I have had many odd jobs, and overall a very interesting (often times challenging) life. I feel that I have always been wise for my age and …hard to suprise. As much as I would like to think so–I could not have prepared myself for my time in Nevada. This is the strangest/most challenging position I’ve ever had, this is the strangest place Ive ever been, and these are the most foreign habitats and the least I’ve ever known about one. This is not to say the experience is either good or bad–on the contrary, I like not knowing yet. I love challenges and hard tasks, but mostly when others are forcing me into taking the leap. Now, it feels as if it is up to me to decide how deep i can go. How much can I learn? What risks am I willing to take? My mentor is quite a mystery to me. A fellow staffer told me this agency would be more challenged, but much better for it in the end, if more people like my mentor existed. I have to say…I agree. As lost and actually dumb as I sometimes feel at this job, I somehow know that there is meaningful and insightful  lessons that I am supposed to take from this, from him, from Nevada–and not all of them are scientific. I’ve always said that college taught me how to think like a scientist: its more like I was told what an ideal scientist would do in any one cookbook lab scenario. Now–it is real.