Ecology?

The semester starts in ten days and I have only five more days of full time work. I am really very happy to be going back to school full-time, but I will miss being around my co-workers. I will stay on the job part-time for most of September until they hire someone to take my place. And after that? I'm trying to find a position in the Geology department.

I am also going to work a few hours a week in the lab of a former TA. She does research on gynodioecious plants and is investigating the reproductive advantages that allow females to exist in various populations of Polemonium foliosissimum. She's taking a multi-species approach to understanding the problem - looking at seed predators, pollen thieves, herbivory and pollinators to determine the effects of each on females and hermaphrodites.

I don't know if ecology is my thing, but I do feel like it's important to take advantage of the relationships I have built with people in the Biology and Geology departments and to get any research experience that I can. I know that this former TA is willing to help me out - and I am going to let her do that! Perhaps next summer I will take on some of my own research. And maybe I'll be sucked into researching a single plant species for the rest of my life. Right now, I don't really care, as long as I'm learning and am interested in what I'm doing.