Within the last week, I got an electronic message from a former student who was very interested in being involved in zoos and wanted to be an animal keeper or an animal caregiver. She didn’t care where it was, this was her life dreams. I encouraged her, we talked in and out of classes because by that time I was teaching several classes at the university and she wrote from Columbus, Ohio, where she went after she graduated last year to join her boyfriend. She got an internship, a non-paid insurance ship at the Columbus Zoo, and recently has gotten a paid summer position. And she essentially wrote and said, “I’m living my dream. I always thought that this was what I wanted to do. Thank you for our conversations. Thank you for all of the encouragement that you gave me.
