Look in your own backyards, or on the side of the highway in Tennessee, you’ll likely see kudzu–a plant from Japan. Look to the skies next time you’re outside at recess, and you might just see European starlings, a bird originally from, you guessed it, Europe. Kudzu and European starlings are two examples of invasive species in Tennessee, meaning they didn’t used to live here, but humans brought them here from as far away as different continents.
So, back to my beloved, but sick, frogs. When humans bring frogs to new places, they’re also bringing any diseases that the frogs have along with them, just like we can spread colds when we travel. Before my senior year of college, I spent the summer studying sick frogs in California. California was so far away from Tennessee that it practically felt like a new country. But I loved meeting new people and getting to know a totally new place. I saw things I’d always wanted to see, like the Golden Gate Bridge, redwood forests and even a tarantula in the wild.
Living so far away from home was hard, but it showed me that I wanted to travel and experience different parts of the world through my career in science. So, that year, I applied for a Fulbright grant to continue my research abroad. The Fulbright Program gives recent college graduates the opportunity to study in a foreign country for about a year, paid for by the government. I chose to study in Panama because of how different the animals are from Tennessee, and because I wanted to get better at speaking and understanding Spanish. Now, I can see toucans and sloths outside my apartment window, and I feel comfortable speaking Spanish in my day-to-day life.
