My Ag Ed Journey

Hello everyone, my name is Abbie Smith and I am an Agricultural and Extension Education major at The Pennsylvania State University. I am excited yet worried about my future as an Agricultural Educator. I am hoping to one day become an excellent teacher-- someone that my students know they can come to if they are having problems in school. I know that it will take a lot of hard work to get to that point, but I am ready and willing to work towards this goal. I’ve always known that I wanted to do something that helps people in a way, but I was never quite sure what to do. At first, I wanted to be a veterinarian, but I quickly decided that wasn’t for me. I doubt I’d have the stomach for it. I kicked around some other ideas as I got a little older: an architect, an environmental engineer, and even a wildlife conservation officer for a short amount of time. Later, during my time at the DuBois branch campus of The Pennsylvania State University, I realized that what I really wanted to d...

Rare  Marine Mammal on the Road to Extinction For my first blog post I wanted to inform you about the bleak future of an endangered species you may not have heard of. This species is the vaquita ( Phocoena sinus ), which, according to the World Wildlife Fund, remained unknown to science until 1958, and little over a half a century later is in danger of extinction (Vaquita). The vaquita is the smallest cetacean; marine mammals such as dolphins, porpoises and whales, in the world, measuring around 5 feet in total length (Goldfarb, 2016). A study from the Porpoise Conservation Society estimates that there were around 5,000 vaquitas in the 1930’s, with a ninety percent decline between 2011 and 2016 alone. In fact, more than half of the population has been lost in the past three years alone (Save). The vaquitas population decline is not helped by how specific its habitat is, vaquitas are only found in the northern most part of the Gulf of California where the waters are fertile. Acco...