Jared “J” Colbert
aka Bartholemew Ginger-Snap Sir Chungus the 3rd

he/him
Undergraduate Fellow
Team Vibes

How did you get here? What brought you to Tyson?

I don’t know, I feel like an anomaly. I was looking around, praying for a job, and a couple of math professors knew about this opportunity at WashU. And I was like, sounds great! I mostly saw the price and was like, okay, this is what I’m selling myself for this summer. (Bartholemew Ginger-Snap Sir Chungus the 3rd laughs.) Then I got on an interview call with Kim [Medley], and we talked, and I didn’t feel like I was doing the best because I hadn’t done much science. But then she was like, what can you bring to the table? And I’m like, I boost morale, you know? We talked a bit about my math background and she asked me what I do when I’m bored. Don’t remember what I said, but apparently it was sufficient. From that point forward we started having a bunch of laughs. A little less than a week later, me, her, and Kasey [Fowler-Finn] got on a call, and they asked if I liked field work. I didn’t know what that was — at the time I thought it was something totally different. So I said, yeah, I love field work! I can’t wait to get in the field! Then I got here. This is something totally different.

What does field work look like for your team?

Find the sunniest spot in the prairie. Walk like 30, 40, 50 feet in. Set up chairs, equipment, and sit there intensively, listening to the sounds and documenting them. Documenting everything, really, taking temperature and noting the site. I didn’t know research involved so much planning. We plan almost every day of the week, and we have to continuously switch it up ‘cuz things change. I really thought we were just gonna be down by some riverbed or creek, putting things in the ground. I don’t even know what I thought, but it’s not this. There’s an audible every day, just so much Oklahoma! Oklahoma!

Besides the field work, what has surprised you about this summer?

I wasn’t expecting to be dressed like this every day. (Sir Chungus is famous around Tyson for his extreme precautions against ticks. He is wearing multiple full-length layers, each one duct taped around the edges for extra protection.) I was not expecting the red-meat-allergy tick [Alpha-gal syndrome]. I was not expecting to be so close to animals. Didn’t know there were wild turkeys, and that they’re violent. But they’re also scared of us. I walked up behind three of them, they were like, what you doin’? It was hilarious. Hmm, what else did I not expect? Didn’t expect this facility. This is a really nice facility.

How might this summer inform any future work that you do?

I always wanted to be a farm boy. When I started the summer, I was like, oh, that is not in the cards for me. But now I’m like, I can actually do this. I could deal with this. ‘Cuz I wanna live off the grid, and this gives me a taste for what that’s like. It has showed me a side of the workforce that I’m not used to seeing. I’m used to physical labor, hard labor, stuff like that. Surprisingly, my back hurts here more than it did there! There’s them chairs, they got us sitting in that field, it’s terrible. But I’m using my brain more. And I figure, if there’s a way I could use my brain and still be active, I could find some balance. Which is probably going to be impossible with a math degree, but that’s what I want to pursue.