QUOTE(seerauna @ Nov 3 2008, 10:59 PM)

My two lifelong dreams are to be either an author, because I'm working on my own novel at thirteen, or to be a herpetologist. In case you don't know what that is, it's a person who studies reptiles. (I think snakes are the coolest things in the world.

)
Sea turtles is where the funding's at, for herpetologists. I'm trying to break into that biz, sort of. I'm all kinds of biologist, but I've recently applied for jobs with sea turtles in North Carolina and desert tortoises in Arizona. One of my bigger regrets is the time I decided to not put off grad school in favor of studying sea turtles in Costa Rica. Would have made life much easier if I had gone, because I could have gone to grad school later, in that field, and then found herpetology work damn easily.
The lesson: when someone asks if you want to study sea turtles in Costa Rica (or similarly nice Latin American country with beaches and a stable government) you say, "Yes!"