Hello! I’m Briana Pond, from Nashville, Tennessee, and I graduated this May from Sewanee: The University of the South with a bachelor’s degree in Environment and Sustainability. In my free time, I love exploring the outdoors by hiking, swimming, and looking for critters. I also enjoy reading, painting, and watching movies (I’m trying to watch all of the Marvel movies in chronological order right now!).

Faith has played a role in my desire to help care for the earth because spending time outdoors has brought me great peace and helped me feel more present. I want to help others learn about the environment so they can enjoy it, but also hopefully be inspired to care for it as well. I am hoping this experience will help me gain confidence in myself as an educator, give me more experience teaching students, and help me learn about an ecosystem that is a bit new to me. I’m still figuring out whether I want to continue pursuing a career in education or get my master’s in environmental science and explore that option further. Whether it’s through my job or by volunteering in my community, I hope to keep engaging others with the environment.

My favorite experience so far has been going to Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore with the other interns, where we got to walk along the beaches and dunes, get ice cream from a nearby vending machine, explore historical sites that have been preserved, and help conduct an avian botulism survey. It was such a beautiful place, unlike anything we have back home in Tennessee, and I hope to get back there soon for a sunrise. While I’m in Michigan, I hope to swim in one of the Great Lakes before it gets too cold and enjoy the fall colors that are soon to come.

After my time in Michigan, I will be placed in Austin, Texas. While there, I’ll be doing environmental education with Spanish-speaking families through the Picnics en el Arroyo program and working on invasive plant management at the Upper Bull Creek Watershed.