Sophie Dorosin

she/her
Undergraduate Fellow
Forest Biodiversity Team

I didn't expect the kind of welcome that we received. I didn't expect to make so many friends. It's been above and beyond what I expected. One thing that I learned here that I hadn't heard before was the radical hospitality, and I really felt it. There's just so many people here that are looking out for you.

I wasn't sure if I could even handle the field work aspect, because previously I've done a lot of computer based or lab based stuff. Like, I'm not the strongest person, I'm not like some of the other guys on my team that are, like, strong, large people. I didn't know if I could do it, but, you know, you kind of prove to yourself that you can. It’s made me more confident that I'll be able to go on to do what I wanna do. You're building these skills in a really supportive environment with training wheels first.

There have only been a few times where the entire team is working in the same quad – that happens somewhat rarely because we're all kind of jumping around at different paces. And then all of us got tick bombed at the same time – where you accidentally stand in the middle of a nest and then all of a sudden, like, you're literally just like, oh…god. You gotta grab the duct tape and just completely cover yourself. Everybody’s kinda laughing and struggling at the same time. Just this kind of mutual, silly-scary moment where you got blood sucking bugs caught on your, uh, self.