I just got offered a highly desired (paid) Naturalist position in Maryland from August to November at Echo Hill Outdoor School!! Here is a blurb from their site:
"Echo Hill Outdoor School is located on the upper Eastern Shore of the Chesapeake Bay. Echo Hill's 70-acre campus is situated near the heart of the 350-acre Bloomingneck Farm, a working Maryland Century Farm owned by the Harris family.
Ecosystems
The campus consists of open fields, hardwood forests, freshwater
marshes, and a mile of sandy beach. The property is abundant with
wildlife and provides ideal outdoor laboratories for ecological studies.
The Outdoor School also owns 172 acres of "The Big Marsh" which borders
the campus. The Big Marsh is a freshwater shrub swamp protected by the
Nature Conservancy.
Educational Facilities and Extended Campus
In addition to these ecosystems, the School's educational facilities
include a barnyard, a recycling center, an organic garden, a Native
American site, and a fleet of historic
wooden Chesapeake work boats. Our extensive Adventure
Challenge course features low and high elements and an Alpine Tower.
The School also conducts classes and programs off campus in the towns
of Rock Hall, Galena and Chestertown as well as the waters of the Chester
and Sassafras rivers and the Still Pond Creek area of the upper bay.
Our extended classrooms include the farms and farmland of the rural
countryside and all the private landowners and merchants who regularly
open their doors and hearts to our curious students."
This place was my very first choice out of the 10-20 places I applied to. Each place I applied to required different things like resume, cover letter, very long questionnaires, 2-3 letters of recommendation----basically what I'm trying to say is that it was really hard work to collect alla that and get my references to keep writing letters for a bunch of different places. But, what comes with really hard work and being organized and on-top of things (usually) is success. Albeit, many many of the places I applied to rejected me, but it was all for that one place that didn't and I'm so excited.
Now, the next few weeks before I go to Washington I have a lot of loose ends to tie up and things to accomplish:
- Get first aid/CPR certified
- Find someone to sublet my room 'til December
- Buy some Silks to bring with me to WA and MD to continue training
- Give stuff away---trying to condense the things I own
- Find transportation to WA and MD
- Plan a possible NY trip for after MD
- Learn Early Childhood Development
- Get a physical (is that TMI?.....eh deal with it)
- Become proficient at aerial silks
- Get/master a drum machine with looper and add multiple more components
- blah blah blah...much more
Here is my video/artist of the day: She is AMAZING---it all about the loop pedal
Sprout Out!
