Envs 043 introduction by Jacqueline Saulnier

Intro

jsaulni1 — 2024-01-22 11:46:09 UTC

Hi everyone! My name is Jacqueline Saulnier, and you can call me Jacqueline or Jackie (no preference, whichever is easier for you). I use she/her. I was born in Summit, NJ, but have spent the majority of my life, since I was 6, in Friendship Heights, MD. Something about my family is that my mom is French and my dad is American, and they both have a degree in Veterinary medicine!

I am a senior at Bryn Mawr majoring in....

jsaulni1 — 2024-01-22 11:47:13 UTC

Biochemistry and Molecular Biology (BCMB), with a minor in French & Francophone Studies

A video I recently watched is...

jsaulni1 — 2024-01-22 11:54:02 UTC

"The Science of Diana Nyad's Swim from Cuba to Florida". I was prompted to search more about Nyad and found this video after hearing one evening last week, on NPR News, about a Netflix movie that recently came out (Oct 2023) about her amazing aquatic feat: swimming on-stop, in open water, from Cuba to Key West, Florida, (103 miles) through shark-infested and box jellyfish infested waters, with one of the strongest (if not the strongest) currents, in 53 hours. It was her fifth attempt at doing so in her lifetime and she was 64 when she accomplished it! This video looks into the scientific knowledge and technology that enabled Nyad and the 35-person team behind her to accomplish this.

I am drawn to this class because...

jsaulni1 — 2024-01-22 14:13:57 UTC

I have always been fascinated by life, whether it be plants, animals, fungi, insects... you name it, and the "natural world" (mountains, oceans, deserts, etc.) in general. This is what drew me to biology in primary and secondary school and to chemistry in college, leading me to major in BCMB. This fascination is also what fuels my angers and disgust about the ways we, humans, have ruthlessly degraded and destroyed other non-human as well as human life, creating our current state of numerous environmental and humanitarian crises. In the future, I really hope to bridge my love for laboratory research and my concerns surrounding the human-"nature" relationship as a physician-scientist focusing on the impacts of environmental factors - particularly those related to climate change - on human health. With Envs 043 being only my second environmental studies course that I will have taken while in college (last semester, I took my first, "Sacrifice Zones", with Prof. Minsky at Haverford), I am really looking forward to continue developing my academic formation in this domain. Doing so has allowed me to begin to appreciate how the "environment" is not only intertwined with human biology and, thus, health, but also with our race/ethnicity, culture, class, etc., making what one views as the "environment" and "nature" not universal. I am excited to explore these ideas further!

Photo of me and my mom over winter break

jsaulni1 — 2024-01-22 14:32:57 UTC

I would much rather take photos of plants, animals, and landscapes, but here is a recent one that I happened to take of my mom and I just a couple days before I returned to Bryn Mawr. We got a pretty good amount of snow in Maryland this past week (3-5 inches, I would say) - much more than I had expected for this year!

I am a huge animal lover, so I will now entertain the viewer with some photos of cats (equally a fan of dogs)

jsaulni1 — 2024-01-22 14:38:55 UTC

A cat that I met at Le Cat Café in Philly (recommend going if you haven't). This cat, which I nicknamed Bob-Bob due to the stump at the place of where its tail should have been, was super friendly!

jsaulni1 — 2024-01-22 14:40:03 UTC

Cat named Fraya who lives in the neighborhood where I went to elementary school.

jsaulni1 — 2024-01-22 14:41:12 UTC

My own cat, Chloe, on Christmas day several years ago.