I’m an entomologist working with aquatic insects in streams. I’ve always loved the outdoors and have dreamed of being a scientist since I was a little kid. Since a lot of projects I work on involve restoration, conservation, and year-round monitoring, I get to go to beautiful rivers with a backpack of equipment during all seasons of the year. Most of the field sites I visit look straight out of a postcard. Field work is exhausting, but I love all the hiking, camping, and being out on the water. The bugs are the biggest thrill for me though. Bringing the net up and sorting through the contents gives me the same feeling that hitting a piñata on my birthday did as a kid.

A big part of my job involves lots of time at a microscope identifying insects. I love taxonomy and am super detail-oriented, so I really look forward to lab time. Every time I identify invertebrates within a sample I remember the place they were collected from. Insects are an incredibly important part of aquatic ecosystem health and food web structure in rivers. It’s really satisfying to go through the process of field collection, identification, and interpretation of what the insect community structure means.

It’s a really cool job if you love being outside and also really enjoy tons of time spent in a lab. The pay where I’m at isn’t great, and I definitely work a lot of hours, but at the end of the day it’s a really neat job.