, even if I, as a perfectionist, really struggle to find it sometimes. I want to write this blog to help me find something every week or two that I enjoyed. Something about being a "professional student," about being paid to learn and grow, that makes me happy. Something that reminds me why I decided a path in research was the path for me.
With that out of the way, let me introduce myself.
My name is Katie Davis. I grew up in Central Florida and North Texas, did my undergraduate degree at Louisiana State University, and worked at UCLA for a year before landing in my PhD position at the University of Wyoming. As a kid, I thought I wanted to be a veterinarian, specifically a wildlife vet, but after a well-timed internship in high school and some remarks from a college advisor that I did not appreciate until much later, I realized that medicine was not where I wanted to be. I wanted to do research. I wanted to understand what happens when species are endangered and we try to save them, often resorting to drastic efforts like captive breeding and reintroduction programs. I was curious about the inbreeding effects of those programs.
Thanks to some scholarships, I started working in a Conservation Genetics laboratory under the guidance of Dr. Sabrina Taylor and then-grad-student-now-PhD! Amie Settlecowski. Through four years of their mentorship, I grew immensely as a scientist. Words will never suffice to express just how much I learned through that research experience. I often say I learned more working in the Taylor lab than I did in most of my undergraduate classes, combined, and I stand by that.
I wanted to take some time off before starting graduate school, so I took a job as a lab technician at UCLA in 2020. Living in Los Angeles during the pandemic was definitely not the traditional L.A. experience, but it was a great opportunity to indulge in leisurely reading on the beach and many, many weekend hikes, not to mention the chance to work with some impressive researchers.
My grad school application experience was atypical when compared to most. I knew exactly who I wanted to work with, and ultimately only submitted one application. This led to the most painful waiting experience of my life, as the university decided to wait until the last possible minute to accept me, but once they did, the ball started rolling and there was no stopping it. I hit the road at the end of June 2021, arriving in Lander, Wyoming to do some fieldwork for another project before finally making it all the way over to Laramie, where I unpacked my car just to jump back in it and head out to Grand Teton National Park to do the pilot work for my project.
Five months later and I've just finished my first semester as a PhD student and teaching assistant. The holidays are just around the corner and this reluctantly Southern girl is looking forward to strapping on some snowshoes and going hiking. I just hope that when I finally summon the courage to try skiing I don't fall flat on my face!
If you have any interest in learning about ecology, genetics, grad school life, my research projects, or whatever other subject I might end up writing about, please subscribe! My goal is to post every 1-2 weeks.
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