I Like Plants

 Welcome to the blog! My name is Marie.

Photo of the author hungering for brains

I grew up in Fairbanks Alaska which was pretty cool. Lots of opportunity for outdoor life. Not a lot of opportunity for anything else. I completed my BBA in Marketing and Leadership from the University of Alaska Fairbanks in 2011. Turns out marketing isn't for me in any way shape or form but I did spend my time and money on it.

Now here in Saint Paul Minnesota I have decided that I like plants. I like them so much I want to go back to school to learn more about them. Seems simple right?

"I like Plants"should really be the name of the blog because it cover the full scope of where I'm starting from. The simple innocence of that statement shows exactly how much I know about horticulture. Which is almost zero if you haven't guessed yet.
So where does this leave me?
I like plants.
I like plants so much I want to grow them.
Grow them indoors, summer is too short for anything.
Grow them year round.
Grown them in less space, mini varieties with normal size fruit.
Grow them more efficiently, less power, less water.
Hydroponics! The ultimate goal: a hydroponics consultant.

Blind enthusiasm does not get a job. Believe you me. It doesn't even get you back into school. I had such high hopes starting this journey back to student life. 'Those academics will welcome me back with open arms! They'll gladly take my money and encourage me to catch up on the science learning I seemed to have missed the first time around!' I thought.

Not so much.

Turns out even attempting to reinvent myself from simple office worker to simple lab worker puts those academic types on edge. The graduate horticulture adviser had all sorts of interesting questions. Why do I need a second undergrad degree? What's wrong with the first one? What's my end goal in horticulture? Why did I get such a "useless degree" in the first place?
Why is he asking me these questions? I'm throwing my money down here. It's not a joke.
Well this lovely learning vessel revealed that he won't take students unless they plan on going into the academic world. I can only assume the academic world is filled with stuffy know-it-all professors who like to squish the enthusiasm out of prospective students.  I'll take a big ol' pass on that line of work.

Protip: when you get an answer that you don't like in a field even moderately related to customer service hang up and call up another representative. The second or third time you hear the same answer it *might* be true. Luckily, even though there's technically only one horticulture adviser he's not the be all end all of the department. The former adviser was much more helpful and actually gave advice.

It's not going to be easy to get into horticulture graduate school. My marketing background is laughable, I took zero science courses during undergrad, and no one in my family has ever done anything related to science. Sometimes I'm not even sure I speak the same language of science. There's a million new vocabulary words, acronyms, and slang terms to know. It's overwhelming. I'm starting from close to nothing in terms of knowledge.

But dammit, I like plants.