Interesting People: Rachel
Hello! This week’s (kind of late) post is about one of my roommates, Rachel. I want to do a segment on interesting people in my life, and Rachel is the perfect candidate because she’s passionate about people, plants, animals, and the environment. We’re gonna do a Q&A (enhanced by the occasional comment from one of my other roommates, Lauren)!
Madeline: Tell me about yourself, Rachel.
Rachel: I’m a Natural Resource Management major specializing in Parks and Recreation. I’m 20 years old, like you [laughs], and I’m a junior at OSU. I am from a lot of different places. I am from New Jersey and Texas and Arizona and Boston, I guess. I really like animals. I’m super passionate about the environment, which is why I am studying environmental science stuff and I’d like a job where I can work both with people and with animals.
M: Do you remember how we met?
R: Yes! We went to the Buckeye Kickoff, and it was where they gather all the freshmen in the Shoe where they taught us all the football cheers. It was so hot and I remember standing around with your RA and there were hot dogs. And we ate hot dogs. Then we became friends. Then I remember a few nights later we went to the Welcome Back concert together and I left early because there were too many people and then I got a call later from Lauren telling me to come to Adriatico’s [pizza] because the two of you were there
Lauren: I totally forgot about that!
M: What’d you do over the summer?
R: I was an intern for the American Bear Association at the Vince Shute Wildlife Sanctuary, which is in Orr, Minnesota, near the border of Canada. And I did a lot of different things there. The main stuff is that I fed bears and I educated people about bears and the environment, and I scooped a lot of bear poop and I met really great people.
M: How’d that experience influence your plans for the future, or what’d you get out of it?
R: It solidified the fact that I’m in the right major and I’m in the right place here at OSU, which is a very comforting thing to have, to kind of have that reassurance. And I just know that I want a job working with animals and with people and it was, like, a dream internship for me, and that I loved every second of it. Class is a lot less exciting when there aren’t bears.
M: What’s your favorite animal?
R: Not a bear, actually. My favorite animal is a sea turtle. I had a really great experience the summer when I was 16. I got to go to Costa Rica, which was my first time out of the country and I got to take a college class about sea turtles and I got to volunteer at the Sea Turtle Conservancy. That was a life-changing experience for me, to realize that I wanted to work protecting the environment and sea turtles. And they’re also just really cool.
M: Who do you want to meet, dead or alive?
R: There’s two routes I can go…um, I have to go with Marcus Mumford.
L: I knew it!
R: He’s an incredible musician and humanitarian and I just know that would completely fulfill any desires I had to meet Marcus Mumford. I’d just be a content person if I met him. I mean, [Mumford & Son’s] music has had such a big influence on me.
M: What’s your favorite song?
R: My favorite song, coincidentally, is not by Mumford & Sons, but it’s by The Middle East. Blood. I have a little snippet of [the lyrics] tattooed on my forearm.
M: What inspires you?
R: Beautiful things like music and Mumford & Sons. Animals like sea turtles and bears. Just, kinda, the perseverance of nature inspires me. And, I don’t know, any sort of passion…I don’t know, if you were a really happy carpet cleaner or something, like if that’s what you loved doing, I could sit and be inspired by how passionate you were at cleaning carpets. Even if the thing itself isn’t super interesting to me, but if someone is super in love with what they’re doing and happy about it, I find that inspiring.
M: What are you most proud of?
L: That’s really open-ended.
R: That’s hard.
M: I’m trying to get deep, here.
R: I’m proud of the fact that I’m following my heart and doing what I want to do, because I feel like all too many people don’t study what they want to study or don’t do what they want to do because they think it’s impractical or because they think ‘oh, I’ll never find a job’ or ‘oh, I’ll never make enough money’ or something. Obviously I do worry about that, but at the end of the day I’m doing what I want to do and I’m doing what I love, and that’s the important thing.
M: Where do you see yourself in five years?
R: Happy. Working at a zoo or an aquarium, just hopefully sharing my passions with other people, and, you know, promoting being good for the environment and being a good person. Hopefully, I don’t know, maybe I’ve done the Peace Corps. Hopefully I’m well-traveled and I’ve seen some really amazing places and I’ve met really amazing people in different parts of the world.
M: What’s the funniest thing that has happened to you recently?
R: I was thinking about this the other day…This wasn’t recent, but over the summer, there was a time where we were kayaking on one of the lakes [at the bear sanctuary] and we found this little island, and we went onto the island–like, super tiny, the size of, I don’t know, the size of a large house, maybe. Anyways, we went onto the island and there were goats on it. It was the only thing on the island, so it’s Goat Island. Just, like, these six goats, and it was really funny.
L: What’s your favorite type of plant? I want to know that.
R: Maybe I like wildflowers, just in general. This summer I made so many flower crowns out of wildflowers. I really like prickly pear cacti. They’re really cute and in the springtime they’re purple and then they turn to green. And they’re just, like, a bunch of disks connected to each other. They look like alien plants.
M: Is there anything you’d like to add, things you want people to know about you, or any advice you want to give people?
R: Use reusable bags instead of plastic bags, use reusable water bottles…know what you can and can’t recycle–
L: –which is hard, so I ask you.
R: And dismantle the patriarchy.
