I've been around the research block a few times. In high school, I was involved in a student lead permafrost research initiative where I got the chance to travel to Churchill, Manitoba and get my hands dirty with my first taste of fieldwork. I started in on-campus research way back in my very first semester of freshman year, studying vampire bat behavior. I spent a summer in an entomology lab at the Smithsonian, identifying parasitic wasps, and pan trapping at sites all over Maryland. And now, as a seasoned sophomore, I got the chance to expand my research horizons to the vanEnglesdorp lab. I had…