Stephanie Bush:
Hi, my name is Stephanie Bush, and I'm a scientist at the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History. I study marine biodiversity, so I study the broad array of different kinds or types of animals that live in the ocean. The greatest thing about my job is that I'm doing something a little bit different every single day. I never get bored. I'm always learning something new about the animals themselves, always learning something from the people that I work with. So I'm a lifelong student, and that is the best thing, in my opinion, to be.
One of the most important skills I need to use in my job as a scientist is very similar to what people probably need to do in any kind of job. You need to learn how to communicate. Part of that, of course, is telling other people clearly what you need, and how you're going to use the things that you need. But you also need to learn how to listen to other people and what they need in order to achieve their goals. For my work it's especially important because my research is done onboard a ship. So a lot of it is about teamwork. You cannot do science on your own. I can't drive the ship and sleep and do the science and pilot the RV all at the same time. It's all about organization and working together, and that requires lots of communication.
One of the many challenges that I had to overcome actually happened when I was still a student. So when I was in college, I spent one year studying abroad in Australia. Then later, after I was done with college, I continued to do some marine biology courses, and I was actually studying in Jamaica. We went on a class dive on the coral reef there, and I actually noticed these two corals. I was like, "Those aren't supposed to be here in Jamaica." I was like, "You must be identifying them wrong," but I knew I was right.
So it wasn't until a few day days later when someone mentioned this to another professor and that professor said, "Hey, will you mind going scuba diving with me and showing me those two corals?" And they said, "Actually, you're right. These are from Australia." Turns out in the '60s one of the researchers at the station was using the coral reef as a holding tank, and they had corals from other parts of the world that they would put out there. It was kind of wild that because I had studied in Australia and then I studied in Jamaica, I was able to notice that they were in fact brought there by another human being.
My advice for any students that kind of like science but they don't feel very into it or they don't know how to start being a scientist or they don't feel very sciencey is that, that's okay. I did not want to be in science when I was younger. In fact, how did I become a marine biologist? I'm from the Midwest. I'm from Illinois. And I definitely spent way too much time sitting around watching TV. The good thing about watching some TV is that I watched a lot of Discovery Channel or National Geographic Channel, and it was most assuredly the programs on the Great Barrier Reef in Australia that made me want to become a marine biologist.
So initially, when I started becoming a scientist, I thought that I wanted to go study octopus behavior while scuba diving. But life didn't quite work out like that, and while I did study squids ... So at least I studied cephalopods ... I studied them in the deep sea and open ocean. So you never know what is going to happen in your life, and you should always take any opportunity that presents itself. Just to say, don't worry if you don't feel very sciencey but you have an interest now. That will come with time. And just because you're not a scientist right now doesn't mean you can't become one.
