Series: Why I Picked My Major: Fisheries and Biology!

I guess I’ve kind of always known what I wanted to do with my life, at least to some extent.  Life sciences are what I’ve been interested since grade school.  So that’s what I went with when I started preparing to head to college.  A Bachelor of Sciences in Biological Sciences was the box I checked on my computer at home my senior year of high school.  Sounded like a great idea to me, because it would allow me to test the waters of other life science fields while still getting classes that counted towards my requirements.  When I got here, I started that testing in my first semester.  I took an Intro to Wildlife Biology class to see if I wanted to head that way with my studies, and as interesting as that class was, it just wasn’t quite my thing.  Then I went to the Natural Resources, Fisheries, and Sciences Career Day hosted by the university.  There I stopped to talk at the School of Fisheries and Ocean Sciences table and I was hooked (pardon the pun!).  

Katie Murra-Straub told me there that with a Fisheries major, I would automatically have the classes to get a Biological Sciences minor.  Awesome, two for one!  It gave me something to think about.  And I did.  I thought about how I’d been fishing since I was a tot, how I love the water, and how I might actually get a job in the town I want to live in the rest of my life.  I talked to my parents about the idea over Christmas break and they agreed it was a good plan.  Sounds perfect.  So I went to Katie’s office during my second semester of college and told her I was interested in Fisheries.  That’s when I discovered it was not only easy to get the Biological Sciences minor with that Fisheries major, it was actually very manageable to get a double major! A couple extra classes and there’s a double major!  That’s how I picked my major.  And just this summer, I was able to confirm I was truly heading in the right direction.  I worked with salmon in the field as an intern for the AK Department of Fish and Game and I came to the conclusion that baby fish are cute.  Yup, I said it.  Slimy, scaly, big-eyed baby fish are cute.

Aren't they adorable?!  These are Sockeye Salmon juveniles.

Another fun thing with fisheries: boats!

The adults are beautiful too :)

I had it fairly easy.  I had a good idea of my direction from the get-go.  But even if you think you know where you’re going, be open to new ideas.  One of my good friends came to UAF for Electrical Engineering.  She’s now a History major.  College is your time to figure out what you want to do with the rest of your life, and it’s entirely possible to be different from what you expected.