You might be an Environmental Science Major if…

As I have progressed in the environmental science major I have made a few observations about myself that may explain why I ended up in this field. I’m not saying I’ve done all of these…although I have done many… these are all little things that just might indicate that someone has a tendency towards the natural sciences.

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You frequently stop to catch up with the trees and introduce yourself to new ones as you walk around campus.

Everywhere you go you are connecting the dots between organisms and their environment, this includes the dairy aisle.

You kept a pet brine shrimp for 5 years and experienced significant sorrow when ‘he’ died.

You have to dig under the pile of leaves on your desk to find your homework.

You have to dig under the pile of papers on your desk to find your leaves.

You cheer when you hear the environmental messages of Avatar, Walle or the Day After Tomorrow.

You can think of few things more poetically tragic than daffodils covered in snow.

You are mildly irritated when someone calls it dirt.

You get disoriented and depressed when you walk through a Wal-Mart

You have ever put a pine cone in the oven to simulate forest fires to see if you could get the seeds out

You carefully refrigerate, treat with hormones and plate out Redwood seeds on water agar to see if they will grow.

In the library you intentionally avoid the natural history section because even walking through it takes you three hours.

You take pride in walking to school. The colder or wetter the weather the more pride you feel.

You stop the car and pull out the camera for a Kodak moment when you pass by a wind turbine.

Environmentalists both terrify and fascinate you.

You can tell how good your day was by the amount and kind of dirt you find under your fingernails.

Being alone on a cold, rainy mountainside miles from home sounds like an excellent way to spend your vacation time.

You can argue with equal passion for both sides of Evolution, Global warming, DDT, Hunting rights, Intensive farming, Timber management, Fire control, Ethanol, population control, the solution to the energy crisis, and many other charged issues,

Everyone thinks you will someday spend a few months chained to a pine tree in Oregon.

You happen to know the scientific names of more than 5 organisms, one of which is the fungus growing in your shoe.

You went to Yellowstone on a class field trip and talked about it in every class period til the end of the year.

Your major club also went on a field trip to visit Arches National Park for no reason other than to see it.

You spent one evening taping ozone test strips around your apartment complex to see if it met EPA standards.

No matter how bad your day has gone you pull out your camera and take a picture of the mountains even though this sunset looks just like yesterday’s.

You took a picture of the mountains yesterday also,

You feel guilty for using all the hot water, not out of concern for your roommates but because of the energy costs.

You collect recycling then carry it over to the dorms at night to sneak it into their recycling bins. You then get frustrated that there isn’t a bin for glass.

In every one of your classes this semester you had to memorize the Nitrogen Cycle.

You think grades should be assigned like soil layers, O,(sometimes P), A, (sometimes E), B, C, R

You have a remarkable ability to find yourself in epic poses,

you may even have an awesome red flannel shirt.

You seem to always have some kind of strange, rescued, foreign plant dying on top of your fridge.

You wore green to the football game even though it matched neither team’s colors.

You dressed up as a tree for Halloween and knew what kind of tree it was.

You woke up at 4 am and drove two hours for a slight chance of seeing wolves in the wild.

You don’t feed strays, but you follow them around and make sure someone else does.

You have more pictures of your cat than your family… by the way… you don’t actually have a cat.

You spent your wild college weekends speeding down dirt roads in a 15 passenger van in the middle of nowhere at 1 am chasing kangaroo rats.

You can’t decide whether to spend your summer teaching ecology at 10,000 feet or counting plants in a swamp in New Jersey.

Your roommates dread the next thing you find under a bush on campus that will find home in their kitchen.

You have an iconic magical walking stick.

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When your mother threw away your rock collection you saved as many as you could, found another box and immediately started over again.

When everyone laughed that Dieter F. Uchtdorf talked about airplanes again you celebrated his brief mention of dendrochronology.

You not only know what dendrochronology is, you’ve done it before.

Finally, if in spite of all your frailties and faults, eccentricities and foibles, dirty fingernails and smelly shoes; lack of social grace, manners, or good speakin’; abundance of pets, lengthy travel–frequently off the beaten path… If in spite of all that the ladies for some reason still cross the desert to find you,

You are probably an Environmental Science Major.