Blog Entry #5

I did my first cold-calls last week and I feel like a whole new door has been opened. Of the two people I called, both agreed to interviews. It is so much easier for a professional to ignore an email then turn down an interview request over the phone. I am going to call all of the people I am interested in interviewing because it is much more effective than emailing and also helps me get over my fear of calling people I don’t know.Tomorrow I have an interview with an urban wildlife biologist with Dallas Parks. Over the past week, I have become more confident that I want to do my research on urban ecology because it will become more and more important as humans continue to develop more land. Although it is a very obscure field right now, I have a lot of confidence many jobs will be available in the future relating to human-wildlife cohabitation. Also, I am becoming very passionate about my research and ISM is changing from “work” to an interesting and engaging project. I plan on interviewing more than the five required people because I want to gather as much knowledge as possible on urban wildlife and engage in meaningful research.