What's This All About?

My name is Rachel.  I love doing science, making lists, and riding my bike at night.  Other interests include:  cooking, talking politics with my boyfriend, and applying scientific (often ecological) concepts in my daily life.  That last one seem a little odd?  Well it's not!  In fact, I think all the things I've mentioned are 100% connected to science and ecology.  When most people hear the word "ecologist" they think "environmentalists" and while both those words do apply to me, they don't actually mean the same thing.  Ecology is the study of the connections between organisms (monarch butterflies, earthworms, sunflowers, humans, etc.) and their environments.  Environmentalists advocate and work toward protection of natural ecosystems from degradation (based on the definition from the Free Dictionary).  


While my scientific work is not advocacy (it's science), I do try to apply information gained through the scientific method to my advocacy activities and positions.  My goal in this blog is to tell you about my life, and show you how ecology applies in almost every situation.  Life can be exciting (I love to travel), it can be stressful (I'm in graduate school), and it can be beautiful (I'm a sap).  I believe our daily lives, the good and the bad, can be taken in an ecological context and used to improve the health of our global ecosystem.  We can learn so much from viewing ourselves as part of an ecosystem, not apart from it.  I want to share with you (and learn from you!) how to put ourselves back in an ecological context in a practical, modern way.  Really, I'm so excited.