Way to go! I agree yet I haven't presented anything in my field of master's work, so I realize I'm not helping...I forwarded your idea to Russ, crediting you, and adding that they should put the call out to those thousands of recipients that get the turtles week educational packets.
Thank you for sharing your story. I've always tried to encourage my friends and younger cousins to study what they're passionate about. My husband as well, who's now seeking his second bachelor's. Woo hoo!A "Russian Mud Turtle" is a person who offers encouragement to a animal interest in someone else despite what family, friends, or the social 'current' at the time indicates. My Dad thought I'd be living under a stair well at this point in my life based on the interest, my mother said something to the effect of "well hopefully you will out grow this before you need a job". My sister never held back telling me that 'everyone at school thinks there is something wrong with you' she's the one that told them. Even a university professor who helped with my reptile and amphibian boy scout merit badge (an ichthyologist) suggested that if I did go to college I should go into chemistry, it pays better.
The Russian Mud Turtles in my life were an aunt and my grandfather. Now you know.
At an older age Harold Carty was a Russian Mud Turtle for me.