Diane MacEachern
<p>To pass Bobbi Lowe’s wildlife biology class, students had to be able to identify frogs by their sounds and birds by their wings. I remember heading over to the lab after work, maybe 10 at night, knowing I had a couple of hours of studying ahead of me. The closer I got to the lab, the louder grew the messy chorus of burbles and bellows coming from inside. Walking in, I’d be greeted by dozens of students massed around tape recorders trying to distinguish between a green leopard frog and a spring peeper. Others would be trying to distinguish the wing of a female mallard from a canvasback. If we’d had hashtags back then, I’d have used #wildbiorocks or some such thing. To this day, I know my frogs and ducks!</p>
<p>Make a Venn diagram. What needs to be done? What are you good at doing? You can make the biggest difference by doing what excites you the most that’s in the overlapping middle of your drawing. Next? Find someone to do it with. What we do is hard, but it’s easier to get more done when you’re not alone.</p>