Dream. Pursue. Achieve. Life after IE3

by Ashley Blake, OSU, interned at ICAS/Mesoamerica in Costa Rica in 2006

Dream, pursue, achieve.

In school we’re given lots of buzz words to get us to “reach for the stars” and “fulfill our dreams.” Inspiring? Yes. Overwhelming? That too. Possibly a bit corny? Maybe…or maybe not.

Let me tell you a little bit about my story. After obtaining my Associates degree (basically your Baccore) in Bend, I entered OSU as a Media Communications major, a Music major and a Spanish minor. Lots of work for a new university student! After a tough first year, I realized that piano performance was not for me, so I dropped to a music minor and focused my energy on my other areas of study. I really needed a break from Corvallis, so I took the summer to study abroad in Spain to work on credits for my Spanish minor (scholarships, loans, and random side jobs for income — that can make it happen!). It was when I came back that I discovered the International Degree program. What an awesome opportunity: studying what you’re interested in! I couldn’t have asked for anything better. I shifted gears once again and instead of focusing on three different subjects — media, music and Spanish — I combined them. Over the next two years, I studied, traveled, did internships, and ended up graduating with two degrees (Media and International Studies), two minors (Music and Spanish), and an International Degree thesis “Music, Media and Success: A Costa Rican Perspective.”

While my academic pursuits were clear, my career ideas were vague. How the heck do you get a job doing what you love to do? The summer before my super senior year, I took an internship in Bend, Oregon with C3 Events, a festival and concert production company. One of their mottos: “Our world is glamorous, but our work is not” was something I learned to take to heart. I schlepped equipment, worked insane hours, and stressed over details like a madperson. But I also got to meet top-notch bands, work with tour managers, listen to music on the job, and gain professional skills in a way that no experience would ever have given me. After that summer, the owner of C3 offered me a job, and I ended up as an Events and Intern Manager with the company for two seasons after graduating.

Now, just two years after marching through Reser Stadium to be handed a piece of paper reflecting 5 years of work and a lifetime of opportunity, I am at a place in my career that I never even dreamed I would be. Last October I took a position with Ludus Tours, a company that does tours to international events including the Running of the Bulls in Spain, Oktoberfest in Munich and the Olympics, happening this year in Beijing. On a daily basis I apply media skills, communicate in foreign languages (since college I’ve learned some German and even a bit of Chinese!), use event management skills I learned at C3, and all around get to do what I love. This summer, I’ll be working in Spain, China and Germany, and my future with Ludus is bright and exciting.

So, we all know that college can be fun and it can be a drag, it can be tough and it can be rewarding. But ultimately, my bottom line is the same. Dream, pursue, achieve.

 

Congratulations, Robbie Lamb! Former IE3 Intern, Future Fulbrighter

Robbie Lamb, a former IE3 intern at Equilibrio Azul in Ecuador, is on his way back to Ecuador this fall with a Fulbright Scholarship to help build a marine reserve in the country’s Esmeraldas region.  The following is taken from the OSU Headline News page. See the original article at:http://oregonstate.edu/home/stories/index.php?story=RobbieDives

______________

Robbie Lamb’s love of marine biology started with his mother’s pre-dawn knocks on his door when he was a child. She woke him so the two could drive from their Portland home to see the Oregon coast’s well-known tide pools. He hated getting up early, but once there, Robbie managed to shake off his drowsiness. The pools inspired him. “I think that’s what really planted the seed for marine biology,” says the senior in the OSU Honors College.

Robbie’s mom didn’t stop there. She urged her reluctant son to spend his junior year of high school as an exchange student in Ecuador. He loved it. Ecuador had so much a teenager like him wanted — diverse ecosystems, more endemic species than almost any country in the world and a rich, varied culture. “It was one of the most formative experiences I had,” he says.

At OSU, Lamb has strengthened the marriage of those two passions – science and culture. He’s a http://biology.science.oregonstate.edu/biology major pursuing an International Degree and marine biology option. He’s spent countless hours in the lab and the field, and he’s written his own grant proposals to get funding for research in the United States, Ecuador and the Bahamas.

But perhaps Lamb’s crowning achievement came in the mail on April 2 — a letter approving a Fulbright grant to continue his studies in Ecuador. In September, Lamb will use the grant to help build a marine reserve in the country’s Esmeraldas region mdash; with fishermen’s input. “I’m very ready to go work with them,” Lamb says. “A big part of developing sustainable fisheries there will be establishing my own relationships with fishermen.”

It won’t be the first time Lamb has melded scientific and cultural work. As a congressional Gilman Scholar, he studied in Ecuador his sophomore year and interned with the Ecuadorian marine conservation group Equilibrio Azul, surveying sea turtle nesting sites and the shark catches fishermen hauled in daily. Counting sharks was a particularly sensitive job in Ecuador at the time. Shark fishing was illegal, and the fishermen were initially suspicious of him.

Gaining their trust was difficult, and where Lamb used to see only a conservationist’s argument, he began to understand the fishermen’s side of the story. “I saw them for the people that they really are. They’re just trying to feed their families,” Lamb says. The experience crystallized his career path. “That experience was very pivotal in directing my interest toward sustainable fisheries,” he says.

Lamb’s travels didn’t end in Ecuador. During his junior year, he took advantage of two of OSU’s undergraduate funding opportunities: the Undergraduate Research, Innovation, Scholarship & Creativity grant and the Howard Hughes Medical Institute program.

The grants took him to the Bahamas, where he worked as a research assistant for zoology professor Mark Hixon and even performed his own study on the effects of Bahamian marine reserves on fish communities. “What’s great about Robbie is that he is so enthusiastic, so willing to work and so dedicated to learning about ocean conservation and management,” says Hixon.

Now, with funding from Oregon Sea Grant, Lamb is working with zoology professor Bruce Menge, studying the same tide pools he visited as a child. He’s looking forward to returning to Ecuador and eventually wants to earn a Ph.D. “I’m definitely interested in teaching. It’s probably the best way to give back to the next generation,” Lamb says.

Looking Back – 10 Years After an Internship

by Katrina McPherson

I can’t believe it’s been 10 years since I first went to Ecuador to work at Bilsa Biological Reserve. It’s funny how I ended up there in the first place because Diane Hart, who was in charge of the Latin American internships didn’t want to let me go. She said that working in a biological reserve had nothing to do with my major in biochemistry or my future as a medical doctor. It was quite a feat to convince her that an internship in environmental conservation was indeed relevant to my future, but somehow she agreed to place me in Bilsa. Ecuador was great. People were warm and friendly, even though my third year Spanish skills were very inadequate in real life. The real experience was working and living in a remote rainforest and it was one of the best things I ever did. There is nothing that compares to the beauty and tranquility of being inside a real tropical rainforest. We all know how terrible deforestation is, but it hurts even more after actually living there. As a result, I decided that I would have to do my own part to protect some part of the world’s rainforest, but first I had to go to medical school and become a doctor.I flew directly from Bilsa to Baltimore for medical school orientation (2 days late, in fact). Even while I was studying medicine, the rainforest was always in the back of my mind, and so was working in developing countries. This time the destination was Africa. During medical school I arranged to spend 2 months working in a rural hospital in Cameroon. The people there were also very warm and welcoming and the environment was breathtaking. I thought that maybe Cameroon would be a good place to start a rainforest reserve after becoming a doctor. Well, luckily I met my future husband while I was there, so now I am permanently tied to Cameroon.After Cameroon I finished medical school and a residency in pediatrics. For the last three years I have been working in the emergency department of Miami Children’s Hospital, trying to figure out how to move back to Africa and start up my biological reserve. And besides that, we want our children to grow up in Cameroon and know that side of their family, culture and languages. Last year I began a Master’s in Public Health through Johns Hopkins and I have begun to work out the details of how being a doctor is going to directly impact environmental conservation. My thesis for that degree will include a plan on improving healthcare to those living in rural, forested areas of Cameroon. My husband is in Cameroon at this very moment working with people in some of the rural villages in the forests and learning about the many problems they face. With a little bit of luck we will have our rainforest reserve up and running in a couple of years. I will be in touch with the details of a new internship in environmental conservation in Cameroon for IE3 Global Internships.My international internship was a very important experience in my professional career and I will always be thankful for having the opportunity to work at Bilsa. I especially owe a big thank you to Diane Hart, who believed in me enough to send me on an internship that seemed to have nothing to do with my major or my future career.