I wasn't the best biology student in the world. I cluttered up my already intensely-full-of-morning-lectures-and-afternoon-labs class schedule with choir rehearsals and tutoring in the Writing Center. I worked really hard in my classes, but always wanted to stray off to writing or drawing or philosophizing. I couldn't find that laser focus, that hospital-internship-seeking, that certainty about life after school that my peers had, beaming out of their eyes and thoughts and lab reports. I did, however, have a secret weapon. Biology labs mostly involved observation and drawing. Draw what you see in the microscope, in the petri dish, inside this dissected flower or frog. And I loved biology labs. Learning to draw what you see is learning to see what you see. Most of my classmates hated the drawing. For me, it was a key to understanding how things really worked. The old hymn of "form follows function" meant that accurately perceiving the structure of a thing laid before you the backwards path of deduction to knowledge.
After school I wandered through a lot of meaningless jobs. I abandoned science, but never felt easy about it. Though I don't want to don a lab coat and juggle test tubes and forget that I sometimes wanted to be an artist, I could learn about the workings of life for forever. That is what brings me here, to this beginner's portfolio. I hope to find work that will finally have meaning for me, and to use my unique history, perspective, and skills to communicate my deep and abiding love of nature and the world of science.
