Hello, my name is Bradley Niekamp and I am going into my 5th year at Georgia College. I am from Atlanta but have recently been living on Lake Oconee for the summers. I am studying environmental science with a concentration in marine biology and have been super looking forward to this trip. Since adding the marine biology concentration, it had been difficult studying marine life in a landlocked city, and I felt that a study abroad program was a perfect way to gain some hands-on experience in a field that I was super passionate about. I have never been to the Bahamas before and was quite nervous because I had little prior information about the majestic country. Yet as a senior and someone who has had both Dr. Devore and Dr. Weese as professors, I felt confident and comfortable with the fact that the trip would help me engage with my education pathway. Also having traveled abroad before I felt that this was a great opportunity to overcome some of my weaknesses and learn to be a more well-rounded person.
Overall, I had no idea what the specifics of the trip would entail and was just purely excited to visit a foreign country that has a reputation for some of the most diverse and exotic ecosystems. I tried to put any assumptions aside about the trip and just focus purely on the fact that many individuals don’t receive such an amazing opportunity as I was given. I felt that given my past scholastic history, I would have had enough knowledge to be able to utilize all the different classes I have taken to gain an increased understanding of the organisms that would be unfamiliar to me. Using my knowledge, I would then be able to take what I could learn from the trip and further apply it to my studies back home, even if the ecosystems function totally differently. While I am defiantly nervous about spending a good amount of time in unfamiliar territory, I am excited to make connections to people and places that are completely unknown to me.
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