My name is Ben Schoenberg and I’m a Senior undergraduate student at UCLA, majoring in Biology with a minor in Biomedical Research. This Winter quarter I’ve been selected to participate in a glorious opportunity which involves traveling to Nicaragua and performing field biology research.

Future sports medicine physician or world-traveling biologist? I hope to answer this question at the end of my field biology quarter experience. I’m excited to gain a better understanding of research in a field environment after spending 1.5 years in a stem cell lab on campus. But almost more than that—I can’t wait for the day in and day out activities in Nicaragua. Canoeing up the local river, searching for slippery frogs of all shapes and sizes, and really getting my hands dirty. A venomous snake experience would be very cool too, although at a distance of about 10 meters of course. I’m also looking forward to being part of this trip with a group and communicating our stories and discoveries to each other. I’ve never traveled to such a remote part of the world, especially one that’s a biodiversity hotspot and can only imagine the mysterious creatures I’m going to encounter. Furthermore, getting off the grid and truly disconnecting from social media and email is definitely something I’m looking forward too.

In terms of academic goals I aspire to come back with a new dedication towards conservation biology, with the goal of making a positive impact in the field. Whether that involves direct research, increased public awareness, or spreading cute pictures of spider monkeys playing. Finally, I’m looking forward to gaining practical skills in developing experiments to test and recording results. I’ve never used the statistical software “R” before and feel it could be a useful tool in analyzing data.