I was born and raised in Tigard, Oregon a suburb of the Portland area. I attended Tigard High School where I play baseball all four years. It was not until senior year of high school that I participated in more extracurricular activities such as our high school leadership class. Being part of the student leadership meant organizing fundraising events for student activities, planning senior class events, and also participating in the planning of graduation. High school leadership was the first time I found myself working with teams in event planning and budgeting and laid the groundwork for success at a higher level through. It provided me a space to practice communication and organizational skills that I hadn't yet felt the need to use. During high school I also took advanced courses that prepared me for college level courses and also provided me with college credits. I applied and was accepted to both the University of Oregon and Oregon State University but had very little idea of what I wanted to study. I knew that I wanted to study science so I was leaning more towards Oregon State until the University of Oregon offered me a scholarship. However, sometime after U of O offered me the scholarship, Oregon State offered me the McDougall Family Scholarship. This scholarship is awarded to students of my home town for high achievements in high school and covers tuition and fees for up to 4 years. To keep receiving this scholarship I must maintain a annual G.P.A. of 3.0 which I have done. This scholarship and the research and science opportunities at Oregon State led me to choose it over U of O. During my first year at OSU I spent most of my energy looking into the wide variety of courses and majors available. Before my first year I was strongly considering majoring bio-engineering. That was until I found out how much math and physics I would need to take. I then started to explore Exercise and Sports Sciences. I had been an athlete in high school and I felt like it was something I would enjoy learning about. After discovering the range of jobs and graduate opportunities available, I no longer felt it was where I wanted to be. I ended up choosing Environmental Sciences as my degree and have not looked back since. Environmental Sciences has given me a holistic view of the sciences as I have taken biology, chemistry, physics, conservation, natural resources, political science, ethics, and multicultural classes all relating to human-ecosystem interaction. I became even more involved in my major as I became a Co-President of the OSU Environmental Sciences Club my sophomore year. In this position I was able to facilitate club meetings between professionals in the private sector and professors and researchers around campus with interested students. We have also put on events such as grad student panels and an Earth Day fun run. I am currently still one of two Co-Presidents of the club and have been hired for the upcoming year as a student ambassador for College of Earth, Ocean, and Atmospheric Sciences (CEOAS). During both my sophomore year I spent most of my time working with the Environmental Sciences Club as well as hitting the books. After sophomore year I entered an internship in the entomology lab of Dr. Peter McEvoy with Dr. Linda Buergi as my supervisor. In this lab I was working with the cinnabar moth (Tyria jacobaeae). I gained experience working with pupae larval, and adult forms of this organism. My many tasks included sorting and weighing pupae, rearing larvae into pupae, sorting and matching individual organisms for mating, labeling individuals, setting up outdoor cages and experiments, and cleaning. During my internship I also did a research experiment and wrote a subsequent paper. My experiment, “Testing for change in larval host plant preference inbiological control agent Tyria jacobaeae" consisted of a choice test between two populations of T. jacobaeae, one from high elevation and one from low elevation. I was attempting to find a difference between the host plant of choice by the larvae from these two populations reared on the two different host plants, Jacobaea vulgaris, which it was introduced to control, and the native Senecio triangularis. Please see my the PROMISE 2016 page for my current work.