Margie Lodes

High School Apprentice

Where does your interest in nature stem from?

"Every summer my family goes somewhere weird and does like crazy hikes. There's this hike in Alaska called the Harding Ice Trail. And it's basically, not even basically, it is hiking up a mountain, which was not the best thing when I was eight years old. But we did it and you got to see glaciers at the top and snow, because snow in summer is not something I'm used to. That was the big one that was kind of awful, but at the end of it then you're like, Oh, that was so much fun. Let's never do it again."

What has had the greatest impact on you this summer at Tyson?

"Honestly, I'd say having the undergrads. Because they kind of take you in and they teach you everything they know, and they're super chill about it, and they talk to you and they kind of make you feel welcome. For day-to-day teaching and stuff, the undergrads. Every once in a while I'll ask Rebecca a question and she'll be like, ‘oh yeah, this is that and this is what we're doing’ and all that. It'd be hard to keep yourself motivated if you're counting all these seeds for literally who knows what reason."

Margie worked with Scott Mangan and Claudia Stein's Natural Enemies team during summer 2018. Learn more about their plant-microbial communities research here.