Hello! I am Jeff Wood, and I am a fourth year ecology, behavior, and evolution major at UCLA. My main goal for my trip to Nicaragua is very simple.  I want to be able to go to nature to be able to explore nature and fulfill my lifelong dream of traveling to a rainforest. I grew up watching people such as Steve Irwin and Jeff Corwin on the television and always wanted to do what hey do, but having grown up in Southern California, I never had the opportunity to do so. I did take the occasional trip to national parks such as Yellowstone and Yosemite, but I never really was able to experience nature to the level that I wanted to. While in Nicaragua, I hope that I will be able to have some moments where I will just be able to sit by myself and just contemplate about life. I know this may sound a bit cliché, but it is something that I have always wanted to do. I have also never been out of the country before, so this will also be a good opportunity for me to get some much needed traveling experience. My mom is terrified of me going, but if I accomplish this goal and the two others that I am going to describe, I think that she will think that this whole experience will have been worthwhile. However, if I get malaria or something, she will definitely never forgive me, but my stories about having the disease will still be pretty cool!

A second goal that I have been thinking of is that I want to be able to conduct research on something that I am very interested in. There are so many different kinds of plants and animals that live in the rainforest, so I am bound to find something that I am passionate about studying. I do not have a very clear idea of exactly what I want to do research on while I am in Nicaragua, but from what I have researched on my own and learned in classes, I am leaning towards something with hummingbirds. At my family home in Chino Hills, California, my family has recently installed hummingbird feeders that attract many individuals daily. My family and I derive great joy from watching the birds’ interactions, which are mostly aggressive. There are many different species of hummingbirds in Nicaragua, so I am hoping that I will be able to view enough to be able to get some good data.

This trip will also allow me to have a clearer idea of what I want to do with my career. I am currently a premed, and since it is my fourth year I will be applying to medical school very soon. The thing is, my childhood passion for ecology has not diminished at all. This has left me with a bit of a dilemma. There are so many routes that I will be able to take in my career for both of these routes, but the time to officially decide what I am going to do is rapidly approaching. I hope to use this quarter as a way to help me make this extremely important decision. While my parents are set on me becoming a physician, I really want to explore all of my options while I still have the opportunity to do so. The future is very important to me, and I want to do something I know I will enjoy.