When I was department chair a couple of years ago, I did a lot of pre-enrollment advising for freshmen over the summer. We had a lot of marine biology students, and then as now, a lot of 'em are marine biology majors because they went to Sea World, and decided they would like to train dolphins, or maybe help dolphins. The thing is, for most people those are fantasy jobs, like rock star, except they don't pay the same kind of money. So we try to take these "dolphin-huggers" as we affectionately refer to them, and steer them into something more realistic. But once in a while, a student comes along who's really serious about it. I have a series of set questions to identify them.
This student came in to see me one day, and she had a little gold dolphin necklace, and I figured, "Oh, boy, another dolphin hugger." My first question, then, was, "So, Michelle, I wonder if you could help me out, my memory is not what it was, can you remind me what the scientific name of the dolphin is?"
"Depends on what species you want, but the generic name is Tursiops."
My eyebrows raised a little bit, so I said, "So, what's your favorite dolphin book?"
She rattled off the names of five of the leading scientific books. Wow!
"So who's your favorite dolphin scientist?"
She reeled off a who's who of the leading scientists. I resolved to keep an eye on her.
She did very well in her first year, and we made arrangements for her to do a semester long internship at the Mystic Aquarium, in the tanks with the dolphins, working alongside a leading dolphin scientist. A dolphin lover's dream come true. But there's an old saying, "Be careful what you ask for. You just might get it." Michelle was still my advisee, so she had to report back to me after about two months into her internship. She sat down in my office, and I asked her a question that I already knew the answer to, but I had to ask it anyway.
"So, Michelle," I said. "Tell me about these dolphins. Are they really like on TV, like really sweet people, except they have fins?"
She frowned, and her mouth formed a little 'O.’
"Well, I'd have to say they're not quite as smart as a dog, but they're a lot nastier, and if you're a woman, you really have to watch out for the males in the water---."
Poor Michelle. She had discovered Sea World's deep, dark secret; dolphins are horny marine predators, and they have to be well fed and trained, or they'll take chunks out of their trainers, something that happens with some regularity. So Michelle, after having her heart broken, had to look for a new passion, and she found it in an unlikely source, marine algae, and she is now very successfully employed by the Environmental Protection Agency. But sometimes, that's what college is about; finding your REAL passion instead of fantasy ones. And that's what teaching is really about, too; not just transmitting facts, but helping students square their dreams and fantasies with the real world, and then pointing them in the right direction.
